What are your New Year’s resolutions? panic
Umm, find my calling? Eat better? Hit the gym more? Get a promotion? Sleep???
I’m sure we’ve all had these conversations over the past few days. The inquisition leads to frantic thoughts about your life, leaving you breathless, scrambling to quickly jot down resolutions in the Notes app on your phone—only to find these very resolutions completely forgotten by February. So, this year, the only resolution I’ve made is to leave “New Year’s resolutions” behind in 2024.
Enter: Intentions and Goals
If you’re an avid yogi like myself, you might have recently sat on the mat with a yoga teacher who asked you to set an intention for your practice. But if not, that’s totally cool too. I’ll be honest—intentions make a rather lovely journal prompt. (See Papier’s wellness journal here.)
Intentions? Goals? They kind of seem similar, right? But to me, there’s a subtle difference. Intentions are the guiding principles of my life—they reflect how I want to live: being kinder, moving more, eating better, spending quality time with friends, sleeping well, etc. Goals, on the other hand, are specific achievements I aim to accomplish.
In the past, my resolutions lacked accountability and strategy. Well, as mentioned, they were simply a couple of bullet points buried deep in my Notes app. This year, I’m breaking them down. But before I dive into the nitty-gritty of goal setting, here’s what I managed to accomplish in 2024—my blessings, wins, challenges, and lessons:
Completed my master’s degree and exhibited at LDF.
Launched Alga.lab and ran my own workshops.
Started this weekly blog.
Traveled to some wonderful places.
It’s important to celebrate these things because, sometimes, we need to be kind to ourselves and acknowledge that we’re doing good stuff and should keep going. (Even Harvard Business School agrees.) On a more practical note, celebrating wins also reminds us that the lessons from these journeys shape the goals we set for the future.
Goals for 2025
To put this all into practice and reflect on the past year, I’ve identified key areas of my life to focus on in 2025:
Design
Learning
Entrepreneurship
Community
So, here goes—a moment of vulnerability and accountability. Deep breath.
Design: Bring value to an organisation by harnessing my creativity to solve problems.
Learning: Become proficient in coding and development.
Entrepreneurship: Save to invest.
Community: Build a wellness community.
I suppose these goals are somewhat clear, but they’re still too ambiguous for my scattered mind. In a world where we’re bombarded with information and distractions as soon as we open our eyes, carving out a clear path for ourselves is crucial.
Breaking It Down
This might be a bit more boring, but it’s important nonetheless.
If I want to bring value as a junior designer, I need to think about what that might look like over the next four months.
For instance, as a designer, I want to maximise an upcoming internship by learning new skills and contributing meaningfully to the organisation. (Mini announcement!) This will involve regular check-ins with team members and personal weekly reflections to help me stay on track and assess my progress.
In terms of coding, I’ve started designing and developing a friend’s website, which serves as both a learning opportunity and a practical application of my skills—and I’m almost there! Completing this project within the next quarter feels like a tangible, achievable goal.
Although I started my investment portfolio a couple of years ago (hurrah!), I seem to have gotten caught up in the ambition of putting aside my pennies for flight fares and other material goods. Whilst I had a pretty good ride last year in terms of travel and experiences, I want to return to my entrepreneurial roots by redirecting the aim of the proverbial pot to give myself the freedom to invest in my own ideas in the future.
This isn’t even a hard goal; it’s just about sitting down and being realistic—but with a hint of ambition—about how much I can ferret away each month into my portfolio. And here’s where an intention comes into play rather than just a goal: spend wisely while being mindful of creating a foundation for future ventures and financial security.
A Practical Demonstration
I’ve touched on a strategy for my first three goals, but let’s use my final goal to demonstrate how I’m putting all of this into practice:
Goal: Build a community around wellness.
Intention: Make more meaningful connections.
Strategy
4-month plan: Create a blog series about what mindfulness means in design.
1-week plan: Have at least two meaningful conversations about how people find mindfulness in their daily lives.
Boom. Hopefully, these steps hit the mark.
And That’s the System
So, there we go. It’s not about overwhelming myself with massive, unreachable goals and completely forgettable resolutions. It’s about setting intentions that guide me toward my goals, creating goals that keep me accountable, and breaking them down into actionable steps.
Alas, while I may be reaching for the stars, if my spaceship doesn’t quite make it to other galaxies, it might at least get me to the moon—and that’ll be just fine.
If you want to find out more about goal setting, I really recommend checking out some of the content from Ali Abdaal.
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