5 Ideas for 2025

I cherish this time of the year.

For those who had a terrible past 12 months, the start of a new year rekindles a missing spark, offering hope, motivation, and positivity.

For those who had a great time, the new year offers hope of something even better.

In that sense, a new year offers a unique opportunity. No matter where we are in our journey, it’s like we are all called back to the starting line, to begin our expedition anew.

And that sense of a fresh beginning feels liberating.

Sometimes we are in a rut, weighed down by inertia, and we spend our days on autopilot. An external trigger like the beginning of a new year is exactly the kind of fresh start a person needs.

So for 2025, I would like to present 5 ideas to help you with your goals.

Over the years, these 5 ideas helped me tremendously in building discipline and sticking to my resolutions.

1. Set goals for the year; evaluate progress by the quarter

New Year resolutions often fail because the deadline for them is just too far away. Any goal set in January with a December deadline lacks a sense of urgency due to the protracted timeline. A better way to approach is to breakdown your yearly goals into quarterly milestones (at the end of March, June, and September) and evaluate your progress. Why does this work? A three month window is good enough to make meaningful progress and short enough to help you attack the goal with intent, helping you course-correct if you are falling short.

2. Begin before you are ready

An imperfect project completed is better than the perfect project that never takes off. So many times we fail to do the things we promise to do because we are afraid to start. Instead we waste countless hours reading, researching, and planning. In 99% of the cases, the solution to finally ticking off your projects is to simply begin. Only when you start, you realise the powerful force of momentum behind you, propelling you forward.

You’ll never be fully prepared to start. Just begin before you are ready.

3. Consistency Over Intensity

Any meaningful, life-defining endeavour is achieved through small, imperceptible steps performed consistently over a sustained period of time. These small actions, taken in isolation, do not amount to much. But over time, what they result in is staggering. Writing 500 words probably won’t amount to much. But do it over four months on any topic you know about, and you will have authored a book. Reading 20 pages a day is not significant, but do it for years, and you will have accumulated immense knowledge. Consistency compounds.

4. Have a daily highlight and plan it the night before

I’ve recently begun to incorporate this technique (which I took from the book “Make Time”) and found it to be incredibly helpful. Every night before I go to bed, I write down my daily highlight for the next day. This highlight is that one task that I will absolutely complete irrespective of what other urgent tasks that I may have to tackle. Daily highlight is usually a task related to my side projects and something that can be completed in 30 minutes to 1 hour. Having that clarity on one singular task is incredibly useful in making daily progress towards my long term goals.

5. Time Blocking

To-do lists are deceptive. They give a false sense of confidence that we are in control of our tasks. Most times, instead of helping us, a long list of incomplete items only makes us anxious.

I’ve realised a practical way of allotting time to things that most matter to us is through time blocking. Write down things you want to get done in the day and allot definite time blocks to them and pursue them without distractions. Time blocking stops us from making unrealistic daily targets because once you start putting things on your calendar and allot a realistic time to each, you are forced to come to terms with finitude of your time and energy.

Hope you find these five ideas useful in helping you stick to your resolutions and accomplish your goals.

May 2025 be your best year yet.