I am very excited for 2025! I wrote about my 2024 recap, and honestly…it was all positive. (I’m sure I had lots of negative things happen in 2024, but none seem to have made a lasting impression). So now, I need to harness that positivity, and skate into 2025. Of course, I am well aware that there is only so much I can do to make 2025 not suck. Life happens, and who knows what this year will bring. But for those things that are in my control, I am going to be very deliberate about actions and outcomes.
(Side note: these are not resolutions. What follows is an intended lifestyle. Big difference!)
The plan:
I’ve divided life into 3 buckets: health, business, and self (incl connections). The plan is to be intentional about improving each bucket, in a consistent, gradual and deliberate way. And the best way is to break each down into focus areas, and check in with myself every month to see how I am doing.
Broad Health Goal: Get fitter, lose body fat, pay more attention to nutrition and supplements.
Broad Business Goal: Set mechanisms in place for voluntary “retirement” by 2030, while having fun along the way.
Broad Self Goal: Live a deliberate and conscious life of joy, agency and gratitude, on the foundation of strong connections with others.
Focus Areas
Kids. This is almost definitely our last year of all three of us being under one roof, and I want to make the most of it. Nothing fancy. Just plain old quality time spent together. It’s not easy, but we do at the very least sit around the kitchen table at least twice a day and catch up. Would also like to do some travel and holidaying with them, although schedules are difficult to align.
G. I started a new relationship last year, and in 2025 I want to work on making it work. Right now, this seems incredibly easy because we enjoy each others company immensely, and have limited time together (thus making sure we make it count). I hope it continues to be easy, fun and novel. I intend to play my part in making sure that does happen. At the same time, it’s interesting for me to watch myself in a new relationship, now that I am older and wiser. The goal here is to have fun, build something lasting while also not sacrificing myself, my hopes and aspirations and my agency. I’ve learnt from past mistakes!
Writing: Big theme for me. Probably the most defining theme, in fact. This year I will be writing, more than I have ever written before. 2024 set me up nicely for this. I started the newsletter, and was very consistent about it. I started my book, and was somewhat less consistent but still enthusiastic. Lesson from that is that I need tight and frequent deadlines, at least until I fully develop the writing muscle. SO will need to figure out how to put that in place. But the goal is to definitely carry on with the personal newsletter, to finish the book, and to (re)start my rehealth newsletter (which is for work).
Social Media. I don’t only want to communicate in writing. I also want to be present on social media, specifically YouTube via shortform and longform video. I have been saying this literally since before Covid, and have done fuckall about it thus far. That tells me that I am not actually listening to myself, and am selling myself stories. So this year is the year when I figure it out. Either I do it, or I stop talking about it. One way or another, this item will be checked off my list.
rehealth. That’s my business. I really struggle with this. I have a love/hate relationship with it for reasons that probably should be unpacked in a therapist’s chair. Nevertheless, with no small help from G, I started to figure this out in 2024, and will continue to work on it in 2025. The decision thus far is to have fun with it (again) and the goal is to build the biggest digital health hub in South Africa, and to be totally audacious about it. Then move into a sideline business, on the back of that. Plan is in place. Now to get it done.
Sort out my house. The bane of my existence. I need to either make my current house work for me, or sell it and move. It will almost definitely be the latter, but I have such an emotional bond to my house (this is probably more bad than good), and it’s difficult to let go. Big, big “must-do” for 2025. Once that’s done, I feel like I will be de-anchored, but in a good way.
Go overseas. I am itching to get on a long distance flight again. I’m thinking Europe or NYC.
Harness AI. Amazing things happening in this space (obviously), and I want to do something amazing and fun with it all. Work in progress.
Meet 52 new people. I want to meet many, many more new people this year. I want to make more friends, especially friends who are “middle-tier” friends (the ones I enjoy spending time with, but don’t need to see every week). This also extends to business network. Setting a 1-new-person-a-week goal means I will need a system in place for this, and be deliberate and conscious about it. We are 6 weeks into the year, and (with slight cheating) I am kind of on track so far. Challenge will be to keep it up. (A side challenge: nurture my existing friendships, through deliberate check-ins and meetups).
Read 12 quality fiction books. This goal shows you how realistic I am becoming, lol! Normally, I would do something insane like make it 52 books (one a week), and then fail in the first month. As it stands, I think I will struggle to do one a month. I just don’t read as much fiction as I used to, and when I do it’s usually “airport books”, which don’t really count as “quality”. (I have no formal definition of what quality fiction is, but it’s not cozy mysteries or TikTok romance books. Those I can read in a Saturday afternoon, but they don’t fill the soul).
Do a monthly new habit. I read this somewhere last year, and it felt right. Instead of setting lots of habits at the beginning of the year, in way of New Year Resolutions, and then failing fast, I’ll rather set a new goal every month, just for that month. It doesn’t have to be big, and the commitment is only for 30 days.Then at the end of the 30 days, I either keep it (now it’d be an ingrained habit), or I release it.
Do a monthly goal for something new. Similar to above, but different. I am forever coming across new “things” to do (Most of them crafty/arty), and then not doing them because of overwhelm. So now, instead of just wanting to do, I am deliberately going to choose to do. This doesn’t have to be massive, and it definitely does not have to be daily. It’s actually a hack: now that I have the mechanism to do something, next time I see an TikTokker make cool earings out of polymer clay, I can immediately either assign this new activity to a month, or release it and not think about it again. I think this could be a great way to calm my busy mind. Also, it’s a good way to keep novelty alive and make life interesting. Example: in January I went to a shooting range. New and fun!
Ignore politics. Not easy, but very rewarding!
Live a life of mindfulness. A lot has been said on this by people much smarter than me, but for me it boils down to savouring moments, and living in the moments. I know this is now a cliche, but it’s actually one of the most important approaches to life. Understand that the past and the future are figments of my imagination, and the only moment that matters is the one I am living now.
Yes, this is all a lot. But also, it’s manageable. I am building more of a lifestyle than just checking off a list. Let’s see how it goes!
