Did You Know You Don’t Have To Fear Annual Goals?

2024 is over, and we’ve entered a brand-new year. Did you set goals for 2025? I did, but I’m doing things a little differently this year.

 

The Review

Before setting 2025 writing goals, I first reviewed the ones I set last year. Like 2023, many of my 2024 writing objectives weren’t met.

As the saying goes, “Life happens while you’re making plans.” And like in 2023, I had to backburner several writing projects I had planned to work on. But I didn’t stop writing. My writing habit is too strong. Even if it wasn’t, I wasn’t about to break my almost four-and-a-half-year streak of writing weekly DYKs.

So, once again, I’ll set annual writing goals. But I also recognize the need to make a few adjustments in my writing life to get better results. I can’t control everything, but making a few changes will help improve the odds of me reaching my goals.

Did You Know…

• Your goals should be realistic, sustainable, and measurable. Start small and increase with time.
• Altering your goals doesn’t mean you failed. The only failure is giving up.
• Though its exact origin isn’t known, most people credit journalist and cartoonist Allen Saunders as the first to coin the phrase, “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.” Saunders wrote that phrase in a 1957 Reader’s Digest.
• Ex-Beatle John Lennon is often mis-credited as being the creator of that phrase because of a line in his song, “Beautiful Boy.” However, the album in which that song was included wasn’t released until 1980.

 

A New Year  – A New Way

Not everyone sets New Year’s resolutions. A writing consultant I know doesn’t. Decades ago, he decided to forgo making New Year’s resolutions and instead make resolutions for the year that just ended. He writes down everything he accomplished during the previous year. The things that made his life, or someone else’s, better. No goal-guilt or fear involved.

Following his example of making last year’s resolutions, I put spending time with Dad at the top of my list of achieved goals. Soon after I moved home in 2023, we began taking almost daily drives around the area. I loved the conversations we had. We talked about the way things used to be, and how the local towns have changed over the years. He also shared stories about the things he’d done during his lifetime, as well as the people he’d known. He really did live an amazing life.

As for my writing, while I didn’t get to work on those backburnered writing projects, I did think about them, rolling ideas around in my head for ways to make them better. I also imagined several new story and DYK ideas. (All of which I noted and filed away for later use.) I even managed to read or listen to a few books and watch a few movies. (They energize a writer’s creative juices.)

Maybe you mowed a neighbor’s yard or took food to a friend. Or you cleaned the kitchen when someone else in your household cooked. Even washing clothes, dusting, and vacuuming, all make the list. Whether you did them for someone else, or because there was no one else but you to do them, they still had to be done. They were goals you set and completed so you could get on with your life.

 

Final Thoughts

We all know most New Year’s resolutions are broken almost before they’re begun. We’ve all done it at least once. I know I have. So, if you’ve given up setting goals, maybe it’s time to look at things differently. Maybe it’s time to change from making New Year’s resolutions to recording Last Year’s accomplishments. It can’t hurt to try. Remember everything qualifies, no matter how insignificant it is. Documenting the actions—large and small—of things you did in 2024 is likely a more positive experience than setting goals you may, or may not, meet this year.

Personally, I combined the two. I made New Year’s resolutions for 2025 but also documented my 2024 successes. And while I’ll try my best to meet the new goals I’ve set, I won’t let guilt or fear of not meeting them paralyze me. If I have to change a goal, or the way I accomplish it, I will. And if at year’s end a goal isn’t met, I won’t feel too bad, since I’ll replace it with many other goals I did meet.

Did You Know…

• Only 9% of American keep their New Year’s Resolutions.