2025 in review

It’s been challenging for me to put a neat bow on 2025. I did so much this year that I’m proud of. None of which were the goals I wrote down for myself at the beginning of the year though! It’s hard to reconcile these two realities in my head. Planning for the next year is even harder, without understanding why I didn’t achieve them.

Let’s break down 3 of my 2025 goals to get to the bottom of this. 

1. Daily routines for the majority of the year

To bring my productivity to a whole new level, I crafted an ideal morning and night routine for myself. It included making my bed, stretching, journaling – all the good stuff they talk about in the books I read. But I’ve gone through several periods of chaos this year that forced me to ask myself: am I really as productive as I think I am?

Productivity means a few things for me. It means cleanly separating the work and the personal. It means being on top of everything. And most importantly it means just getting stuff done. I idealize productivity as a zen, super state of being that I know I can achieve if I just work harder at everything.  This year I had to confront the fact that I was nowhere close to that ideal. The first casualty in this realization were these arbitrary routines, instead choosing to focus on just getting more stuff done.

2. Run in a marathon

I picked up running in 2024. It’s a fun hobby. I had a bunch of races and a whole marathon planned out for this year. I wound up running in a couple of 5Ks before significantly running less.

What happened here? I joined a pickup league. And so I really wanted to get better at that instead of running. Someone told me recently that sometimes we drop things because the time we invest in them may not be as fulfilling as we think they’ll be. That matched my situation completely. I enjoyed my pickup league so much more than (I think) I would have trying to train for a marathon.

3. Pick up 12 new hobbies

One for every month this year. I tried 3. Enjoyed the third one so much I just kept doing it for the rest of the year. The reason I decided to purse this, it’s really only because I wanted to find a new hobby. And I ended up finding one! So I think I still accomplished the spirit of it. 

Conclusion

I don’t know. Focus keeps cropping up as an important thing for me to remember. Less is more. The me that accomplished everything I wanted to do this year would have given up a lot. So I’m ultimately okay with what I focused on instead.

I’ll reconfigure these goals, come up with some new ones, and maybe trim it down for 2026. I should’ve had one of my goals be to sit in a really nice coffee shop this year. Cause I knocked that one out of the park!