After setting New Year’s Hopes/Goals for almost 20 years, I won’t set annual goals for 2026.
But I’m not done with goals! I’m just thinking about them a little differently. I will explain at the end of this post, but first, I still want to reflect on my 2025 Goals.
Meditate Every Day
Until about two months ago (when I had my goals realization), I was remarkably consistent. I actually don’t think I missed a day until then.
I usually meditated before bedtime. Unfortunately, I was usually quite sleepy and wasn’t particularly mindful, but I made sure I sat for at least five minutes, and it really did feel like a habit.
I also built in pauses during my day as well. On work days, I would regularly sit for about five minutes at the beginning of the work day and after lunch. It was an opportunity for me to catch and write down my thoughts and TODOs instead of bothering me as lingering tasks in my head.
Memorize five songs on ukulele
I was also very consistent about playing at least a bit every day while I wasn’t traveling. I learned:
- Kiss Me by Sixpence None The Richer
- What Else Can I Do from Encanto
- Sweet Pea by Amos Lee
- Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen
- All My Loving by The Beatles
This goal wasn’t specifically about memorizing: memorizing was a concrete way to set goals with improving as a byproduct.
And I improved, too. To memorize the songs, I had to work through tricky sequences of fingerings that I would otherwise skip past. I also learned many more chords.
Speak to my children in Mandarin
I’m still well below fluent, but I’m much better than I was before. For basic instructions around the house, I have most of it figured out.
Notably, the vocabulary is very different from what I was taught in school. In school, I learned “hotel” and “beer,” which don’t seem to come up very often. With my children, it is much more useful to know “socks” or “shampoo” or “road roller.” Given that I didn’t even know “road roller” in English until recently, the Chinese is a stretch.
It helps that my children have also been curious and interested in learning Mandarin as well. I know many children are resistant to extraneous, contrived effort for cultural benefit, but I haven’t run into that at all.
The turnaround
Over the past few years, I have reframed a lot of my goals into developing or establishing habits. I figured that enduring growth compounds over time and should come from ongoing, permanent changes, not temporary or time-boxed changes.
I consider myself relatively disciplined. Whether it’s taking cold showers or (previously) meditating every day, I can maintain schedules and habits in the constant fight of procrastination or laziness.
Then I listened to this podcast.
There’s a lot in there, and I naturally don’t agree with everything Naval has to say. However, it really made me think, and it did impact my thinking about goals
Living a more inspired life
Naval describes a seemingly very whimsical life. He is unapologetically self-prioritizing in not keeping a schedule or calendar. He pursues what he find most interesting in the moment because inspiration is perishable. He acknowledges that his circumstances provide the privilege to live life on his own terms, but it works for him now.
How did I interpret this? Well, I live a very rigid life where I schedule everything to meet obligations and handcuff myself to priorities. I carefully slice my time so that I can read a bit, meditate a bit, play ukulele a bit, and so forth.
Perhaps I’m undervaluing the gradual growth, but I don’t feel like much of that has compounded.. Mandarin is the most obvious example. I did 1000 days of Duolingo and frankly had little to show for it. I made more progress in about two months just by actually using my Mandarin.
Many of my proudest accomplishments didn’t come from diligent, compounding growth over time. They happened in short bursts of intense focus where many other things were pushed aside. Whether that’s a project at work, a side project, or a new skill, I seized on the momentary inspiration to just go. Spawning Tool started with an all-nighter, and most of the development happened over about two years.
Goals going forward
Right now, I’m taking an extreme approach of ruthlessly prioritizing and unscheduling myself. In practice, this isn’t that extreme: normal people don’t plan too much and just live, so maybe I’m being more normal there.
Rather than relying on discipline to push myself, I’m following my interest and drive. Historically, I would have held back from getting over-excited about one thing to make sure I’m doing everything else. Now, I’m asking myself what is the one thing and doing that.
I suspect that long-term, I’ll revert to something more balanced. There certainly are skills or growth that work better with steady, consistent effort over time. Something like weightlifting (which I have no interest in doing) requires steady growth (I presume). I suspect various other physical activities involving strengthening or developing muscle memory are the same.
As I set goals along the way, I’m not sure if I will post about it here. Expect nothing, but if I have an interesting story, I’ll share it.