#92: My Goals for 2025
And the system I use to set them (template available for Paid subscribers)
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Hey Friends,
Welcome to the 91st edition of my newsletter.
After last week’s cold, I was happy to get back on track this week, which meant working out, working on my MBA projects, and especially spending more time with Zeno.
My mom visited us for a few days, and she was very happy to meet her grandson.
We also took him for a newborn photoshoot, and I will share more photos from that when we have them ready.
I’m still trying to figure out how to build a proper routine around this parenting thing, especially since tomorrow, I will be returning to work after my one-month parental leave. We’ll see how that goes.
I also had time this week to clarify my list of goals for this year, and I will let you know what they are and give you a quick process for setting them yourself.
2025 Goals
First of all, it’s not the first year I’m doing this planning, and it’s not even the first year I’m writing about it. You can find the full process in my edition from one year ago.
Below, I will talk about what I changed in the process, my actual goals for this year, and at the end, I will share a Notion template for goal-setting, only available for my paid subscribers.
Last year Review
So, first things first, I go through last year’s areas to figure out which ones have a low grade and if there are any goals I didn’t achieve to see if they are still relevant.
I did this in my newsletter from a couple of weeks ago:
This is the summary:
Career: 8/10
Health and Fitness: 9/10
Fun and Hobbies: 8/10
Finances: 9/10
Family and Friends: 10/10
Personal Development: 7/10
Online Business: 5/10
Home Environment: 7/10
Decide on your life areas
Next, I go through these areas and figure out if they are still relevant, or if I should combine some of them, or have a new area. For this year, I decided to remove “Online Business” from the areas, as I don’t want to focus on it as much, and if I have any goals for it, they can fit into other areas. I will also combine “Fun and Hobbies” with Personal Development, just to simplify things. So, for 2025, I will have the following:
Personal Development and Hobbies
Home Environment
Family and Friends
Health and Fitness
Work and Career
Finances
Plan goals
Now, if I were to go by the book, I would have to define the goals primarily based on the grades I got last year for these areas. But I won’t do that because I acknowledge the fact that some of those were based on unforeseen events (Zeno’s birth got me a 10 on Family, for example) and because I have already set up my priorities for this year in my head. I will also put a time horizon on each of them, as I usually plan and execute my goals in quarters instead of years (if I have a year-long goal, I try to break it down into specific actions I can take this quarter if I can).
Personal Development and Hobbies:
Finish my MBA: August 2025
Start writing my first nonfiction book: December 2025
Practice snowboarding: March 2025
Completing my MBA is my biggest goal of the year, and I plan to focus most of my mornings on this. I still have 3 courses to go, an entrepreneurship pitch and the final paper.
I didn’t put the snowboard on last year, and I don’t feel confident in it, so this season, I hope to get at least 3-4 days on the slope.
As I realized writing is my favorite thing, I want to start writing my first book this year. I’m not sure about the topic, but it will be a nonfiction book and in a field I am interested in: leadership, peak performance, productivity, antifragility, things like that.
Home Environment:
Move into a bigger apartment: March 2025
Stretch goal: get a bigger car
With Zeno coming, our one-bedroom is no longer enough for our family, and we plan to move to a bigger place where he can have his own room. We are already in the process of getting a new apartment, and hopefully we will move there this quarter.
Getting a bigger (and newer) car is also on the list since the one we have is already 8 years old and not very "family." We want to sell it and get a bigger one, but this might not be possible financially.
Family and Friends:
Go out with friends once a month
Go out with my wife once a month (after the baby is 3 months old)
From this perspective, I have to take into consideration that we will not have that much time with the baby, but it’s safe to assume we can both have one night every month for meeting with friends and leave Zeno with his grandma once he is 3 months or so. This is something we will need to adapt, probably.
Health and Fitness:
Run a marathon: October 2025
Get the Spartan trifecta: December 2025
Snatch my bodyweight: June 2025
Stretch goal: Go to another Hyrox
After 3 years or so since I started running, I want to try my first marathon this year, and I’ve already signed up for the Amsterdam marathon in October.
I will also compete in my first Spartan race this year, in June, the 21K Beast one (half a marathon of running with obstacles), but to complete the Trifecta means I have to do the 10K and the 5K ones too, and I will try to do them both in one weekend in autumn.
Weightlifting is one of my favorite things right now, and after power cleaning 100 Kg last year, my goal for this year is to snatch my body weight. Which is a bit lower than 100 kg, but not that lower :P I can reach this goal by snatching more and/or by losing some weight. It will probably be a combination of both.
Finally, if I can, I would also like to participate in another Hyrox event, but it would probably be in the autumn too, I’ll see.
Work and career:
confidential: December 2025
I have some serious plans for my role at Deloitte this year. After 3 years in the organization, I can say I understand it better, and I have some big projects in the pipeline. My MBA thesis will be on one of these projects, so I will try to kill two birds with one stone. I will focus this year on creating as much value as possible and I will also step up my networking game inside the company.
Finances:
invest X (confidential) EUR/month
While I have been investing for several years now, I don’t have the discipline to do it monthly; I have only done it now and then when I remember. The plan for this year is to “pay ourselves first” and automatically invest X money at the beginning of each month. I don’t overcomplicate investments and just buy ETFs like the S&P 500. I’m also too risk-averse to do any crypto stuff, but kudos to you if you can.
And this is how it looks like in the Notion template I use to track my goals.
(PS: You can get my template if you are a paid subscriber, it’s only 50 bucks/year or 7.5/month and you get access to this template and many more to come).
Recommendations:
I just saw “A Real Pain” yesterday and I liked it. Mismatched cousins reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother, but their old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history. I loved Kieran Culkin’s acting.
I finished “Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout ”, the latest book of my favorite productivity expert, Cal Newport. I liked it, and I resonate more and more with this way of doing fewer things to a higher quality instead of doing a lot of things poorly.
This substack post about nailing the basics.
Well, I hope you liked this edition.
Thank you for reading, and join me in the comments section for further discussions!
Leo
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