A Framework to Actually Hit Your Goals in 2025
A path to bridging the gap between planning and execution.
To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.
Eva Young
With the upcoming new year, many of us are considering New Year's resolutions and 2025 goals.
In addition to the allure of future plans is the unfortunate reality of our incomplete or forgotten goals from 2024.
Despite our best intentions, there's a vast gap between our plans and actions. We know exactly what we want to do, what we should be doing, and how to do it—yet we still don't follow through.
Both consciously and unconsciously, we make decisions that undermine and neglect the goals we've set to improve ourselves.
When we're sitting at home thinking about everything we want to accomplish, executing our plan seems simple, but when facing the realities of life, our plans are forgotten or compromised in the blink of an eye.
There is no perfect plan
Our natural reaction is to spend more time setting goals and planning in an attempt to preemptively avoid these disruptions.
There is something that leads us to believe the perfect workout program or task management system will turn hard work and difficult decisions into a stream of effortless execution.
Unfortunately, doing something worthwhile always requires challenging work and life will always throw a wrench into our best-laid plans.
The challenge in making progress toward a worthwhile pursuit is not deciding what to pursue or how to accomplish it. The challenge lies in making time for the daily actions that will move us forward and doing what we said we would do when the time comes.
Bridging the Gap
Accomplishing something worthwhile is about bridging the gap between planning and execution. Planning is critical but it's futile if we don't follow through.
It's important we know what we need to do and how we're going to do it, but the critical piece of bridging the gap from planning to execution is when we'll do the work.
When we set up to pursue something worthwhile we're likely adding a new responsibility to our already busy lives. The most common reason we don't follow through is we “don't have time”.
With that in mind, making time for the daily action required to make meaningful progress is the first step to bridging the gap.
Making time for something starts with blocking our calendars off, but it also requires we protect that time both from ourselves and others.
This is the second and most difficult part of bridging the gap from planning to execution: deciding to do the work.
It means we must decline invitations and requests from others and protecting the time from ourselves too. When other obligations creep into the time we’ve made we must stay disciplined to push them away and remain focused on our true priorities.
No matter how much we optimize our schedule, break down difficulty things into small chunks, or provide compelling reasons for doing the work, the single most important thing required to make meaningful progress deciding to do it.
There is no secret, no optimization, and no replacement for the simple, but profound decision to do what we know is right.
The more we face this decision the easier it becomes to make the right choice, and the more we make the right choice the more progress we make toward something worthwhile.
Prompts
What has been the biggest barrier to accomplishing the goals you set in 2024?
How can you make time for what’s most important in 2025? Will you need to remove something to make room?
When faced with the decision to do what you need to do, what can you remind yourself of to make the right choice?
Deep Dive
Do the Work by Steven Pressfield
A manifesto on the value of “doing the work” to overcome resistance.
Thanks for reading! I’ll see you next Sunday.
Kevin