My Compass for 2025
How I'm doing goals wrong this year.
I was in the back of an Uber doing some casual pondering about life, trying to figure out what my goals for 2025 should be. I’ve always been a guy with a goal (or several). More than that, I’ve always been someone who defined himself by his goals (for better or worse). And (for better or worse) I’ve been lucky enough to have achieved them. I have a wife and daughter who I adore. I’m surrounded by interesting friends who I look up to. And I get to write TV shows for a living, which is the most fun gig I could ever imagine. If I could credit any one personal quality that helped the luck get me here, it’d be that goal-driven focus.
As I stared out the window of Steve's blue Toyota Camry, looking for the next mountain to climb, I had a weird thought: What if 2025 was about finding my voice?
What a great goal! I congratulated myself. Steve was too busy talking to someone on his earbud to share in my self-satisfied reverie. Until it started to dawn on me that "finding my voice" isn't really a "goal".
According to the too-many podcasts and blog posts I've consumed, meaningful goals need a tangible finish line. They need a deadline. They need an action you can do to reach said finish line before said deadline. So what the heck is this? What even is a “voice”? How will I know that I’ve successfully voiced enough to consider it found? Normally, that would be my cue to leave this murky, undefined non-goal in the backseat of Steve's Camry and look for something new. But when I got out of the car, it was still there. And when I tried to find another, more "actionable" goal, it was still there. Worse, it was growing. Not only was this whole "voice" thing about writing, but maybe it could apply to the rest of my life too. Maybe it's about how I want to show up in the world.
My goals have always been destinations, identifiable places that people have been before. I usually have a map of paths others have taken to get there. But this is more like an explorer setting off into uncharted territory. The journey is kinda the point. I don’t have a destination. I barely even have a direction. The only thing I have to cling to is this: when I show up the way I want to in the world, I can feel it. There’s a resonance, a vibe, a sense of rightness – even if things are going wrong – when I act like the kind of father, husband, friend, writer, human I want to be.
So I made a list of the kind of choices that usually get me there, especially the ones I struggle with. I’m calling the result my “compass” (just to stretch this whole explorer metaphor as far as I can): Four simple heuristics to consult this year to help point me in the right direction:
Practice over Theory
Compassion over Judgment
Time over Pressure
Messy over Boring
I’m sure I’ll have more to say about these (and a few other honorable mentions below) as I test them out, but here are my initial thoughts about each and some tangible ways I can live up to them. I'm excited to see where they'll lead me and who I'll meet along the way. (Subscribe now and be one of them!)
Practice Over Theory
Oof, I know, I’m already in the danger zone because this whole thing could be an exercise in useless conceptualization. I already spend a lot of time reading stuff about the things I do, hoping each book or substack or whatever might have that lil' nugget of wisdom that unlocks my understanding of writing or parenting or life. For this next year, I want to get my hands dirty. I want to learn from mistakes. I don’t always need to know how something should work before I try it. Without a theory to guide me, I'll have to listen to my gut. Which might just be the gateway to the voice.
To Do:
Spend time writing actual words each day, and definitely don't waste potential writing time reading books about writing.
Share more writing publicly (check!)
Compassion Over Judgment
Compassion for everyone. For people I don't agree with. For people who don't deserve it. For people I know so well that I assume I know everything. For myself. Judgment is important, but I am, regrettably, human, and judgment usually takes care of itself. In my experience, when I make the effort to look for compassion, I find a lot more along the way.
To Do:
Talk to strangers. Listen to their stories.
Read fiction from international authors or people with experiences and perspectives very different from mine.
Avoid sensationalized news and social media-level political discourse.
Time Over Pressure
This was actually advice my dentist gave me for brushing my teeth. Aggressive brushing isn’t any better, and you risk damaging the enamel. If I brush lightly for longer, I'll get a cleaner, longer-lasting smile. Turns out that advice has applications far beyond oral hygiene. The same logic has definitely worked for dealing with a toddler tantrum and finding writing work. Brute force might solve a problem, but at what cost? Conversely, time will shake everything loose eventually. If only I didn’t suck so bad at waiting.
To Do:
If I feel like I’m forcing myself to work on something, set it aside. Work on something more interesting and come back to the other one later.
Take more breaks during the day.
Eat slower.
Don't rush my daughter to school or bed, even when there are things I need to get done.
Messy Over Boring
Every time we talk about taking our daughter to the beach, I shudder just picturing all the sand getting everywhere in our car and home. But every time we go, we have a blast, and the sand part isn’t even that bad. It’s not like our car and home were pristine to start with. This year, I want to let things get messier. At home and in my writing. It'll take longer to clean up, but the downside is boring and nobody wants that.
To Do:
Let the art table get dirty.
Don’t get bogged down making the early writing perfect before I’ve had a chance to explore the possibilities.
Those questions about what a voice actually is and how one might go about finding it are out there somewhere. Crossing my fingers that this gets me a little closer. Or that I discover something even better along the way.
What do you think? What are other ways to put these into practice? What are some of the directions you want to move in? What other heuristics should I add to the list?