2025’s Word is Intention: Ditching Perfect Plans and Embracing Freedom

Tired of setting New Year’s goals that fail by February? Discover how focusing on intention and experimentation helped me transform my health and happiness in 2024—and why I’m bringing the same mindset into 2025.

Jan 07, 2025

Every year, I set a bunch of goals. And inevitably, most years, I end up fucking them up. I can’t maintain them long enough to see real progress.

I’ll wrap up the previous year, think about everything I want to achieve, make them all SMART, plan out a whole “new year, new me” roadmap—and it’ll feel amazing… until about the end of January. Then life kicks in, my shiny new plan goes to shit, and my notebook of goals starts collecting dust. Obviously, I feel guilty as hell about it—because if I’m going to fail, I might as well marinate in guilt too, right?

2024: A Different Story

But 2024 was different. It was full of big personal changes, and somehow, I managed to build a brand-new identity. The catch? I didn’t set any rigid goals last January. I just had a couple of “things I wanted to do” or intentions.

I stuck to those intentions. No elaborate, perfect plan—just a desire to make a few changes, experiment, and see what happened. And it fucking worked!

In 2024, I lost a solid amount of weight, tackled my emotional relationship with food, and basically turned “healthy” into a big part of my identity.

Reflecting back, it’s clear this transformation didn’t happen overnight. I had my share of slip-ups, mistakes, and moments where I pushed too far. Still, each time I messed up, I just got back on track—and that compounding effect really did its job over time.

What Actually Changed?

Why did not setting a huge, precise goal—like “I’m gonna lose X kilos by this date, in exactly this way”—work out so much better for me? And more importantly, how can I replicate that process in other parts of my life?

Experimentation Over Rigid Goals

Turns out, without even realising it, I was doing a year of experimentation. It reminds me of something I used to do back when I ran a software agency in my previous life.

We’d set the next year’s financial goals around March or April. Then I’d have the time between that and the 1st of September to basically try things out: new sales methods, new marketing channels, different types of content—just experiment without getting too attached.

By the time August/September rolled around, I’d look at what worked, what felt good, what was actually fun—and double down on that. Everything else? I’d let it go. This simple system helped us grow year over year for 11 years.

That’s pretty much what happened with my health in 2024. I had the freedom to dip my toes into a bunch of different health approaches because I wasn’t locked into a strict plan. I just knew I wanted to be healthier and make it a lasting lifestyle change, so there was no point forcing myself to do something I hated.

I tried almost every form of exercise, gently, between January and March. The aim wasn’t to progress at anything but to try things out, see what I liked, and find my routine.

Then, from March onwards, it became clear that I enjoyed lifting heavy things, running, and swimming the most. So I concentrated, for the remainder of the year, on getting better at those, with a focus on “listening to my body”. And what my body told me was that trying to cram too much into the same week would leave me exhausted, with everything in my life suffering as a result. So I looked inward again and decided that weightlifting and running were “my thing”, and swimming would only happen when I really felt like it.

Intention

Now, onto this year’s theme: Intention.

After looking back on 2024, I’ve decided to keep going with this “no big plan” philosophy, but do it all with clear intentions. What do I want to change or improve in 2025? And what am I leaving behind for good?

I plan to focus on just a small handful of things, experiment my arse off, and keep only what works—and what genuinely feels good.

It sounds fun: designing a life around the freedom to explore, and bringing intention to every part of it. I’m definitely excited to share more about it as the year goes on.

The Three Pillars of My Life

Right now, I have three main areas:

It’s all too easy to let one area consume the others—like when I obsess over work and completely forget I have a body that needs exercise or a personal life that needs attention. But I’ve realised that happiness is all about striking some kind of balance.

This year, I want to approach all three pillars with genuine intention—making sure I get things done without sacrificing everything else. It might require some planning, and I’ll probably have to let go of a few “it would be nice if…” ideas.

But you know what? I’m actually looking forward to it.

Looking Ahead to 2025

I’m ready to embrace this new way of living: setting intentions, giving myself the freedom to screw up, learning from those fuck-ups, and carrying on anyway. I don’t have a big laundry list of “goals”—just a few core desires and a lot of excitement to see how these experiments shake out.

Because honestly, if the process is fun, if I’m learning and growing, if I’m living more authentically—who the hell needs a perfect plan?