I see January as a time for reflection and redirection. It’s an opportunity to pause, evaluate, and realign both personal and professional goals. Here are a few key questions I ask myself during this period:
Am I/are we happy?
How do I/we see our current lifestyle changing this year?
Are we earning enough for our lifestyle?
What do I/we want this year?
What do I/we want in three years?
What will help us get there?
These questions guide my prioritization. Setting goals is only part of the process—the methods we use to achieve those goals are what make the difference. My aim is always to refine my approach, reduce stress, and build momentum.
A professional example: The Benevity dream team
One of the most productive times in my career was my third year at Benevity, working on our charitable granting products. By January of that year, our team had hit its stride. We weren’t just setting goals; we were building systems and methods to achieve them effectively.
Here’s what worked for us:
Clearing our backlog: We adopted a zero-bug backlog approach and regularly reviewed our JIRA and other initiative backlogs to ensure they remained clean and actionable.
Refining quality controls: We improved team norms, definitions of done, and definitions of ready, aligning everyone on expectations.
Fostering collaboration: We broke down silos, bringing together different areas of the business to plan holistically at yearly and quarterly cadences.
Regular improvement cycles: We continuously reviewed and refined our Product Development Life Cycle (PDLC) to identify areas for enhancement.
Caring for each other: We built a culture of accountability and compassion, pushing each other to improve while ensuring well-being.
By focusing on these areas, we turned what was once seen as a loss-leader into an exemplar of efficiency and engagement.
Healthy team habits
Depending on your team’s size and goals, different methods will help you achieve peak efficiency and engagement. Here are a few strategies I recommend implementing yearly—or even quarterly:
Build and maintain a healthy backlog
Set a threshold for how long tickets can remain in your backlog (no longer than a year).
Clean out old tickets and strive for a “work-ready” backlog.
Groom as many tickets as possible in advance.
Evaluate and improve team norms around:
Communication
Decision-making
Accountability
Conflict resolution
Preparation
Respect
Open-mindedness
Optimize recurring rituals Review the cadence, effectiveness, and purpose of meetings and processes:
Are they engaging?
Do they have clear outcomes?
Are they the right length?
Revisit definitions of done and ready (DoD and DoR)
Ensure alignment on what “done” and “ready” mean for your team.
Foster collaboration
Promote positive conflict resolution and shared accountability.
Smash silos to build momentum and ensure the right people are talking to each other.
Create feedback loops between interdependent teams.
Run retrospectives
Hold summative retrospectives on the year or quarter, and act on insights.
These habits help teams stay focused, improve continuously, and avoid getting bogged down in inefficiencies.
Healthy personal habits
Yearly goals often fail because we don’t spend enough time refining the habits and systems that support them. Instead of just setting goals, I focus on:
Reflecting on the past year
Discovering what I truly want
Planning with focus and intentionality
Breaking down tasks into achievable steps
Reinforcing habits with accountability and support
Reflection questions
What did I achieve last year? Why or why not?
What made me feel fulfilled or joyful?
What drained me?
How was I, or how were my:
Physical health?
Mental well-being?
Work-life balance?
Relationships?
Self-discovery questions
What areas feel insecure or need more control?
What values guide me? Have they changed?
What do I want to achieve or improve?
Helpful question aids
It can help in answering or exploring these questions to:
Open a map to help think through where I want to go, the types of cuisines I want to try, or the various topical events that might influence me.
Scroll through my contact list to remind me who I haven't been in touch with recently and who I want more of in my life.
Scroll through my photos (not social media, as that would distract) to see what brought me joy or seemed noteworthy.
Planning and focus
I aim for focused goals that align with my values. For example:
Goal statement: “I want to [goal] by [time] because [reason or purpose].”
Habit statement: “I want to [habit] every [cadence] because [reason or purpose].”
Reinforce and enable success
Here’s how I support my goals and habits:
Use tools like task apps, alarms, and physical reminders.
Share goals with accountability partners, like my wife, and involve others where possible.
Rearrange my environment to support habits (e.g., reorganizing my workout space).
Celebrate milestones to stay motivated.
Break things down
What are the different branching paths that might help work toward a goal? Each of those can become a list. This type of tree list is a way to build humility and self-acceptance into things. It says "OK, I don't know everything about this or how the year will go, so if the approach has to change, that's alright."
What are all the different ways I can get started?
What might get in my way? How can I get ahead of that?
How can I make this thing smaller in effort, over time?
If one way doesn't work, what will I try next?
An example branching path of tasks.
My goals in 2024
Goal: I want to [read 24 books] by [the end of the year] because [I know it helps me wind down at the end of the day, sleep, learn, and gain new creative ideas]. Reflection: I accomplished this, despite a 3 month reading hiatus when my health and spirit were so broken. I expanded my fiction horizons, read some long and some short, and learned a few things that I applied to my creative endeavours. I think I want to expand on this in the next year.
Goal: I want to [reduce my migraines by at least 3 days per month and get a clear diagnosis] by [the end of the year] because [they have gotten so bad they are preventing me from participating in any part of my life]. Reflection: I haven't received a clear diagnosis, but I did push hard on my neurologist and GP to try me on new drugs that ended up completely changing life for the better for me. I'm still getting migraines, but where I was operating at 25/30 days a month with a migraine and an average of 8/10 in pain most days, I am now at about 15/30 days a month and 2/10 average for pain, which is beyond freeing. I want to use the freedom this gives me in the new year to continue improving my health.
Goal: I want to [finish my Insects 101 course] by [the end of the winter holiday] so that [I can use what I learn in my gaming and writing hobby]. Reflection: I don't think I was aggressive enough in this goal. I did accomplish it, but it took way longer than it needed to. That being said, it was an amazing and very thorough course and I learned a ton. I will definitely use more of it in the new year.
My goals for 2025
Habit: I want to [read at minimum 10 pages] per [day] so that [I have continual intake of knowledge, inspiration, and enrichment both personally and professionaly].
Goal: I want to [read at minimum 24 books, at least one in four being non-fiction,] by [the end of the year] because [I know it helps me wind down at the end of the day, sleep, learn, and gain new creative ideas, and will support my new habit].
Goal: I want to [complete 5 courses to better myself personally or professionally] by [the end of the year] because [I want to improve areas of operational efficiency, management, and leadership].
Temporaryhabit: I want to [work out for a minimum of 30 minutes every single day] for [60 days] so that [I can break my migraine-imposed gluttony, and reassess a regular workout cadence after that time].
Habit: I want to [drink 1 gallon of water] every [single day] so that [I help my thinking and stave off dehydration-caused migraines].
Goal: I want to [finish the v1 alpha version of my game Bug & Claw] by [September 2025] because [it doesn't need to be perfect, I want people to experience it and give me feedback, and then I want to iterate].
Habit: I want to [write at least one hour] every [week] because [I want to improve my writing skills, I know I learn better and hone my own thoughts by teaching others, and it will help me finish my game].
Supporters and enablers for 2025
I have been using the HelloHabit app, which has proven to jive really well with my brain. I check things off a list of habits mid-day and end-of-day.
If I haven't done everything on my habit list by end-of-day, then I haven't been going to bed until I complete the habits.
I have asked my wife to work out with me most days, thankfully with her agreeing.
I have been using Goodreads to track my reading goals. It's near the end of January and I have already read 6 books, so I would say things are off to a good start.
I'll be letting my wife and a few others read this and asking for their feedback on how I should continue and improve.
I've set a couple of alarms on weekdays and different ones on weekends to remind me to do certain things.
I've gotten in the habit of putting my phone on do-not-disturb much more frequently to aid in my focus and attention.
I rearranged the basement to help support the habit of working out more, putting equipment in optimal locations, and setting out a better balance.
Closing
January isn’t just for goal-setting—it’s for prioritization and reflection. By refining my methods and focusing on what truly matters, I aim to create momentum, reduce stress, and achieve meaningful outcomes.
I hope some of these ideas resonate with you. How do you approach goal-setting and prioritization? Share with me on Substack or LinkedIn!
