Sunday Musings The Art Of The New
Happy Sunday Friends!
Hello from the comfort of my home! Last voyage of the year is in the books and Germany was fantastic! It was my first time visiting a Christmas market, drinking Glühwein, and actually seeing more than the airports. It was grand, and I loved it very much.
Here is 1 quote I’m musing, 2 Ideas, 3 of my favorite things from the week, and 1 question. If you find it useful or interesting, please feel free to forward this along to some friends or others!
One Quote I’m Musing
"When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps."
-Confucius
What To Do With a New Year?
As the calendar turns to another January, I often find myself reflecting on a recurring question: What will I do with this new year? It's deceptively simple but carries profound weight when answered with intention. The start of a year isn’t just a date on the calendar—it’s an invitation. An invitation to reflect, reset, and chart a course forward.
Looking Back: The Importance of Review
It’s fascinating how much clarity we can gain when we take a moment to look back. I remember vividly the day I realized how much I had been drifting without direction. It wasn’t that I lacked ambition—it was that I hadn’t channeled it into something tangible, something measurable. That’s when I first understood the importance of setting clear, actionable goals.
Jim Rohn tells a story that, I think, perfectly encapsulates this realization. Early in his career, he had breakfast with his mentor, Mr. Shoaff, who asked a simple but profound question: “Jim, let’s take a look at your list of goals so that we can review and discuss them.” Rohn replied, somewhat sheepishly, that he didn’t have a list of goals—not with him, not at home, not anywhere.
Mr. Shoaff sighed and said something that would change Rohn’s life: “If you don’t have a list of your goals, I can guess your bank balance within a few hundred dollars.” And he was right. That day, Rohn became a student of goal-setting, realizing that the simple act of writing down goals could drastically change the trajectory of his life.
Reading that story hit me hard when I came across it, not because I was unfamiliar with the concept of setting goals, but because it shone a very reality-inducing light on my realization: If we don’t articulate what we’re striving for, we’re leaving our success up to chance.
Looking back at the past year, I’ve seen firsthand how writing down my goals—whether they were professional, personal, or philosophical—helped me stay focused and measure progress. More importantly, it’s helped me reflect honestly on what worked, what didn’t, and what needs adjustment. This is where the magic lies: in taking stock, recalibrating, and moving forward with clarity.
Goal-Setting Framework: Charting the Path Ahead
Once we’ve looked back, the next step is to set our sights on the future. Goal setting isn’t just about checking boxes—it’s about giving yourself a roadmap.
Reflect First: Consider these prompts:
What are you most proud of from last year?
What do you wish you’d done differently?
What’s one habit you’d like to build in 2025?
Define Your Guiding Star: Ask yourself:
What excites me most about the future?
If failure weren’t possible, what would I attempt this year?
What small action could I take today to align with that vision?
Take Action: Write down 2-3 goals you’d like to achieve this year. Make them specific, measurable, and tied to a clear purpose.
By taking these steps, you’re not just planning—you’re giving yourself permission to succeed.
Tools to Support Your Journey
To help with your goal setting and tracking, here are three tools I’ve found invaluable:
Notion: A customizable digital workspace where you can map out goals, track progress, and reflect on achievements.
Atomic Habits by James Clear: Some practical strategies for building habits that align with your goals.
A Good Journal: There’s something powerful about writing goals and reflections by hand. It turns abstract thoughts into tangible commitments.
Two Ideas From Me
Reflection isn’t about revisiting the past; it’s about redirecting the future with precision.
Dreams are like vapor until ink or keystrokes give them weight.
Three Favorite Things From Others
These three are going to be something different. They are three things that, if I could, I’d work with others to help them build. Things that would increase productivity, efficiency, and generally give us more time back to do the things we really should be spending more time on.
An app/digital assistant linked to AI (probably an LLM) that would transcribe what we say and upload it to a designated area (cloud/local storage/whatev). Then review it and ask questions back to us to help us better formulate our thoughts. The idea here would be to keep us from spending hours at a keyboard and, instead, let us get our ideas/thoughts out while we are out walking, biking, hiking, running, out DOING things. Bounce those thoughts off a disinterested, but connected, third party to help us refine those thoughts, and have a bit of discourse before we start. So that when we sit down to start, we’ve already gotten the ideation and rough draft out of the way. Much more excited to sit and work.
Personal Relationship Management Software - An app that works just like a CRM, but for real personal relationships so that we can easily enter and pull back up info about people we value. One might think that we should remember every detail, but that’s simply not possible, and the ability to remember that last thing a friend was about to start who you haven’t talked to in a few months is fantastically helpful.
A true Gamification of skill building. A platform where you can select the skill you’re looking to build and then load a set of modules to skill up. Be it running, coding, hacking, cooking. Sign up, load up, skill up.
Closing Thoughts: A Question for the Week Ahead
As you step into this new year, ask yourself: What would my future self thank me for doing this year? Let that question guide you as you set your goals, define your themes, and take the first steps toward a year well-lived.
This year isn’t just another block of time. It’s a canvas. What will you paint on it?
Have a wonderful week,
I’ll see you Sunday.
-e
End of transmission.