Happy New Year! With 2025 upon us, and the calendar serving as a reset point, a lot of people are working towards New Year’s resolutions. We start out with the best of intentions, but a few weeks into the new year our goals have fallen by the wayside. Too often New Years’ resolutions are vague, non-specific goals like “lose weight” or “read more books”. They also tend to be focused on negatives, or things that you feel you need to do, or should be doing, and frequently we try and do too many of them at once. Working towards a laundry list of distinct and unrelated goals all at the same time is a recipe for failure. I think New Year’s resolutions are flawed for this reason, and instead, I like to structure my personal development goals differently. Rather than a list of goals (I want to lose weight, I want to get promoted, I want to buy a house), I divide my personal development into a set of categories: Healthy, Wealthy and Wise, and then build themes around them.
Themes, not Goals
Too often New Year’s resolutions, and other personal development aspirations take the form of a list of wants. These can fail for a number of reasons. Even when the goals have a specific outcome (i.e. “I want to lose 10kg” rather than “I want to lose weight”) because we define success or failure by an objective metric, we end up with a rigid definition of success. Once you have achieved the goal (or fail to achieve the goal within the specified period of time), the journey is over. Often at this point we revert back to our original habits and behaviours, and never get the change we were striving for. The fixed target focuses not on the process, but rather on the end result. In reality, the objective for most people when choosing a goal like “I want to lose weight” is actually a higher level aspiration of being a healthier person. There are milestones along the way, but this should actually be framed as a change of identity.
In James Clear’s book Atomic Habits, he argues to instead focus on Identity-based habits. Rather than “I want to lose 10kg”, we should frame our goals around identities i.e. “I am a healthy person”. By doing this, we “fake it ’til we make it”, and take on the habits and behaviours that define a healthy lifestyle. It is a change from “I am working towards something” to “this is who I am”.
To avoid the trap of trying to change too many things at a time, I like to think about this over an annual time period by grouping these identity based habits into specific life categories (Healthy, Wealthy and Wise). Once I identify a change I want to make, I can prioritise by selecting yearly themes to work towards for each category. Instead of picking a goal of “I want to read 50 books this year” (arbitrary, pass/fail), I take a step back and think: who is the kind of person who is likely to read 50 books in a year? And, more importantly, why do I want to be this kind of person? Eventually after analysis I realise, I want to read more books because I want to be a knowledgeable person, and a knowledgeable person would self identify as a reader. What changes can I make this year to make it so at the end of the year, I would self identify as a reader, and therefore move closer to my actual goal of being a knowledgeable person? My “Wise” theme for the year then might become “The year of the bookworm”. I would try and think “like a bookworm does” (whatever that means), and by extension achieve my original arbitrary goal of “read x books” as a by-product. This gets me to my actual intended end state of a more knowledgeable person, and a change to my self identity.
Lets look at the categories in more detail, my themes for 2025, and why I chose them.
Life Categories
I originally came across this idea of categorising personal development (or “life”) categories in Alex Vermeer’s 8760 Hours. In their guide, they lay out 12 life areas to think about and focus on. This felt like too much for me, so I have simplified. The “Healthy, Wealthy & Wise” comes from a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin:
“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”
The original intention of the quote is around waking up early in the context of productivity, but I have plagiarised it to represent the “pillars” of development. There are other categories that I might experiment with adding, but for the most part I try and make things fit into these broad boxes.
Healthy: Physical and Mental Well-Being, and Relationships
The Healthy category refers to physical, but also mental health. Physical health refers to things like exercise, sports, diet, and sleep. Mental health refers to things like emotions and well being. I also group social life and relationships into “mental” health here; how good of a husband and father I am being, and the quality of my relationships with my extended family and friends. I have thought about putting this into its own category (“Connected”) to encompass all relationships in my life, but for now think it’s appropriate to group it as mental health.
For 2025, my Healthy theme is: The Year of the Purple Belt.
At the end of last year, I achieved my purple belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. This (for me) was a huge achievement, and I was totally surprised when it was awarded to me. It was also accompanied with a massive wave of imposter syndrome. For those not familiar with the sport, the journey to black belt for the average practitioner is about 10 years (it is faster to become a doctor). The purple belt represents the halfway point. When I first started, a purple belt (now a close friend) took me under their wing and taught me a lot. They also seemed like a wizard with their abilities. Now that I had achieved that rank, I didn’t feel that way at all. But, what if I did all the things that I would expect someone else who had this rank to do? e.g., if I have a list of things I would expect of someone else with this rank, and I am all those things, then how could I continue to feel like an imposter?
Thus, my theme of self improvement! What are the kinds of things that I (and it is subjective of course) would expect from someone who is a purple belt?
- They should be able to teach. I guess I am getting better at teaching.
- They should be physically fit. I need to be strong, and have great cardio. I need to be in shape, so that physical attributes are not limiting (e.g. weight)
- They should have technical knowledge. That means I am studying.
- They should have few weaknesses and gaps in their game. I guess I am working on my bad positions.
You can see how, although the theme is “Healthy”, there are actually habits and behaviours baked in that could be considered in the “Wise” category (teaching and learning). This is intentional, there will always be some overlap between different areas of life.
Armed with this knowledge, I can choose habits and behaviours that more closely align me with this new self identity. I can read books on how to be a better teacher, and emulate behaviours of my own mentors and teachers that I respect. I can put exercise and diet habits in place so that my physical fitness improves to the (subjective) “purple belt” level. I can study specific positions, both to improve as a teacher, but also to address my own weaknesses.
Wealthy: Career and Finances
The Wealthy category refers to work and money. Depending on your personal circumstances, work here could mean your job, your career, your business. Finances is about savings, investments, assets and debts. Again, like the Healthy category, rather than focusing on a specific goal (e.g. “I will get promoted”), I prefer to think about the kind of person who achieves that goal. By adjusting my habits and behaviours, I aim to become that person.
For 2025, my Wealthy theme is: The Year of Leadership.
This speaks to my career aspirations of further developing leadership skills, while still being a “good engineer”: taking on more responsibility at work, mentoring others, learning how to manage teams and projects more effectively, but also continuing to improve my technical chops. The best leaders (in my opinion) are still on the tools in some capacity. I think for a lot of people, leadership is a by-product of seniority as they progress up the career ladder. Some have natural ability in leadership, and others don’t. Again, using imposter syndrome as a motivator, I think about the kind of technical leader I would like to work with, and then aspire to become that person.
What would I expect of a great leader?
- They should be empathetic. Great leaders actively listen to their team, seek to understand challenges, and provide meaningful support. They build trust through communication and feedback.
- They should be inspiring. Translating technical needs into vision and strategy, getting buy in.
- They should be accountable. Leaders own their mistakes, and lead by example.
- They should be great communicators. They can present the complex simply, provide clear direction, and influence through their words.
- They should be a technical expert. Leaders in technical fields must be technically competent. For me, this means continuing to improve on my skills: software engineering, data modelling and architecture, among others.
These qualities are subjective, but like my healthy goal, it serves as an identity to drive my personal development. When facing decisions about what skills to focus on, what books to read, or where to allocate my time and energy, I can think “is this making me more like the kind of leader I want to be?”.
Wise: Personal Growth and Learning
The Wise category is about learning and intellectual development. It is about how much I know and how I think about the world. Being wise means always seeking to grow, expand my perspective, and use what I learn to become a more thoughtful, intentional person.
The Wise category can fall victim to list based goals just like the others, with goals like “read x number of books” or “complete y courses”. It is much better instead to focus on a theme of growing wise, rather than specific intellectual goals.
For 2025, my Wise theme is: The Year of the Attention.
When I was a child, I loved to read. I can remember going to get the latest Harry Potter book on release and being on chapter 3 before we had paid and left the store. During quiet reading time in the third grade, I remember finishing the last page of a book, closing the cover and looking up. The entire class was sitting on the floor watching me. I was so engrossed in the book, I’d completely failed to notice everyone moving to the next activity. Now, as a grown up, doom scrolling news, social media feeds and bite sized content has completely ruined my attention span. When (or if) I do read books, they are mostly technical. I had lost my love for reading. Slowly over the last few years, I have been fighting back, but this year I want to take that even further. The year of attention is about taking intentional control of what I spend my focus on, going on a “brain rot” diet, and instead directing my energy towards things that are good for my brain: books and learning.
To become more attentive, I’ll:
- Reduce mindless consumption. Someone who is attentive is intentional about their consumption of nonsense. If food is the diet of our body, then media is the diet of our mind. There is nothing wrong with the occasional metaphorical Big Mac, but a Super Size Me diet causes super sized problems.
- Read more. I want to read fiction, non-fiction and technical books. I want my kids to grow up seeing their Dad with a book in his hands, not his face illuminated by the dull glow of the Instagram feed (this is an exaggeration, but a useful one).
- Write more. (thanks for reading).
I originally started with a goal of “read more books again” but upon inspection, realised that there was an underlying root cause of my decline in reading. Putting my attention on attention will have wide ranging impacts, including on my reading habits.
A Year of Themes
With my yearly themes defined, I have a north star to work towards. Rather than a list of goals to check off, I am working towards becoming closer to the person I want to be (and, happily, that person tends to be the kind who achieves the original goals). My themes for Health, Wealth and Wisdom form the basis of the habits and behaviours I will take on this year, and guide my decision making for 2025 and beyond.
In Healthy, I’m combating imposter syndrome by doing all the things I’d expect to be done by someone halfway to black belt. Silly and subjective, but hopefully effective. In Wealthy, I am continuing to grow my leadership and technical skills. And in Wise, I’m reclaiming my attention, focusing on the quality of the media I consume.
These themes aren’t separate, they all connect together. By becoming healthier (whatever the motivation), I’ll have more energy to invest at work and in learning. By growing wiser, I’ll learn things that will make me healthier and wealthier. By trying to be a better leader, I’ll become wiser, and probably be a better teacher in my sport.
Rather than resolutions, what themes will you choose this year? How can you become more healthy, wealthy and wise? Have a wonderful year!