why i have no goals this year

new year, same me?

New Year's Day is my Super Bowl.

Reflecting! Refreshing! Planning! I look forward to it desperately every year, like an addict waiting for their next hit.

There's nothing like the opportunity to look back at all of your failures and mistakes from the past twelve months and squeegee them clean, scrubbing away the layers of accumulated grime, to find a new and shiny version of your self smiling back in virgin glass.

This is the year you finally get in shape.

This is the year you finally make new friends.

This is the year you finally get that promotion.

This is the year you finally get a dog.

This is the year you finally start journaling.

New year, new me!

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There's something entrancing, almost hypnotizing, about the thought of a fresh start. Whenever we find ourselves doing something that we ought not to, our knee-jerk response is usually a well-intended hand-wave to change said behavior at some vague moment in the future.

It's not the right time to change jobs. Let's wait for next quarter, when hiring picks up. (guilty)

It's the holidays, I'll start my diet next week. (also guilty)

Squid Games season 2 just dropped! I'll fix my sleep schedule tomorrow. (ok, definitely guilty)

I'll spare you a pseudo-intellectual analysis of the psychology of goal setting, but the long and short of it is simply that goals make you feel like you achieved something before you ever actually do. It's a way of feeding our neurological desire for accomplishment without having to actually, well, accomplish anything.

I've been conducting a personal annual review every year since high school. They've been moderately successful, all considered. This practice has guided me throughout my teens and twenties. Every year I learn something new about how to effectively set goals for myself—don't overdo it, don't plan too far ahead, and a bunch of other trivialities you're probably tired of reading about in Medium articles.

I'm usually rushing around in a flurry during the holidays, locking myself in my room in self-proclaimed "monk mode" the day after Christmas while I reflect, brainstorm, dream. Several days later I emerge with an elaborate spreadsheet and a newfound sense of hope. Then it's twelve months of tick, check, tick, check, until it's time to do it all over again.

There's nothing wrong with this, to be clear. Goals are not inherently bad. But they can be a distraction. Especially if you struggle with the whole "living in the moment" thing like most of us do.

I've spent the entirety of the past three months wrapped in a cocoon of stillness, doing little more than reflecting on what it means to live in the present. And my conclusion so far is that it's really, really difficult. Even if you occasionally find yourself able to do it, the chaotic pull of regretting, planning, daydreaming, and hurrying are waiting to draw you back in like a magnet.

This past week I felt that old familiar sense of crunch, pressed to find enough time to plan out my 2025 before the proverbial ringing-in of the new year. I'm almost superstitiously attached to the idea of clearing away the old to make room for the new, and I attributed this unsettling anxiety to my usual desire to have things "figured out" by December 31st.

But I woke up one morning this week with a new thought, barely a whisper yet deeply unsettling:

I don't want to set goals this year.

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The first time I tried to meditate was back in college. I felt a notable difference in my sense of clarity and focus after practicing consistently. Then, sometime after a year or so, life happened (as it always does) and I slowly forgot about it.

For most of my 20s I tried half-heartedly to incorporate it back into my routine. Sometimes it worked for a while, but mostly I was distracted by other things. And then a few months ago I read Oliver Burkeman's Meditation's for Mortals (highly recommend, btw). There's a chapter where he speaks on the pitfalls of preparation in habit building. He used meditation as an example, citing how many of us will create an intention to meditate and then promptly spend all of our time and energy on reading meditation books, researching the best apps, and testing out new cushions (or, fittingly, we tell ourselves we'll start "next year"). We very rarely get around to the actual practice of sitting before we're inevitably distracted by some other goal.

I was predictably (embarrassingly) in the middle of this very cycle as I was reading this. And so, that afternoon, I sat down for five minutes in the middle of my living room. I closed my eyes, not worrying about how I'd trigger the habit cycle in the future or the best way to track my progress.

That was the first time I had meditated in months.

I did it again the next day. And the next. I allowed myself to play with the timing, different techniques, and even skip a day if I was busy with other things. Over the last few weeks I've developed my deepest and most consistent meditation practice to date.

I think that's part of what it means to truly "live in the moment". We spend so much of our lives trying to wrangle and tame uncertainty, trying to carefully orchestrate cause and effect, that the present always feels like a dangerous place to rest for too long. I used to think that "living like there's no tomorrow" meant bungee-jumping off of cliffs or YOLO-quitting your job, but I now understand that it's more about living without the crutch of assuming you'll get to the important stuff later. We can still make plans for ourselves, but we have to accept that those plans may never come to fruition, and the only thing guaranteed to get done is what we are doing right now.

I think that's why I've always clung so tightly to the idea of resolutions. If your Myers-Briggs type has a P in it somewhere, it will probably sound dramatic when I say that the very thought of entering a new year without a written list of goals absolutely terrifies me. But if you're a planner like I am, you'll understand why I'm scared; why I'm truly, deeply, viscerally afraid to wake up on New Year's Day without a plan. It's the sense of diving headfirst into a sort of freefall, parachute be damned, accepting finally that life will march on as it always has; completely ignorant to the changing of the seasons, the concepts of dates and years, unaware of whether it's January 1st or just another Tuesday afternoon.

It's the feeling of finally taking responsibility for your own life, not tomorrow, not next year, but today—this very moment. It's facing your flaws and limitations and braving action in the face of all of it, knowing deeply and completely that you may not get another chance like this. It's treating each moment that passes as the fresh start you've been waiting for all along.

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It should go without saying: it can be fun to dream! To spray sticky bottles of champagne while dancing under an electric sky, dressed in itchy sequins and toasting to new beginnings with all of your loved ones. I'm not insisting we all become hermits and give up the few simple pleasures of society that bring us joy each year. I'm simply writing this as a reminder to all of the over-zealous planners out there: that, at the end of the day, New Year's is just an illusion. Or as many-a-more-wise have been saying for generations: it's just another day. Hyping yourself up for a new week, a new month, a new year, is absolving yourself of responsibility in your current one. It can still be a fun indulgence, but we're only kidding ourselves to treat it as anything other than that.

Still, if you'll allow me a sliver of hypocrisy: I do have one intention for 2025. This year, I want to focus on flow. Building rituals and intentions in the face of ever-present change, taking the days as they come, resting in the space between intense focus and broad awareness. This year, I want to finally be present in my own life.