Hey there,

A new year is coming up and for many of us, myself included, that means setting goals for next year.

A big question about goals came up amongst friends this year.

Are we setting goals just for the sake of having goals?

I have a monthly accountability call with friends and last month one of us admitted something along these lines:

"I know we have these calls and we commit to these monthly goals, but it feels like I'm just going through the motions. These goals don't even excite me. I'm just writing them down because I feel like I need to put something down."

These goals were things like "Go to the gym 4 times a week" or "Finish 2 books this month."

That opened up the conversation about what types of goals we were setting and the whole point of goals.

We set aside 2 months of not committing to goals but discussing what led us to feel unexcited about, not just work, but even life.

We also talked about what does excite us.

These things included work and spending time with people we care about. I realized I hadn't been great at keeping in touch with people so I set a goal to hang out with at least one friend a week.

This was an important conversation to have because I go through a goal setting exercise at the end of each year and I used to have long lists of all these things I wanted to do. I never completed everything.

Looking back, I question why I wrote those things down all down.

Digging into it, I think I did that because I felt like more goals was better. I wanted to prove, to others and myself, that I was doing something with my life.

In reality, I wasn't focused. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to achieve. I aimed for quantity instead of quality or depth.

This year, this are different. I no longer have random, arbitrary things like "learn Python" or "read 50 books" or "become conversational in Spanish" (okay that last one is still very interesting for me, just not a priority right now).

My 2023 goals are clear and mostly about building a sustainable, successful business.

Maybe I had to learn the hard way that it's not the quantity of goals, but the quality of them and how much they matter to you.

If there's something you feel very strongly about, don't shy away from focusing on that. It will mean making tradeoffs, but what could you do if you had undistracted focus on that one thing?

What do you plan to accomplish next year? How can I help? Just respond to this email.

Created

Stuff I've produced:

• Blog post: I published my annual review for 2022. Lots of exciting highlights personally and professionally.
• Podcasts: Here are some of my favorite podcast episodes I hosted this year.

Consumed

📚 Reading: Just finished The Way to Love by Anthony de Mello.

🎧 Listening: My 2022 playlist.

👀 Watching: Started watching The White Lotus.

Cheers,
David

P.S. Find out what I'm up to on my blog and reading list and connect with me on Twitter.

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​​About me: David Ly Khim is a founder of Omniscient Digital, a content marketing and SEO agency helping B2B software companies grow.