5 intentions I'm carrying into 2025 to achieve my goals and build a better life

Every December, I spend time doing two things: 1) reflecting on the year ahead and 2) casting a vision and building a plan for the year to come.

Over the last week, I’ve received multiple annual review templates, and processes to build and craft goals for 2025. I am not going to repeat their work. Instead, I wanted to give you something a bit more personal - my intentions for 2025 and why I’m carrying them into the new year.

These aren’t “goals” but they are frameworks and concepts through which I believe I’ll be able to achieve everything I want to achieve.

1. Flighting my intensities

One of our go-to dinners at home is a Thai noodle dish. It’s composed of shaved beef, an assortment of cooked vegetables, noodles, and a homemade peanut sauce.

It’s not a complicated dish, but the order in which you make those four distinct parts matters.

The correct order is:

1. Homemade peanut sauce (never needs heating)

2. Chopping and cooking the veggies

3. Cooking the beef and start boiling water for the noodles

4. The meat finishes as the water boils

5. Cook the noodles while combining the meat and veggies

6. Combine the full dish and serve

When it’s cooked like this it’s easy. It takes about 15 minutes and can be done alone.

But for some reason the other night I started with the beef. While not catastrophic, I did need to ask my wife to come help, and the whole process became more stressful than necessary.

Why am I telling you this story?

Looking back at 2024, I had reasonable goals, but I didn’t consider how the order and timing would matter.

Instead of tackling one goal at a time, I started all of them at the beginning of the year, and to continue with the cooking example… some dishes turned out fine, and some never made it to the table.

In 2025, I’m flighting my intensities throughout the year and building a four-peak growth model to achieve my goals and enjoy life more.

2. Defaulting to Subtraction

I wrote a letter earlier this year on the attraction to addition.

There was a study done with engineers where they were given an incomplete Lego bridge and asked to make it work. The bridge could be fixed by removing pieces from one end and making the bridge simpler or by adding Legos to the other side.

All of the engineers choose to add Legos!

(if you’re interested in reading more about it you can do it here)

We add for many reasons. The two main ones are that we have been conditioned to add and that adding comes with new feelings (if you start running on top of lifting you get extra sore), but adding also comes with more stress and work.

I’m trying to build a better life without sacrificing the enjoyment of life.

That’s why in 2025, I’m saying no to more things, prioritizing the highest leverage actions, removing redundant actions, and simplifying my protocols to create the maximum benefit with the least amount of work.

3. Paying for guides and mentors

I have always been a person who takes pride in my ability to work.

One of the things I say about myself is that “I don’t always win the battle, but I always win the war”. I fight and fight until I eventually succeed. On the other hand, my wife tells me and others that she’s “convinced he always tries to do things the hardest way possible”.

Here is what I’ve learned in 2024:

Hard work is admirable, but unnecessary hard work is foolish.

Coaches aren’t just for beginners or people who aren’t capable on their own. Coaches and mentors are for anyone looking to level up and paying for them isn’t a sign of weakness or inability, it’s a commitment to progress.

In 2025, I’m investing in myself by hiring coaches, guides, and mentors to help me level up and achieve my goals. (I actually already started by getting a nutrition coach through WAG to help me get fit for the Miami Hyrox in April. Started yesterday!)

4. Extending the surface area of accountability

Everyone has heard that the secret to success is to tell someone your goals and how you plan to accomplish them.

Accountability is crucial to success, but the secret to making accountability effective is to raise the cost.

You can do this in a few ways, first, you can increase the actual cost. My example of hiring a nutrition coach is an example of this. The other way to do that is to tell more people.

In 2025, along with paying coaches and mentors to keep me accountable, I’m going to share my goals with more people. (My sharing that I hired a nutrition coach to help me lose weight is an example of that.)

5. Investing in memory dividends

One of the concepts I’ve truly fallen in love with this year is memory dividends.

I am not good at spending money on things or experiences. Generally speaking, I think of the opportunity cost of investing in something to enjoy instead of investing in something that builds more capital or has higher leverage.

Historically, I’ve done the same thing with experience. I don’t go to concerts, trips for myself, golf at nice courses, or buy items I want because I can’t justify the spend.

But I never considered the dividends experiences pay over time before learning about memory dividends, and it makes a ton of sense.

My best friends and I go a Triathlon together every year (I’ve missed two which they never let me forget), but the cost of that event isn’t just for that weekend, its for the memories, the stories, and the value those deeper relationships spending time together provide.

Those memories and the stories I get to tell are dividends that will pay out for those experiences for the rest of my life.

In 2025, I’m going to invest in experiences and relationships that pay back dividends for years to come to build a lifelong dividend portfolio.