Episode 1
Kickstart Your 2025: Setting Goals That Matter
As the new year unfolds, it brings a fresh opportunity to reflect on what will truly make you happy. This episode of Crappy to Happy offers a guiding light for anyone looking to set meaningful goals in 2025 and give yourself the best chance of achieving them.
Cass shares how her personal experience with ADHD has prompted a shift in her goal-setting strategies. Rather than allowing the diagnosis to frame her identity, she embraces it as a catalyst for change, using it to inform her approach to planning and productivity. This refreshing outlook encourages listeners to view their own challenges as potential stepping stones towards personal growth.
The episode dives deep into the art of goal-setting, urging you to move beyond generic aspirations to create specific, meaningful objectives. Cass emphasises the critical importance of understanding the emotional underpinnings of goals—why they matter and how they impact overall well-being. This insight not only enhances motivation but also fosters a deeper connection to your aspirations.
Cass highlights the value of accountability, suggesting that your goals should be tangible and regularly revisited to ensure that you stay on track and avoid being derailed by unproductive busyness.
She shares practical tips for breaking down yearly objectives into quarterly targets, making the journey feel less overwhelming and more achievable. This episode is your invitation to reflect, plan, and take proactive steps towards having your best year ever, knowing you have the power to shape your path in 2025.
Takeaways:
- January is a great time for reflection and planning, setting clear and specific goals.
- Consider what you truly want to achieve in the next 12 months and write it down.
- Regularly review your progress and adjust your goals based on feedback and experience.
- Break your 12-month goals down into 90-day milestones to maintain focus and urgency.
- Identify measurable metrics to track your progress toward your goals effectively.
- Create a system or habit that supports your goals, ensuring you prioritise what matters.
Transcript
Such a pleasure to be back.
Speaker A: that you are easing back into: Speaker A:Not too much overdoing things this early on.
Speaker A:For me, January has always really been a time of planning and preparation, and that is is very much the case this year.
Speaker A:I feel like it is a really useful time to think about what's important in the coming 12 months and to start laying some foundations to give yourself the best chance of achieving the things that are going to really matter to you in the coming 12 months.
Speaker A: were listening, at the end of: Speaker A:Now, first up, I have no intention of making ADHD my entire identity and talking about everything in the context of, oh, but I have adhd or for people who have adhd, like, yes, I will talk about that because it's going to be relevant to a lot of people, but I don't want you to think that that's going to like that.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:That is just not something that I am interested in doing, is just banging on about that.
Speaker A:All I will say is that it has helped me.
Speaker A:Despite suspecting that I have symptoms of ADHD for a really long time, having an actual diagnosis has definitely helped me to be able to look at things in a different way and to really consider deeply what is going to work for me this year in the context of having that diagnosis that perhaps has not worked for me in the past and understanding why things haven't worked for me in the past, no matter how I try.
Speaker A:So in a way, what it has done for me, and I would encourage for you to adopt this kind of attitude as well, whether or not you have any diagnosis is to get a little experimental.
Speaker A:So what I'm doing is experimenting with systems and structures and processes and just allowing myself to take on the feedback and review and evaluate and to see what's actually going to work for me to ensure that I actually achieve the things that I want to achieve this year.
Speaker A:If you continue to set goals and fail to achieve them, if you continue to set targets and fail to measure your progress, if you continue to focus on goals and then lose interest in them, then take the feedback, you know, take the time to stop and really reflect on why that is so that you can do something different, differently as you go into this new year now, you can do start doing something Differently at any time of the year.
Speaker A:But you know, January is a nice time, clean slate, new year, psychologically, it is kind of a nice fresh start.
Speaker A:It's got that kind of fresh start energy to it.
Speaker A:So it's a great time.
Speaker A:It's a great time to do the reflecting and do the planning that you might want to do before you really launch into action, is all I'm saying.
Speaker A:So the first thing is, when we start a new year, what I would love for you to be thinking about is, yes, I want you to set goals.
Speaker A:It is so important that you set goals and that you set really clear, specific goals.
Speaker A:So where do you want to be in 12 months time when you get to the end of this year and you look back?
Speaker A:If you'd had an amazing year, what would be different?
Speaker A:What would you have achieved?
Speaker A:What would you have learned?
Speaker A:How will you have grown?
Speaker A:What would you will be tangibly different in your life?
Speaker A:Now, setting these really clear, specific goals is really important, as opposed to just setting these kind of vague, fuzzy kind of ideas about what you want to improve.
Speaker A:Like, I want to be more confident.
Speaker A:Like those inner things can be really hard to measure.
Speaker A:But as best as you can, can you tie that to something that you can measure?
Speaker A:If I was more happy, what would look differently in my life?
Speaker A:What would people outside me notice that is different?
Speaker A:If I was more confident, what would people outside of me see that is different?
Speaker A:What would I be doing in my life that I'm not doing now?
Speaker A:I really want you to, as best as you can, make these things tangible, things that you can actually see and measure.
Speaker A:Particularly if your goal is something to do with, you know, your internal experience.
Speaker A:But if it is something that's externally able to be measured, if it is like a training that you want to do, a qualification you want to achieve, a course you want to enroll in, if it's a promotion, start a business.
Speaker A:You want to achieve something at the gym or with your fitness, with your finances, there's a trip that you want to take, money that you want to save, like write it down.
Speaker A:It's so important that your goals are written down and that they are somewhere that you will be able to have regular access to them.
Speaker A:So not just written down in a notebook that you're going to shove in a drawer and never actually pull out and look at again.
Speaker A:You need to have these written down and somewhere that you will be able to see them, check in on them.
Speaker A:So that's number one.
Speaker A:What are your goals?
Speaker A:What do you want to be different and Are they written down somewhere that you can regularly tap into them, access them and remind yourself of what it is that you are aiming for this year?
Speaker A:Now, on that, when you write down goals, if it is something that's got an external measure to it, like it's, it is a, whether it's your fitness, you want to be able to run a marathon, you want to save a certain amount of money, whatever that is.
Speaker A:I also want you to check in and ask yourself, how will you feel when you achieve that?
Speaker A:Like, what is the feeling that you're aiming for?
Speaker A:Or what is the why?
Speaker A:Like, why does that matter to you?
Speaker A:And see if you can tap into to like, what is really the deeper desire?
Speaker A:What is the deeper reason at an emotional level or in terms of just your satisfaction with life, your bigger purpose, your bigger vision, your legacy, how you want to be for the people in your life, you know, what kind of a role model you want to be, the legacy, you want to leave all of these sorts of things.
Speaker A:Like I want you to not just have a, you know, a number on a piece of paper about how much money you want to make, for example, I want to know why, why does that matter to you?
Speaker A:How does that benefit your family?
Speaker A:How does that improvement in your lifestyle?
Speaker A:How does that impact your mental health?
Speaker A:How does it affect your stress?
Speaker A:How does it improve the quality of your relationship?
Speaker A:How does it remove stress in your relationship?
Speaker A:You see what I'm saying?
Speaker A:Like, I really want to know why.
Speaker A:I don't want to know.
Speaker A:I want you to know.
Speaker A:I want you to be able to be able to tap into that and access that.
Speaker A:If I were to ask you, if I were to say, what are your goals for this year?
Speaker A:You need to be able to tell me or tell somebody and why do they matter?
Speaker A:These are the key things.
Speaker A:So grab a journal, grab a notebook, grab a word doc, and if you haven't already, then get to it and get that stuff down, get it out on paper, do a bit of a brain dump, a bit of a brainstorm.
Speaker A:If you're anything like me, got a very scattered brain.
Speaker A:There'll be like 55 things, there'll be all different areas of your life, but just get it down on paper and you can refine it from there.
Speaker A:You can narrow it down to like the really key important things.
Speaker A:Once you've got all of that out of your head and onto some paper.
Speaker A:So the second thing is 12 months is great.
Speaker A:I love having a 12 month goal to look forward to, but I want you to wind that back to a 90 day goal.
Speaker A:So basically what you want to do is as best as you can, bring this back to quarterly kind of milestones.
Speaker A:The great thing about 90 days or three months is that it is, it's a big enough amount of time that you can really see some solid progress, that you can really feel good about what you can achieve in that period of time.
Speaker A:But it's close enough that you know it'll be here before you know it.
Speaker A:Like, it's close enough that you can see it, it's close enough that you can actually feel it's going to kick you into action.
Speaker A:Basically, you know, 12 months, great.
Speaker A:But it's so far away that you can put off doing anything to actually achieve that goal.
Speaker A:But if it's 90 days and then you start bringing that back to 30 days, well then the rubber is really hitting the road and then you've actually got to start to do something to take you closer to achieving that milestone.
Speaker A:Now I am not going to lie to you, this is something that I have been notoriously bad at doing in my own life.
Speaker A:I'm great at setting 12 month goals.
Speaker A:Sometimes I'll do a 90 day goal, but it's something to whether it's just my brain or whether it is the nature of my business and things being very kind of ad hoc and inconsistent.
Speaker A:Like I don't get a regular salary every week.
Speaker A:I do multiple different types of work and different projects and I love that.
Speaker A:I thrive on that.
Speaker A:But it's really bad for keeping me focused and on track to achieving specific goals in specific areas of my life.
Speaker A:So this is one thing that I am really conscious of doing differently this year because I think it's been to my detriment that I have not been able to really get clear on 90 day goals and be measuring my progress along the way.
Speaker A:So take your 12 month goal then ask yourself, what would that look like in 90 days?
Speaker A:Now look, if this is something that's really clear and easy like a financial like savings amount of money you want to save or something like that, then that might be really easy to just split that into four quarters and write down that amount.
Speaker A:But you know, you might have to do a bit more thinking about realistically what you can do if you're a bit like me and you've got, you know, inconsistent income or a variable schedule or you know, sometimes you might have to put some more groundwork in, in the initial phases of a goal before you actually can hit the ground running.
Speaker A:So, you know, it doesn't have to be Perfect.
Speaker A:But it has to be something like, you have to have something that you're working towards to give you some direction and some focus.
Speaker A:Now, the third thing that is really important is identifying what are the metrics that matter?
Speaker A:How do you actually measure your progress towards this goal?
Speaker A:And again, if this is something that's kind of inner.
Speaker A:Inner work, then you might find that a little bit more challenging.
Speaker A:And I'll.
Speaker A:I'll actually come back to that in a minute because sometimes it's less about a goal and more about having a system or building a routine and a habit.
Speaker A:So, you know, I'm going to let you decide which is going to be more appropriate for you.
Speaker A:But if it is a tangible outcome goal, then I want you to be asking yourself, what are the measurements that I can actually track week by week to keep me moving in the direction of this goal so that I can, instead of realizing in three months time that I am way off that, or that I actually totally even forgot that I was working on that goal, then I'm keeping it at the forefront of my mind every week, every fortnight, every month until I get there.
Speaker A:Now, let me give you an example from my own life, which probably will not be relevant to you, but just to highlight the importance of this.
Speaker A: have done this podcast since: Speaker A:Now I say all the time I really want to grow the show.
Speaker A:Like, it is really hard these days to keep an engaged podcast audience, never mind attracting new listeners in a very, very saturated podcast environment.
Speaker A:Like, there's just too many of them out there at the moment.
Speaker A:So if I say I want to grow the show, but I don't have any actual number, like what?
Speaker A:How many listeners do I want to have?
Speaker A:How many downloads do I want to be having?
Speaker A:So that's number one, writing down an actual goal, like, what is it that I want to work towards?
Speaker A:And then consistently tracking, like checking my stats, checking my download numbers, and seeing if I'm on track for that.
Speaker A:But here's the thing.
Speaker A:Every week when I'm really busy and I'm doing coaching work and I might be doing some online study in some particular area, and various ad hoc projects pop up that I'm working on, or I'm doing my social media or all of the things that keep me busy in my life, every week I'll go, oh, my God, I've got to put out a podcast.
Speaker A:And I just put out a podcast.
Speaker A:And I try to put out a podcast consistently enough that people, people don't drop off and that you keep showing up and you keep listening.
Speaker A:You know, booking guests, recording, editing.
Speaker A:You know, there's a lot involved in putting out a podcast, and I'm doing it currently all myself, so it's a big job.
Speaker A:But by the time I've done all of that work to actually just get a podcast up and out uploaded, I might have some reels that I put on my Instagram to promote the show.
Speaker A:I might send out a newsletter to tell people on my email list that there's a new episode.
Speaker A:May or may not.
Speaker A:I've been really inconsistent with all of that.
Speaker A:But also, there's no evidence that any of those things actually grow the show.
Speaker A:So when it comes to not just measuring the metrics, it's also, what are the actions that you are taking or that I am taking each week, each month that actually will move the needle on that particular goal, that will actually attract new listeners to the show.
Speaker A:So to grow the show, it might actually be that I need to go and get myself on somebody else's podcast and introduce their audience to my show.
Speaker A:It might be that I need to put some ad in a podcast newsletter to ask somebody to promote me.
Speaker A:Like, there's various things that you can actually do to grow a podcast or audience.
Speaker A:So it's all well and good to say I want to grow the show, but if all I'm doing is all of the work involved in releasing an episode and none of that other stuff, then that I'm not going to be any closer to achieving that goal.
Speaker A:So I know that's a really specific kind of a niche example, but I need you to be thinking about your life and your goals and are you doing the busy work without actually giving consideration to whether any of that busy stuff is moving the needle on the goal that is important to you, on the outcome that you are actually working towards?
Speaker A:Are you.
Speaker A:Do you want to write a book or have you got an idea to start a business and.
Speaker A:Or whatever it might be, and you are doing all of the busy work, like all of the learning and gathering and planning and the preparation or whatever it is that you're doing and not actually doing the thing that is going to move the needle and actually take you closer to achieving the thing that you want to achieve.
Speaker A:Are you doing busy work or are you doing the key, important work that is going to take you closer to what it is that you want to achieve?
Speaker A:Ask yourself.
Speaker A:And in order to ask yourself, you actually have to identify what are the things, what are the actions that are going to take me closer to that goal.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:So I know for myself, I say all this coming from a person who is very, very good at doing a lot of busy work, a lot of very unproductive busyness, and not actually doing the things that matter.
Speaker A: cious of doing differently in: Speaker A:And that is identifying the actions that are going to make the difference, knowing why that's important to me.
Speaker A:What's the bigger picture?
Speaker A:Why am I doing this in the first place and checking, actually measuring the metrics.
Speaker A:Now, I am also a person who loves to bury my head in the sand.
Speaker A:And I don't like looking at numbers and I don't like looking at budgets and finances.
Speaker A:I just.
Speaker A:That doesn't feel fun to me.
Speaker A:And so I just ignore it and avoid it.
Speaker A:This is something that we can't be doing.
Speaker A:We've got to be looking at the numbers, we've got to be looking at the outcomes and actually tracking our progress.
Speaker A:So it is only January, it's early days, and I'm opting optimistic and it's quite possible that I'll be back here in a month saying that I did not do any of those things.
Speaker A:But I am optimistic that I'm putting systems in place to make sure that I do the things that are important this year.
Speaker A:And that's what I'm asking you to consider as well.
Speaker A:Now, on that, one big downfall that I have had in the past is that I have too many ideas all at once.
Speaker A:I'm thinking about everything everywhere all at once.
Speaker A:There's, there's no, there's, there's no like sequential, like, let's just do this thing first and see it through to completion and then move on to the next thing.
Speaker A:I want to be doing five things at a time.
Speaker A:And when I do that, I don't make any significant progress on any of those things.
Speaker A:I also will have a random idea pop into my head and even if I scribble it down on a piece of paper, then that piece of paper will just sit there and then it will be forgotten.
Speaker A:Like, and there'll be 20,000 pieces of paper and various notebooks and there's no system, is what I'm saying.
Speaker A:There is no coherent system for organizing all of those thoughts or for prioritizing.
Speaker A:So one of the things that I have been working on as I start this year is creating a system to help me to organize my thoughts and to help to keep me on track with doing what I actually matters, like what the Important tasks are that are going to take me closer to my goals, that are important to me, and I know why they're important to me.
Speaker A:So it is a trap that I fall into every year, all the time.
Speaker A:Maybe you too.
Speaker A:I know it's very much an ADHD thing, but I don't think it's just adhd.
Speaker A:But always buying into the idea that the shiny new planner or the new project management system, like it's going to be some tool that is going to be the magic pill that it's going to provide the answer.
Speaker A:And suddenly I'm going to be so organized, I'm going to be able to do the things that I say that I'm going to do.
Speaker A:I have invested in every project management software online.
Speaker A:I have tried them all.
Speaker A:Trello and Asana and Monday and ClickUp and all of the rest of them.
Speaker A:The only thing that I use consistently is my Google Calendar.
Speaker A:And if, if I did not have my Google Calendar, I would be a complete disorganized mess.
Speaker A:And in my family, if it is not in the Google Calendar, it's not happening.
Speaker A:And the same with my, my work and my business.
Speaker A:But Google Calendar doesn't provide all the answers.
Speaker A:I have to have a place that I can store, you know, and track progress on certain projects that are happening over time.
Speaker A:So this is not an ad, it couldn't be because it's free anyway.
Speaker A:But what I have been investing in learning is notion.
Speaker A:I don't know if you're familiar with it, maybe you are.
Speaker A:Notion is this like online tool.
Speaker A:It's a, it's a, like an organizational tool which essentially once you understand how it works, you can pretty much organize your whole life.
Speaker A:However, it has got a hugely steep learning curve.
Speaker A:So I pretty much spent the best part of two days last week watching YouTube videos and learning how to set up Notion.
Speaker A:And this is what I mean about laying foundations so that I can use it to support my life and work and to keep me on track.
Speaker A:Now I will say what I just said.
Speaker A:It is a trap of mine to fall into believing that this new tool is going to be the magic solution.
Speaker A:This is going to be the magic wand that's going to solve everything for me.
Speaker A:I'm very conscious of that.
Speaker A:I'm also very conscious of I can hyper focus on the wrong thing and maybe I just wasted two whole days learning how to use Notion and in a week's time I'll have forgotten all about it.
Speaker A:I'm hoping that's not the case.
Speaker A:What I understand about this tool is that you can obviously you can personalize it once you, I mean, hugely steep learning curve.
Speaker A:I'm a techie kind of a person.
Speaker A:I can get really, you know, I just love learning new systems and new softwares.
Speaker A:So that's just me.
Speaker A:Maybe it's not you, but the fact that I can completely customize this for my life and my business and I can have this one stop platform where everything in my life is in it is.
Speaker A:That's a dream to me and I have got high hopes that it will, it will be really helpful for me.
Speaker A:So for example, I can go into notion.
Speaker A:If I've got a random thought or I come across some person, I think, wow, that'd be a great podcast guest.
Speaker A:I can open up my notion app, open up my notion page on my browser and I can type in that person's D details.
Speaker A:There is a special place for ideal podcast guests.
Speaker A:All their details, a few notes about what they're about, their website.
Speaker A:I can also keep a track of all of the things that I need to track for my health, all of the things that I need to track for my just my general to do list, holiday planning, like literally every aspect of my life.
Speaker A:You can create like your own little database in there and it is all in one place.
Speaker A:So not an ad, but just in case it's of interest to you.
Speaker A:For you it might not be notion.
Speaker A:For you it might be something else.
Speaker A:But have a system where you can keep a track of all of the things that really are important and you can track your progress over time.
Speaker A:Now I said earlier that you might actually not want to focus on a goal, you might want to focus on a system.
Speaker A:So let me just talk briefly about that.
Speaker A:So sometimes it might be the case that you can't pin down a very specific goal, but what you want to do is be building a new habit.
Speaker A:There is something that you want to be incorporating more of in your life.
Speaker A:And so it's really about how do you prioritize that.
Speaker A:For example, I last year had some really recurring sciatica and it took me out for big chunks of time, made it really hard to do particular kinds of exercise and just generally caused me a lot of pain.
Speaker A:So I have been saying I really need to get into some core strength work.
Speaker A:I need to be getting into Pilates.
Speaker A:So in that case building my core strength, avoiding sciatica like that.
Speaker A:I don't necessarily have a goal around that, but what I know is I need to be building in regular Pilates or regular core work into my Routine, I need to make that part of my regular process.
Speaker A:I need to make it a habit.
Speaker A:So it might be that what you want to be doing in terms of what you want to be focusing your energy on and how you prioritize your time each week, when you look at your calendar and your calendar gets full very quickly and there's always a lot of really important things to be done or they seem like they're important, they pull for your attention.
Speaker A:But what are the really important things that you need to prioritize to make sure that they get done based on what is truly of value to you?
Speaker A:So for me, that has meant, as I start January, that I have scheduled in my diary for the next three weeks, one weekly Pilates class.
Speaker A:Similarly, yin yoga.
Speaker A:I really, really enjoy yin yoga.
Speaker A:It's great for your fascia, for, you know, your mobility, et cetera.
Speaker A:It's also just really great for your nervous system.
Speaker A:I have pre booked the next four weeks of that class to make sure that I show up because otherwise I'll just look at a busy week.
Speaker A:I just let everything else get in the way, I schedule things and then before I know it, I've got no time to go to yoga.
Speaker A:Too bus busy for Pilates.
Speaker A:So it's about prioritizing those things that are important and blocking that time before you fill the rest of the space up with all of the busy work.
Speaker A:So for you, you know, think about what those things are, what are those cornerstones, what are those pillars that are really important for you, whether it's your physical health, like I've just given a couple of physical health examples, but it could be socially, it could be friends, like important social events that you want to make sure that you don't miss, people that you need to stay connected with.
Speaker A:If you have a goal to be a writer, you have aspirations to write, whether it's a book or you know, whether you make music or something creative like that.
Speaker A:How do you build into your week?
Speaker A:Even if there's no goal, even if the goal is not to publish a book or get published, but.
Speaker A:But how do you just build in time to write and make it a priority every week?
Speaker A:How do you build in time to focus on your music, your photography, whatever that thing is that's really important to you, that feeds your soul, even if there's not an outcome, you're not looking to win some photography prize, you're not looking to release a single on Spotify, but it's really important to you in terms of you just your overall well being and your happiness and your satisfaction with life.
Speaker A:How do you make sure that you block time for those things so that they don't just get lost in the busyness of life as things start to pick up and get going?
Speaker A:So it might not be a goal, it might be a habit or a routine or a system and you need to make time for it.
Speaker A:So think about that and on that, if the idea of time blocking doesn't work for you, I know for me, especially when it comes to actual work things like if I say I'm going to block two hours to write that newsletter, often I will just completely ignore that.
Speaker A:But what might be better is something called time shielding.
Speaker A:So actually protecting some time in your calendar for the things that matter to you.
Speaker A:So just having untouchable time in your calendar, you know, blocking it out as, as a meeting, as a commitment to yourself so that then you can decide how you want to choose to spend that time when the time comes.
Speaker A:You don't have to be too fixed and too rigid about how you spend that time, but you shield that time.
Speaker A:You protect it from being just filled up with busy work and other people's priorities or just giving it away because you haven't been really intentional about what is important to you each day and each week.
Speaker A:So I'd really encourage you, even if there's not a goal, you know, if there is a goal, then absolutely be looking at your week ahead, checking in on your progress to your 90 day goals, whatever it is, and then asking yourself what are the key things that are actually going to move the needle?
Speaker A:Not just the busy work, but the things that are actually going to make a difference.
Speaker A:And if it's not a goal, then what are the priorities or the systems that you want to be making sure that you're making time for?
Speaker A:Next week, I'm going to be back with Alexis Fernandez, who you may know as the host of the do you Effing Mind?
Speaker A:Podcast.
Speaker A:We had an amazing conversation about how to.
Speaker A:How to create change.
Speaker A:And so I've been holding that to release it this year and I think that you will love it.
Speaker A:You will love her if you're not already familiar with her.
Speaker A:And I think that that conversation hopefully really pick up on and build on just this basic stuff that I have talked about today.
Speaker A: s that you want to achieve in: Speaker A:I hope this has been helpful.
Speaker A:I just wanted to come in and just give you a little bit of inspiration for setting your goals and setting yourself up for the best year yet.
Speaker A:And I can't wait to catch you next week for another episode of Crappy to Happy.
