How I lived my best year yet (so you can too)

Why goal setting sets you on the opposite direction of what you're looking for

Dec 29, 2024

Note: This essay was first published on December/2024, and now December/2025 it happened again.. ”my best year yet”! by following the same principles I lay out on this piece.

We're often looking for "the thing" that will change our lives and reveal our life's purpose.

But it's actually the little things we do daily that end up being recycled, transformed, and become something else we could never imagine if we hadn't traveled the journey.

Every year, I used to grab my journal and with excitement start planning my goals for the next one. Things I want to experience, achieve, or what in my mind looks like “a better version of myself”.

Some years, I crossed off many of them, and other times barely any. Either way, it led me to repeat the cycle the following year, or left me with a sense of not being enough.

I also tried years when I decided to have no goals and no specific direction, and just "let life guide my way," as a popular Brazilian song says. And for those years, I have to say, they weren't the best either. I ended the year feeling more or less in the same place I was before, or for lack of a better way to put it, feeling lost.

A need for progress

What compels us to create New Year's goals and resolutions is the need to feel that we're progressing in life, that we are moving towards something better, more fulfilling, and happier.

We make all kinds of assumptions about what will make us feel this way: a better job? a higher salary? a new home? more trips? We typically lean toward wanting more, better, and new things.

But do these things truly help us feel fulfilled and accomplished?

Or are we just chasing dopamine hits that quickly fade when achieved? Or worse, leave us feeling like failures when we don't achieve them at all?

Why the productivity lifestyle kills our real progress

The obsession with productivity comes from the corporate world. As companies become more productive, they achieve more, make more money, and drive growth in the stock market and economy. This represents capitalism's cycle and reflects the society most of us live in today.

But we are not companies. Our fulfilment as humans is not based on external growth. More and better every year doesn't leave us with a deep sense of meaning in life. But there are three things that do:

Connection with ourselves
Connection with others
A sense of learning and personal evolution.

What if we set goals and intentions based on these 3 pillars, instead of random assumptions of better, more, and bigger?

Learning Goals: An approach that changed my life (really)

Around 7 months ago, when I was facing the void of no direction in my personal and professional life, I came across a podcast episode with David Epstein that lit a bulb in my mind. Among other things, he talked about the importance of failure and of setting learning goals instead of achieving goals.

Achieving goals vs. Learning goals

When we set "achieving goals," we tend to focus solely on the end outcome, and whether we achieved it or not. After the dopamine hit fades away, we find ourselves in the same place with very little sensation of progress, growth, and learning. It might also add pressure which can make our progress harder and more challenging than it should be.

When we set "learning goals," we focus on the process, and we tend to be way more experimental with how we approach things, opening more space for real growth, we're constantly collecting insights and learnings from it.

The curious thing is that even if you don't end up "achieving" your goals, but you have learning goals, you still leave with a feeling of fulfillment and progress, because growth happened internally; you're not the same as you were before, and you're aware of it.

I applied his insights the very next day by creating learning goals around topics I was curious about. Now, looking back on the past months, I'm amazed by the new direction and vibrancy my life has taken.

How to do that (with examples)

For me, curiosity and openness form the foundation that makes this approach work, and the direction will naturally reveal itself along the way.

Step one: The first step is to do an inventory of things you're curious about, that you like, enjoy, and want to explore more.

PS: In case you feel totally disconnected from yourself or life, and can't think of things that make you curious or excited in the moment, try to recall things you once were excited about or that brought you joy, or that you liked but for one reason or another ended up abandoning.

My example: Among other things, two topics in my list were writing and psychology as interests.

Step two: Create a habit or a project around this curiosity or interest. And define learning goals for this habit or project.

My example: I combined writing and psychology into one project and habit. The project was this newsletter, to write about topics of psychology that interest me.

Then I set learning goals:

Project/habit: Starting a Newsletter around psychology topics relevant to me, so I can:

Improve my writing skills and learn to better articulate my thoughts
Find my "voice", what do I really like to talk about?
Prove to myself I can be consistent with my own projects
Learn how to get subscribers

Notice: I didn't set a goal to start a newsletter and gain 10k subscribers in 3 months.

Step 3: Set aside time periodically, to reflect on your learnings and write down how you have learned and grown so far. Write them on a physical journal or a digital diary.

Here are my results so far:

I improved my writing and structure of thought dramatically since my first issue, compared to the 23rd now 😊
I have much clearer insight into my writing voice and the topics I truly enjoy discussing.
- Note: Initially, I named this newsletter "Dear Life" to give myself freedom to explore any topic. Over time, I discovered that I'm most passionate about exploring our relationship with ourselves and how it affects our connections with others. This realization led to rebranding the newsletter as "Dear Self".
I've experimented with various methods to attract relevant subscribers to my newsletter. The most effective approach has been through writing-focused social media channels, particularly threads (which has sparked another experimental project).

I don’t have a big achievement or huge numbers to brag to you about it, but this process brought me so much growth and fulfillment with myself. I learned, I grew, I’m proud of myself.

I also had "failures" that felt like winning

The newsletter also opened so many other opportunities for me. I joined forces with a friend to run a one-day retreat for people going through any kind of life transitions—work or personal. It took us two months to put everything together from program to marketing and logistics.

In the end, it didn't happen. We didn't achieve the minimum number of people required to cover the costs.

But because I had set learning goals, I learned a lot in the process, especially about social media and ads, which made me feel so excited that I took these insights and integrated them into another project that is now my main focus. I'm so excited about it, and what I'm doing now would not have been possible if I hadn't done these experiments before.

We're often looking for "the thing" that will change our lives and reveal our life's purpose. But it's actually the little things we do daily that end up being recycled, transformed, and become something else we could never imagine if we hadn't traveled the journey.

A better alternative to goal setting

Goal setting is too binary, and it excludes all the nuances and layers of our lived experience, especially our internal experience and sense of self.

When we focus on growing internally through external experiments, we're more likely to experience fulfillment and progress regardless of where we are in the moment. The reference becomes our past selves, instead of where we are in comparison to others.

For the next year, instead of setting goals to achieve, what about setting learning goals and keeping a diary of the process?

I'm setting learning goals and habits, not a thousand, just a few relevant to me. Things I'm curious about, not things I think "I have to."

Wishing you a wonderful ~~2025~~ 2026 filled with love and care for yourself,

Nat

What do you want to learn and what habit do you need to implement for that?

Can a curiosity become a project? And if so, what are your learning goals for that? What do you want to know about yourself?

Discussion about this post

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