Have a powerful start to the year by setting goals for 2025.
Whether it’s learning a new skill or pursuing a dream project, setting new goals can help you improve various aspects of your life in 2025.
If you’ve been feeling lost or stuck in a rut, a goal can give you something to strive for. Goals give us a sense of purpose, and add shape and definition to our days. Goals ensure that you’re always learning something about yourself and making progress in your life.
If you’re looking for ideas for 2025 goals, you’re in luck. Below, we’ve rounded up some fun, exciting, and challenging goals to pursue in 2025. We’ve organized these goals into different categories: health and wellbeing, friendships and relationships, career, and personal development. Choose 1-2 goals to work on every month or quarter, and select them from different categories. With this holistic approach, you’ll nurture all the different areas of your life.
Want to make sure you successfully achieve your goals for 2025? Write your goals down in your planner and make a list of all the tasks or activities you need to do to get closer to your goal.
Goals for 2025: Health and wellbeing
These goals will help you prioritize your physical, mental, and emotional health in 2025.
- Develop a gentle evening routine before bed (read a book instead of looking at a screen; take a hot bath).
- Sign up for a group fitness class like pickle ball or zumba and have a fun workout in a group setting.
- Always have a side of veggies with lunch and dinner
- Learn a new healthy recipe a month.
- Cook a meatless dinner every Monday.
- Set aside 5-10 minutes a day to meditate or sit still.
- Have a self-care day once a week and do all my favorite, soothing activities like reading magazines in bed or watching a feel-good movie.
- Write in my gratitude journal everyday and make a list of at least 10 things I am grateful for.
- Spend at least 30 minutes a day outdoors.
- Be on top of my medical and dental health (schedule appointments; get prescriptions refilled; organize my insurance paperwork).
Goals for 2025: Friendships and relationships
Whether it’s maintaining close ties with your friends and loved ones, or thinking of simple ways to deepen your connections, these 2025 goals will improve your relationships with the people you care about.
- Keep a running list of gift ideas for friends, family, and coworkers so that I’ll be prepared for birthdays or the holiday gift giving season.
- Do something social with friends at least once a week.
- Schedule a weekly FaceTime with my parents and siblings.
- Send a “thinking of you” text to a friend whenever I'm thinking of them.
- Instead of going to a bar, brainstorm ideas for fun activities with friends like hosting a game night or going for a hike in the woods.
- Plan a family vacation.
- Go on a weekend trip with my bestie.
- Do at least one nice thing a day for my partner.
- Support my friends by attending their concerts or art shows or other events that are important to them.
- Add reminders for people’s birthdays to my calendar and always have a supply of greeting cards and stamps on hand.
Goals for 2025: Career
Do you want a new job? Or want to get promoted at work? These 2025 goals will help you get ahead in your career.
- At the end of the week, make a list of all the things I accomplished at work. Examples: increased number of social media followers, submitted a report to a client on time, etc) and then use this list when completing my performance review.
- Develop at least 1-2 new skills to stay ahead in my industry. Examples: learn how to create videos, improve my public speaking, learn graphic design, etc.
- Have better work-life balance by setting boundaries at work.
- Reconnect with an old boss or coworker. Send them an email and invite them out for lunch or coffee.
- If a work project sounds cool or interesting, ask my boss if I can take it on.
- Develop a niche and become the go-to person for this specific skill. Examples: being good at analyzing social media data or writing email newsletters or being good with strategy.
- Have better one-on-one meetings with my boss by taking notes, getting clear on action items, and using the meeting as an opportunity to “toot my own horn” and share my wins.
- Conduct a solo work retreat to identify my career aspirations, define my values, and plan my action steps in order to reach the next level in my career.
- Start laying the groundwork to put myself in the running for a promotion: learn how to do my current tasks remarkably well and then start taking on bigger tasks or ask my boss if there’s anything else I can do to support them.
- Be better prepared for meetings: read and study the background materials; brush up on terms and acronyms I need to know, etc.
Goals for 2025: Personal Development
If you’ve been feeling stuck in a rut, these personal development goals will help you get out of your comfort zone, live new experiences, and have a memorable 2025.
- Travel to a city or country I’ve never visited before.
- Learn a new language.
- Start squirreling away money for a travel fund.
- Write in my journal once a day or once a week to reflect on my experiences and have an outlet for my emotions and feelings.
- Read at least two books a month.
- Take up a new hobby like bird watching or pottery or water colors.
- Stay on top of clutter by doing 5-10 minute cleaning sprints once a day.
- Be more organized: keep a planner, check my schedule in the morning to know what’s on the agenda for the day; make a daily to-do list.
- Increase my productivity: learn how to prioritize my tasks, schedule important work for times of day when I have the most energy, etc.
- Take a small risk at least once a month: invite an acquaintance out to coffee, sign up for a class, speak up at meetings, join a club, etc.
Written by JiJi Lee
