- Wishful Working
- Posts
- What do you REALLY want?
What do you REALLY want?
Where goal-setting meets soul-searching
Kara Detwiller
December 05, 2024
Today’s edition of Wishful Working is a 4 minute read.
It’s December, which means it’s time for ✨ 2025 planning and goal-setting ✨
Here’s how planning and goal-setting usually goes for me:
Step 1: Join some sort of online planning party slash webinar, possibly multiple
Step 2: Create a super detailed plan and list of goals for the new year
Step 3: Mostly ignore plan
Step 4: Forget about said goals by February
Step 5: Immediately change mind about priorities
Step 6: Dig out goals list in December
Step 7: Repeat
Of the many goals I set for 2024, I basically achieved two of them. And I’m fine with that. (I’ll go into more detail when I publish my 2024 year in review later this month. Here’s last year’s.)
As a freelancer, I have a lot more control over my goals and plans than I did when I was an employee. But even as a freelancer, it’s easy to get caught up in relatively short-term goals and lose sight of the bigger picture for my life and career.
And I do have a bigger picture for my life and career. I worked on this after reading Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life in July 2022.
Full disclosure: I thought this book over-promised and under-delivered, but there were a few good exercises within. One exercise was called “Building a Compass,” where the authors encouraged readers to write down our unique views and values related to work and life and use these views to create guiding principles for career and life decisions.
Reflecting on this exercise more than two years later is enlightening. Here are some statements I wrote down then that still ring true:
Work is a small part of my life. It enables me to be able to afford things that I need and enjoy.
I do not believe that constant financial growth is necessary in order to be successful.
I believe what I do for work will continue to shift and change throughout my life.
I love to write, and I would like to try writing lots of different things — poetry, novels, memoirs, articles, features, etc.
I believe my purpose is to live a creative life, making things that express something true about me and connect with others.
I believe everyone should be able to enjoy life more and work less. No one’s purpose on this earth is to make rich people even richer.
These are powerful statements. When I reflect back on the past year and start planning for the coming year, I’m more concerned about working and living in a way that aligns with these statements, rather than achieving a bunch of short-term goals. Yes, commitment and follow-through are important, but it’s also vital to know when to quit or pivot.
It shouldn’t surprise you that I don’t have a certain annual planning framework or workbook I swear by. I tend to cherry-pick elements from various sources to create my own thing, but here are a few resources I would recommend if you’re looking for guidance:
See you next week,
Kara
Wishful Working is inspired by my desire to see more people enjoy a life not centered around work. For some, the path to freedom and flexibility is through self-employment, but we also need to challenge cultural norms and champion healthier working conditions and work/life balance for all types of workers.