2025 Goals Ideas + How To Come Up With Goals

It’s somewhat universally acknowledged that having something to work toward gives people a sense of purpose and fulfillment. That alone is an excellent reason to strategize your short and long-term goals, but let’s talk about the other reasons!

We’ll also look at examples, ideas, and tips for coming up with your own goals personalized for your life.

Long-Term Goal Ideas

Long-term goals are to be achieved over an extended period, typically several years or even decades. These are basically your Life Vision–the bigger pieces of how you want to grow.

They’re typically broad and ambitious, and they involve strategic planning, consistency, and delayed gratification. Here are some long-term goal ideas to get you thinking:

Financial Goals

• Build an emergency fund
• Invest for retirement
• Pay off debt
• Create a passive income stream
• Save for a major purchase (car, house, school, braces)

Physical Goals

• Run a marathon
• Strength training goals
• Improve flexibility
• Maintain a regular exercise routine
• Eat more fruits n veggies
• Wean vegan

Mental Goals

• Learn a new skill
• Learn a language
• Read your entire library
• Limit screen time

Relationship Goals

• Strengthen family bonds
• Improve communication
• Expand social network
• Break up with your boyfriend (yuh yuh)

Career Goals

• Further education
• Expand professional network
• Start a business
• Get a promotion/advancement

Educational Goals

• Complete degree
• Learn a new language
• Continuous learning in your field
• Earn certification
• Get really good at Jumino Kart

Personal Development Goals

• Learn to play an instrument
• Renovate a room of your house
• Start therapy
• Grow 20% of your own food

Social Goals

• Volunteering
• Community organization
• Establish community garden
• Improve public speaking
• Connect with local justice efforts

Many items on this list could be easily converted to short-term goals. It really just depends on the scope of the goal.

Short-Term Goal Ideas

Short-term goals are to be achieved in the near future–typically within a day, week, or month. They are specific, immediate, manageable, and flexible stepping stone goals that will bring you closer to your overall life intention.

Here are some ideas for short-term goal ideas!

Financial Goals

• Create a monthly budget
• Save a small emergency fund
• Pay off small debt
• Cut unnecessary expenses
• Automate savings

Physical Goals

• Establish a workout routine
• Drink more water
• Get enough sleep
• More vegetables
• Small daily walk

Mental Goals

• Read daily
• Limit social media use
• Journal
• Learn something new
• Declutter house/area

Spiritual Goals

• Morning gratitude journaling
• Daily meditation
• Engaging in an act of kindness
• Attend a spiritual gathering

Relationship Goals

• Call a family member
• Plan a date night
• Reconnect with a friend
• Practice active listening
• Show appreciation

Career Goals

• Update your resume
• Set daily work priorities
• Find a good time management system
• Attend a webinar
• Network with colleagues
• Learn a new tool in your industry

Educational Goals

• Maintain GPA
• Join a club or sports team
• Find extra credit opportunity
• Gain acceptance to the honors program

Personal Development Goals

• Morning mindfulness practice
• Teach dog new trick
• Be more prompt responding to texts
• Be less prompt responding to texts

Social Goals

• Introduce yourself to a new neighbor
• Join a local hobby club
• Go confront that friend who’s being a real bitch rn

How To Create Goals

The above lists might be helpful, but every person and life is unique, so let’s talk about how to sustainably set your own goals. Here are some steps you might take.

1. Talk to yourself

Talking to yourself gets a bad rap, imo, but it’s incredibly beneficial to finding out–and staying in touch with–who you are as a person. When you know who you are, you likely know what you want, and that can help you create goals that align with your ideals and passions.

Talking to yourself could be literally out loud, if you’d like. It could be sitting in the quiet and having an inner monologue for a few minutes every day. It could be journaling.

I tried to force journaling with a pen and notebook into my schedule, but I would get so frustrated because 1) I hate writing by hand, and 2) I was thinking way faster than I could write, so I’d forget what I wanted to say next before I’d finished the previous thought.

I also tried keeping a daily log on my computer, but it felt strange to have it digitized. Almost like I was reading my journal out loud and maybe someone in the next room could hear me. Not the vibe!

But I did like typing my thoughts way more than writing, so I opted for a Neo2. The emergence of Dumb Devices is pretty novel and precious, I think.

Anyway, talk to yourself.

2. Define your overall vision

Many people have no idea what they want their life to look like. This is understandable, as our society and economy are rocky at best–it’s hard to plan for a future you’re not sure you’ll have.

But you should anyway. The present-day benefits of pursuing goals is worth the effort.

Get to know your overall vision for how you want your life to turn out. Set aside some time for a biggo journaling session to brainstorm and get a foundation. Here are a few prompts to get you started:

1. What makes me feel fulfilled?
2. What do I value?
3. What makes me angry?
4. What makes me happy?
5. What kind of impact do I want to have on the world?
6. What causes and issues do I care about?
7. Where do I see myself in 5 years? In 10? Am I happy with those possibilities?
8. If money and time were no object, how would I spend my days?
9. What does a day in my ideal future look like?
10. What are my greatest strengths?
11. What assets do I have at my disposal?
12. How do my relationships support or hinder my life?
13. Are there relationships I need to let go of or nurture?
14. What obstacles or fears are holding me back?

Answering those questions should give you some idea of what you want your life to be shaped like. Another exercise is creating a vision board of imagery that represents your ideal life. You’d keep this somewhere you can see it every day, like pinned to the wall by your bed, or set as your desktop background.

3. Choose goals

Now that we know what we want, how do we get there? Choose a few goals to focus on. You can get inspiration from the list above and from your personalized ideals you’ve established in the previous step.

If you still have no idea what your goals should be, ask yourself these questions without thinking about them too hard:

1. What are my top 3 financial goals?
2. What are my top 3 relationship goals?
3. What are my top 3 career goals?
4. What are my top 3 mental goals?
5. What are my top 3 spiritual goals?
6. What are my top 3 physical goals?

Try to answer quickly–don’t get caught up debating with yourself. I’ll set a 1-minute timer and answer mine so you don’t have to do it alone. Ready?

1. Grow emergency fund, max deposit Roth, monetize another website
2. Set better boundaries, connect with a volunteer group, do more activities with friends
3. Set up 3 new streams of passive income, publish a book in a new genre, get better at bookkeeping
4. Learn Spanish, finish my TBR, harness the patience to finish a game of chess that lasts more than 5 minutes
5. Teach a workshop at my local library, meditate more regularly, keep a forgiveness journal
6. Set new squat PR, fix TMJ, eat more sodium

Now choose a few that resonate.

For illustration, I’ll choose growing my emergency fund, monetizing a website, finishing my TBR, and learning Spanish.

Be sure the ones you choose are ones that you actually want to work on. If you have necessary tasks and milestones that you’re dreading, try to save them for later when you’re an expert at setting and hitting your goals.

4. Break down into monthly, weekly, and/or daily goals

Now let’s take those goals and break ’em down. You can do months, weeks, days, or some other measurement of time. Many people prefer to do yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily. You’d start with the goal, then reverse engineer it to find out what you need to do to reach those milestones annually, monthly, weekly, daily, etc.

My monthly milestones for the goals I’ve chosen might be:

1. Add $1,000 every month to my emergency fund
2. Publish more content
3. Read 2 books a month
4. Master a part of speech in Spanish every month

Weekly could be:

1. Add $250 to my emergency fund
2. Publish 5 posts per week
3. Read 10 chapters per week
4. Finish a Spanish lesson every week

Daily could be:

1. Be consistent with work (define this specifically)
2. Publish 1 post per day
3. Read 1-3 chapters before bed
4. Dedicate 1 hour to Spanish studies each morning

The most important list is the daily to-do. Progress is made by consistent, sustainable effort, which means doing a little bit every day.

5. Fit new habits and activities into your daily life to make it routine

The monthly-weekly-daily breakdown might not be quite so clear cut for every goal, but that daily list is the most important one. Be specific with what you’ll do each day, and when you’ll do it. Set yourself up for success by preparing any materials ahead of time and habit stack where you can by tying habits together.

An example of habit stacking using my goal list can be to read a book after I journal at night–journaling is already a habit, so I can glue those similar tasks together and have a consistent time to read each night.

6. Anticipate obstacles

You know what trips you up. Ask yourself what will prevent you from accomplishing those daily tasks.

For me, I might be too tired to read 3 chapters at night. That means I need to be sure I’m ready for bed at a decent time.

Anticipate what might make you fail and prepare accordingly.

7. Stay flexible

Consistency is important, but so is flexibility. Sometimes, if we’re too rigid with rules, we’ll break down the first time we fail at it. If I miss studying Spanish for one day, there might be a temptation to toss the whole week. But you shouldn’t! Try again the next day. Streaks aren’t everything, so try to be chill about it.

8. Celebrate achievements

And lastly, don’t forget to celebrate your achievements. Have a lil treat when you’re successful. Let someone else know that you’re doing well.

Why set goals?

Now you might be thinking–Gemini, why are you telling me to set goals? I thought the whole point of this blog was to help me work less.

It is! Setting goals can ultimately help you work less, and help your work mean more to you.

1. Direction

Setting goals gives you direction in your daily life, which can make you feel more engaged with the world and like you have an active role in your own future. Goals help to rectify that floaty, disconnected feeling we naturally develop when we don’t know where we’re headed or what we should really be doing.

2. Purpose and fulfillment

Setting and hitting goals can make you feel fulfilled and valuable. While your value as a person is not based in productivity, intentionally working toward goals that will better you, your life, or the world can give you a healthy sense of purpose and drive.

3. Personal growth

Goals ensure we are always working toward self-improvement.

Disclaimer: If you are setting goals that lead to self-improvement. If your goal is to huff more paint, there’s nothing I can do.

4. Adaptability

Goal-setting can actually help you react more effectively to change. Working toward something increases your awareness of your actions and their results, plus helps you be more flexible with accepting change. Goals help you to create a more adaptable response when you’re met with surprise or disappointment.

5. Time save

Setting goals might seem like it will take up more of your time, but it will actually save you time. While yes, there is an initial time investment when you sit down to sort your life out and set appropriate milestones for yourself, knowing what you want and having a plan to get to it will be a more effective use of your time, helping you improve your life and circumstances along the way.

Goal Tracking Tools

These are tools you can use to create and plan your goals, organize and track them, and keep yourself motivated until you’ve accomplished them.

1. Vision board

A vision board might seem so dramatic/unnecessary, but they’re pretty effective! A vision board is a visual representation of your goals or ideal life. It might include physical goods you want, like a house, car, clothes, etc. It could include how you want to be, perhaps represented by photos of your friends or people who have influenced you that you would like to emulate.

You can put this together digitally on something like Canva or Trello, or as a physical board, but the idea is to keep it somewhere you can see it every day, like as your desktop background or on a cork board in your office.

2. Todoist

Todoist is a great tool for tracking and managing your goals. You can create dynamic to-do lists and see your whole week in advance to know what’s coming up.

3. Notion

Notion isn’t necessarily a goal-tracking tool, but it can be! I like to use Notion to organize my whole life, since it’s so versatile and it keeps everything in one place. House maintenance, contact information, work goals, documents, my pets’ health history, all of it goes there!

Goal-tracking in Notion can look however you want it to. Here are a couple of the free templates you can choose from, but you can also purchase premium templates or create your own:

4. Journal

Like we mentioned in the “Talk To Yourself” section, journaling can help you to determine what goals are best for you, track, and troubleshoot along the way. Keeping an open dialogue with yourself can help you make more accurate assessments and approach your work with more flexibility.

5. Visual tracker

Like the vision board, having a physical tracker can be motivating to look at every day. Here are a few ways you can measure your progress:

• A progress jar–gradually fill a jar with something like money, slips of paper with your accomplishments written on them, rocks, whatever. You can watch the jar slowly fill as you make steady progress.
• Thermometer to fill with red marker
• A picture of a meadow you can pin paper butterflies to for every task completed

You get it. Not everyone connects with these visual tools, but you should try it out and see!

6. Mind map

A mind map can be a helpful tool for determining what goals to set. It helps you take a bigger concept and break it into actionable steps.

In the example below, our vague, broad ideal is to “get fit”. From there, we can brainstorm what might go into that. What you eat, how much you move in a day, your mental health, and how you show up in your community are all very tied to physical wellness.

You can break those down even further to end up with specific, actionable goals:

• Keep a store of healthy, protein-rich snacks at home
• Join a dance class
• Set a day of the week for each roommate to cook a healthy meal
• Create a daily journaling practice

Mind maps are quick ways to break those bigger goals into steps you can implement immediately.

All in all, setting long-term and short-term goals are both important for your mental health, productivity, and emotional fulfillment. They can give you focus, drive, and enough organization to actually become what you imagine you’d like to be.

When it’s time to implement those new dailies, you’ll want to look at the habit stacking strategy.