Founder Diaries: How I'm Approaching Goal Setting While Avoiding Burnout

Ok, I'll admit. I love New Year's.

It feels cringy leaning into New Year's resolutions and the "new year, new me" mentality, but one of my favorite parts of the holiday season is having time to reflect over the past year and to dream about what the new year may bring.

I typically dive straight into setting goals, cluttering the kitchen table with poster boards, markers and planners, but this year I took a slightly different approach. 

I wanted my goal setting to be a truly valuable experience, so I focused on three things:

1) Setting intentional goals - Rooted in what I want from my own life and what I enjoy, not what everyone else is doing

2) Setting realistic goals - When I say realistic, I don't mean limiting what I think I can achieve, specifically I mean setting goals that I have time for based on my life's daily responsibilities. 

3) Keeping the experience positive - Its so easy for goal setting to turn into feelings of inadequacy, thinking about the things you haven't accomplished. Instead, I wanted to focus on my strengths, and my hopes for the future. 

Beginning with Celebrations

Did you see the TikTok trend where people were doing their celebration cakes? They were so cute!

I could tell some people were really pushing themselves to be comfortable highlighting their wins. 

I didn't make a video (I'm still way to shy for that), but it got me thinking about all of the things I had done throughout the year, including some of the things that I would have typically brushed off as not being a big deal. 

There were some highlights this year: 

• Quit my job and took a sabbatical to focus on my startup 

• Completed a coding bootcamp 

• Started consistently working out again

• Landed a new job with more flexibility 

These were the obvious accomplishments. But when I pushed myself to think more broadly about the year, I realized we had really made some great progress on things within our home and relationship. 

For example, we finally cleared out our spare bedroom from when we moved in five years ago. I'm ashamed to admit, but we still had boxes that we had never unpacked just sitting upstairs, tucked away in a room both had become too scared to walk into. 

This wasn't something that was on my goal list, its definitely not the type of achievement most people would brag about, but it took us multiple weekends to achieve and we should be proud that we didn't just let it sit that way another year. 

Defining Good Enough

Working in the software space, one of the terms I learned was "Definition of Done." 

When you're building software, scope creep is very easy. There's always additional enhancements you can make, so it's important to have an idea of what's required for a feature to be ready for release to users. If not, you'll stay in a constant loop of development and nothing will ever make it out the door. 

I've been thinking about how to apply this to my own life because I've caught myself in this constant loop of self-improvement. Online content has convinced us that we should always strive for perfection and look for things to change about ourselves. 

I don't know about you, but that sounds EXHAUSTING to me. 

I don't think people can be happy if you're constantly thinking about how you're not good enough. 

So what would it look like to be good enough? 

I took some time to map that out for myself in each category of life and immediately felt a sense of relief. 

I'll share this template and dig in on it a bit more in a future post. 

Setting Target Outcomes 

Typically I've leaned towards setting SMART goals. We've been told for years that goals should include a specific, measurable outcome that we want to achieve. But from what I've seen, focusing too much on the outcome can lead to consistent disappointment and frustration, particularly for goals where the outcome is not 100% in your control. 

So this year I've decided to focus on the behaviors, or habits, that I do have control over. 

For example, weight loss is back on my goals list. So I wrote out my goal, focusing on the habits that would help me.

Reach a healthy weight by: 

• Working out for at least 30 minutes each week day 

• Participating in one physical social activity each week 

• Following my meal plan at least 80% of each week 

Along with these habits, I've noted the ideal outcome, to lose 100 pounds, but it's not something I'll be looking at every week. 

Before I would have hyper focused on the scale, weighing myself every day to see if the number is going down. Instead this year I'll track my habits each day and only check in on my actual weight bi-weekly or maybe even monthly. 

If I'm following the plan I'll get results, it may not be a 100 pound weight loss, but if I can say I committed to those habits then I'll still have reason to be proud of myself. 

Mapping Goals to My Calendar 

With my goals were set, I went through my calendar to schedule time for each habit. 

This was a really helpful exercise because it forced me to be honest about what I can realistically accomplish each day, considering the ongoing commitments I have. 

Tip: Start with the non-negotiables (sleep, work time, family time) and then fill in the habits around those things. 

Once I had things in my calendar, I realized I would have to scale back on my goals a bit. There simply wouldn't have been enough time in the day to do everything without sacrificing things like sleep and that would have been a recipe for disaster! 

Monitoring My Stress Levels

There's still a lot of things I want to achieve this year, but I've learned from previous seasons of burnout that I don't want to risk my physical and mental health to make them happen. 

I decided to create a stress tracker that I can fill in each day to help me keep an eye on how much I'm taking on. I'll use my weekly planning time to review the tracker and see if I potentially need to make any adjustments to my schedule or goals to keep myself balanced throughout the year. 

What did your goal setting process look like this year? Are you trying anything different? My approach this year took more time, but I walked away feeling more grounded and confident altho I wouldn't have to sacrifice my health or happiness to achieve my goals.