We are a quarter of the way through 2025; I can’t believe it! Time is moving so fast, how are we already in April? With three months gone, it’s time to revisit the 2025 Year-Long Focuses we made at the beginning of the year and take a look at how our monthly goals have gone for January, February, and March.

Recapping My Approach to 2025 & Initial Thoughts

In my first blog post of the new year, I explained how instead of making a lot of goals that last all year, January to December, I was going to select a few to be annual and then have the rest be picked on a monthly basis. After going through this process for a few months, I think it’s the best decision. Anyone can get and work toward their goals however they want, but breaking it up this way has been incredibly helpful for not feeling overwhelmed and making small progress over time that leads to big results.

So this whole concept and goal-tracking approach is already a winner after this first quarter. But outside of that, what I really want to talk about are the trends I’ve noticed in myself. I really want to go over the major wins I’ve had so far this year and a few common areas of struggle that need to be addressed over April, May, and June. 

My Quarterly Accomplishments & Areas Of Improvement

Let’s start with our  2025 Annual Goals, which are:

  • Reading 24 books
  • Increasing my monthly savings account contributions
  • Adding more steps and exercise time into each week

With the reading, I’m not where I’d like to be, but I do recognize that there is a lot of time left to make up for it. I’d ideally have six books complete by now, but I only have four at the time of writing this: Rest Stop, Weyward, Where the Dead Wait, and The Poppy War. Not super happy to be behind on this goal, but I am working on another one right now and will start another Book Club pick within the next week or so. We’ve got time to recover! Our other two annual goals, however, are going fabulous. March was the best month pedometer-wise and exercise-wise (95%-100%), a huge improvement from January and February, and saving contributions for all three months were a strong 100%. For the most part, we’re in a great spot! These I’m very comfortable with.

As far as monthly goals, those changed each month but were (and continue to be) divided into six different categories: Personal, Professional, Financial, Community, Self Care, and Health. For January and February, all of these categories were 100% met, except for Health — that one wasn’t (isn’t) as straight forward. My annual physical is in mid-April, so my Health goals may change, but for now I am keeping track of my protein and vegetable intake, as well as how often I eat dessert, soda, and alcohol. Some aspects were better/worse depending on the month, but I ended March with 91% of my monthly protein intake. I’m still trying to get a more consistent handle on the other factors. The monthly “maintenance” things I have on my list (flossing, daily water intake, etc.) have been going well all throughout this quarter, with March being 100% for all. 

March was the month where I really tried to challenge myself and have several smaller goals for each of the six categories above. In hindsight, I guess it makes sense that all my goals except for Health weren’t at 100% by the time April came. But they were close! Two were 100%, two were 80-90%, but one was around 33%. This showed me that I am likely better off sticking with smaller goals for each category and not trying to assign too much to either category for one month. March was a challenge for myself, and I don’t want to be too overwhelmed; that is not a great way to make progress. 

I’m Formulating My April Plan Of Attack

With this in mind, I’ve given myself some wiggle room for April; not adding too many goals for each category, keeping them more manageable, and leaving some space open for additional goals as the month goes on. I want to keep building on what I’ve been doing the past few months and see what all I can do for myself and for my career during the spring and start of summer. We’ll check back again in a few months!