Re-thinking Your Priorities for the Coming Year

What do I want my 2025 to look like? You may be reflecting on this important question as we close out what has been a challenging year for many of us. Business professionals should always make time for reflection, reassessment of their strategy and goal planning. I would suggest this approach is more critical than ever if we wish to break out of the rut many of us may feel we are in. By now, it is likely you have largely completed your 2025 business goals and strategy planning. If so, I would encourage the readers of this post to expand their thinking about the coming year in terms of time and priorities (both business and personal). The business priorities and goals may be clear, but how about your personal priorities?

Time is a finite resource, yet we often foolishly behave as if there is an endless supply of it to accomplish everything on our daily to-do lists. For many of the professionals I know, stress is at peak levels and burnout from the daily grind of work is a real issue. Add on the stress of an election year with a tough economy and these issues were likely exacerbated and made worse.

As I ponder how to make 2025 an amazing year and prepare for what I hope to achieve on both a personal and professional level, I have come to realize that everything hinges on how effective I am with managing my priorities and the precious resource of time. Below is a list of five priorities outside of the typical business objectives requiring an intentional time investment from me in 2025 (and beyond):

• Invest more in self-care.?As I have written before in other posts, you cannot share with others from an empty cup. I am no longer the Superman I was early in my career and I have to watch my diet and exercise more. I also need some quiet time each day to think, read, be creative and restore my batteries. I need time for daily prayer and reflection. This time goes on the calendar like everything else of importance and I have to zealously guard it or watch it be easily sacrificed to other demands on my time. Being overextended and dealing with burnout is a real problem for many of us. If we want to address our responsibilities and serve our families, work colleagues and friends, we have to take better care of ourselves.?In 2025, how will you take care of your own needs in these critical areas?
• Family comes before work. I am fortunate to own a growing business doing work I love. However, I absolutely love my wife and sons more. I must exercise discipline and intentionality to ensure my work exists to serve my family and avoid asking my family to serve my work. This means turning work off at an acceptable hour and being fully present when we are together. How will you make your loved ones feel like they are the priority in 2025?
• Invest in those around me. As an executive coach working with dozens of senior leaders and their teams each year, this should be obvious. But, I need to be intentional and go deeper in other areas of my life. My oldest son has high-functioning autism and needs me to be fully invested with my wife in helping him learn to be as independent as possible. My younger son is newly married and building the foundation for a successful life...I want to be available to encourage him and help if needed. My wife and I are always looking for ways to spend quality time together and a number of fun family trips are in the works. I also mentor a number of young leaders who have asked for my guidance and I want to show up with my best effort for each of them. These time investments require careful calendar management and prioritization or they will not occur. How will you make time to develop others in the coming year?
• Nurture key relationships. I am grateful to know a lot of wonderful people and am committed to spending more quality time with them throughout the year. I will check in more often with a call, email, text or handwritten note to people I care about, but don't see as often as I like. Consider where you will invest in your own personal and professional relationships, especially with work colleagues. When you observe eroding trust and poor collaboration in an organization, you can often trace it back to neglected work relationships. What are the key relationships in your world and how will you creatively invest in or re-invigorate them in the coming year?
• Better serve the community and causes I care about most. Long ago, I learned the hard way to only be involved in the organizations that match up with the causes I care about most…and I will only serve up to three non-profits at any given time. This keeps me engaged in a manageable way and allows me to give my best effort to important causes that are making a difference. In addition to my personal donations, I can promote these causes to my network, recruit new board members/donors and find other ways to add value. I find the most personally rewarding investment I can make is to show up on the front lines serving these causes with focused time and effort. Which causes will benefit from your time, talent and treasure? How will you best serve the community in the coming year?

I shared my personal 2025 priorities to encourage you to make an honest list like this for yourself. You may have a very different list as we all tend to approach this topic in different ways. I could have shared sales and profit goals for Serviam Partners, the topic of my forthcoming book or the other strategic work projects I want to tackle, but those are all givens when it comes to business planning for a new year. The financial goals are easy, but try writing down all the other priorities you have that never seem to get fully accomplished with your current approach to calendar management. When this is completed, I challenge you to conduct a calendar audit of one month in 2024 when you were particularly busy. How successful were you in accomplishing the expanded list of priorities you wrote down? Where do you need to start saying NO? What other changes need to be made? For more insight on time/calendar management, read my post on Living Life in Real Time.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers and I often struggle to stay on top of this issue like most business people I know, but I keep trying to improve. I also know that I am determined to thrive in 2025, savor every moment and help others do the same. Time is a precious resource and I am encouraging everyone I know to stop assuming the important priorities like the ones I shared will get done by accident with scraps of time left over from our busy workdays. Intentionality, focus and self-discipline are the keys to making this attainable and workable. If we are successful in making this a reality, life and work in 2025 will be richer and more enjoyable because of our efforts.

What will your list of priorities look like for 2025 and how will you find the time to ensure they happen?

Thanks and best wishes for a Happy and Blessed New Year!

*My newest book, Becoming a More Thoughtful Leader, is available from Amazon! This book can be an excellent companion and guide for you to make the most of the coming year. If you would like to learn more about the book, read over 50 humbling 5-star reviews and purchase a copy, click here.

Randy Hain is the president of Serviam Partners, the award-winning author of 11 books, an executive coach, leadership consultant and thought leader on candor, clarity, time management and business relationships. He is also the co-founder of The Leadership Foundry.