Setting Goals won’t make 2025 a better year — Do this instead

Will you achieve your goals in 2025?

How are you so sure?

What makes you different from someone who won’t achieve them?

Think about it.

Confused and don’t know the answer.

It’s okay.

I also didn’t know the answers but I figured it out.

Here’s what I found…

A person with the right mindset and consistent action will achieve their goals.

But…

• What are those Right Mindsets?
• How do you take the right actions?

Well, I’m starting a series of articles called Dose of Mindset Shift.

In this series, I’ll share mindset shifts and actionable steps to help you achieve your goals in 2025.

Here’s the first — and perhaps the most powerful — mindset shift you need.

Having an Action-oriented Mindset

Why Smart People Fail and “Dumb” People Succeed

All of us have a desire to achieve something.

Often, smart people fail while less knowledgeable “dumb” people succeed.

Why?

Because a dumb person…

• Don’t doubt themselves.
• Don’t obsess over future outcomes.
• Focus on doing rather than thinking.

They think less and do a lot.

Smart People often overthink and over plan which causes inaction.

So if you have a lot of doubts like…

What if I fail?

Am I doing this correctly?

What will others think?

If you are facing this kind of situation then you should do this…

(Step 1) First of all, Stop thinking about the future and past because you don’t have control over this.

Then take a pen and a paper.

(Step 2) Write answers to these questions…

1. What are the projects and tasks I should work on this month to make progress on my goals?
2. In those Projects and tasks, what are the core levers that are responsible for making progress in my goals?
3. What are the best things I can do today to make progress on my goals?

(Step 3) Then open Google Calendar.

Schedule all today’s tasks on the calendar, and start taking Action.

Improve your Fragile Focus and Concentration

In the modern world, we all are going through an information overload.

What is Information overload?

Information overload happens when your brain gets overwhelmed by too much content.

In the meantime of doing something, there are a lot of thoughts going on in our minds.

When we are doing our work, We start thinking about Instagram Reels, Life problems, and different types of thoughts.

That’s why we can’t focus.

We have to remove unnecessary clutter and information from our brains.

If you can’t focus, I have a suggestion for you.

Read a Book — Deep Work by Cal Newport

This book gives you the complete solution to improve your focus.

Stop avoiding Difficulties and Challenges

This is one of the core mindsets of unsuccessful people.

They only try to do easy things.

When they find something difficult, they avoid it to hide their flaws.

Also, they have a lot of Fears like…

• Fear of failure
• Fear of Other’s judgment or criticism
• Fear of rejection
• Fear of being stupid in front of others

But they don’t know, if they can’t fail, they can’t learn.

Without facing difficulties and challenges, they can’t grow, they can’t learn.

This means they can’t become successful.

If you are someone who avoids difficulties and challenges then maybe you have a wrong mindset.

And I have a very good solution to this problem.

Read a book — Mindset by Carol Dweck.

This Book tells you how you can improve your mindset and solve these problems.

Stop chasing Perfection and keeping Wrong Expectations

We avoid challenging things when we have a wrong mindset.

We also make simple things challenging to do, when we have a wrong mindset.

Let’s suppose you want to learn the skill of writing an article.

For example, if you expect your first article to match top writers, you’ll feel frustrated and stuck.

You know, right now, I feel overwhelmed and frustrated.

Because I feel this article is not perfect.

I also have this problem of perfectionism.

However, I try to improve my mindset by telling myself that I should focus on writing articles consistently.

This is my sixth article, so how can I write a good article like a top writer?

I should focus on repetition instead of perfection.

Over time, I will be able to write a good article.

If you have this problem, Adjust your expectations and adopt an imperfection mindset

Focus on doing, not perfecting.

Stop doing less and thinking a lot.

Try to measure your day.

How much time, do you put into thinking?

How much time do you put into doing things that matter to you?

I did this.

I found myself a lot of time thinking about…

• What should I do to achieve that goal?
• Then what I should do?
• After that what I should do?

I spend a lot of time thinking about plans and future actions instead of doing things in the present.

I start focusing on doing things instead of thinking.

Measure and observe your day.

If you find the same situation then you should start focusing on doing things instead of thinking about doing the things.

Start doing what you should do instead of what you want to do

Many times, we procrastinate our tasks because we feel that we are not in a good mood.

We let our emotions control us.

When we are sad, angry, or stressed, we find doing things very difficult.

So when we feel not good, then we do the things that we want to do.

• Scrolling Social Media
• Eating Junk Food
• Overthinking
• Bing-watching Netflix

On a typical day, we face a lot of things that affect our mood.

If we let our emotions control us, then we never be able to complete our today’s work.

So we have to learn to control our emotions.

Regardless of how we feel, we should do the work instead of doing things that we want to do.

Don’t use Busyness as a proxy for productivity

Most of us, find ourselves busy doing many things in a day.

Then end of the day, we say we did a lot of work.

But if we try to find, how much progress we made today toward the goal, then we find zero or very less progress.

Because we spend most of our time doing things that do not matter to us.

We should do the things that matter to us and contribute toward the progress of our goals.

So at the end of the day, review what are the things you did today.

Ask yourself, what are things I did that contribute to progress in my goals?

If there is any random thing you did today.

Ask yourself, why did I do something that didn’t contribute to progress toward my goals?

Every day, make a to-do list of the important tasks that contribute to progress toward your goals.

Keep your focus on doing those things.

Instead of doing random things.

I have something that help you build an Action-oriented mindset.

Check out Sam Matla’s YouTube channel…

This YouTube channel is completely based on the topic of becoming an Action taker.

Sam helps you with his content to develop a mindset that helps you to take important and difficult actions.

This is the person, I learn from to build an Action-oriented mindset and take action on tasks that matter to me most.

Make sure to check out that.

Conclusion

If you want to achieve something then this Action-oriented Mindset is the first and the most essential thing you need in your life.

Overall, to build this mindset…

• You need to stop overthinking about the future and past and start focusing on doing things in the present moment.
• You have to defeat your self-doubt and build self-confidence in your life. To do that you have to action toward your goals.
• Face difficulties and challenges regardless of your Fear and Anxiety to make progress toward your goals.
• Learn to control your emotions and do things that you should do instead of doing things that you want to do.
• Spend most of your time taking action and putting effort into your goals instead of thinking all the time.
• Choose Imperfection instead of Perfection, Learn to do things imperfectly and try to improve over time.
• Keep yourself busy doing things that matter to you instead of random things.

Adopt these mindsets and Read the Books I mentioned in this article, it will help you.

Remember, without effort, goals are just unfulfilled dreams.

All the best for building an Action-oriented Mindset.

Anish, A devotee of Effort. xx