Aiming to Run 1,000 Kilometers, and Other Goals for 2025

My weekends already look quite different than they did in 2024.

One of my favorite things about the Christmas holiday season is the opportunity to reflect. To take stock of my life. To zoom out and re-imagine things.

Where am I succeeding?

Where am I growing?

Where do I need to realign my investments of time and energy?

An annual tradition that anchors me

An important part of this annual reflection is a goal-setting session that my dad and three brothers complete together. It usually takes us 3–4 hours to discuss each domain of life, and because we love and trust each other, we get pretty real.

This year was our twelfth annual meeting of the minds, and as always, I’m fired up for more growth in 2025.

One of the most significant changes I’ll be making in 2025 is to hit pause on weekly livestream interviews with educators. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this hobby, but it’s taken 7–8 hours a week (mostly weekends) to get through each step of the workflow involved.

It’s actually quite painful to hit pause on these episodes, because I enjoy the activity and weekly rhythm. But freeing up this time allows me the margin to create other forms of content that I’m passionate about, including this blog post.

Why share these goals publicly?

Fair question, and I know most of my acquaintances would be horrified by the idea of sharing their own personal goals on the web.

I’m posting them here for three main reasons:

When we write them down, our goals become a little more real.
The power of public accountability is REAL. People may ask me how I’m doing on these goals this year, and that awareness pushes me to stick with them.
Even if I don’t reach every goal, I believe that aiming for a goal is better than playing it safe and not aiming at all. Some progress is better than none.

I’m not afraid of failure.

Here they are — my goals for 2025

Physical

Run 1,000 km. This will be tracked automatically on Strava.
Complete daily mini-workouts (push-ups, squats, curls, stretches) for 300/365 days.
Check blood pressure numbers weekly (52 times) and push my averages below 130/80. My BP numbers have always been poor, but 2024 was especially worrying.
End 2025 at 189 lbs. I ended 2024 at 195 lbs.
Complete the Vancouver Sun Run (10 km) in under 53:48 (my 2024 time).
Complete 10+ chin-ups in one set by end of year.
Bench press 135 lbs. x 20 reps (recorded PB is x 12 reps) by end of year.

Financial

Invest in S&P 500 ETFs within my TFSA. Single stock-picking has been fun for the last few years, but my results haven’t kept up with the S&P. When it comes to investing, boring often wins over the long haul. It’s time to get more boring.
Earn $240+ from blog posts on Medium.
Earn $1,200 from AdSense on my YouTube channel for teachers. To get there, I’ll need to publish more tech tutorial content — that’s what teachers around the world find most helpful.
Give successively more to charitable organizations each month than the month before. This is a trend that my wife and I have followed since marriage in 2015 and we would like it to continue indefinitely.
Give spontaneously to family, friends, or those in need once a month. This often takes the form of treating another couple to a meal, but it can take other forms as well.

Marital

Continue to connect with my wife on Friday Family Fun nights, Saturday date nights, and Sunday afternoons. She needs lots of quality time together and I am grateful that she doesn’t ever seem to get sick of Tim Time.
Create some new travel memories together in July — location still to be determined.

Parental

Connect with our younger son (he lives at home with us, but the three of us have different schedules) over a meal at least once per week.
Continue to match him dollar-for-dollar on his university tuition. His mother and I share finances, so this is a shared goal.

Professional

Improve my contributions to my elementary team, students, and parent community. I’m happy with my current mix of teaching and administrative duties.
Support my still-to-be-hired new principal (my seventh principal in nine years) this fall.
Obtain my BCCT certification. I’m currently certified to teach at all schools in Manitoba, but only independent schools in BC.
Publish 50 blog posts (and matching vlog posts) about my education practice.
Increase my proficiency with AI-for-teachers tools. This one is difficult to quantify, but let’s say that by year’s end I want to be leveraging AI tools in my work more than once per day.

Self-Improvement

Complete daily goal tracking consistently (as in: charting my progress virtually every day) using the Strides app.
Finish 12 books. I read almost every night, but I hop around a lot, so the word ‘finishing’ is important here. If you’re a reader, I’d love to connect with you on Goodreads.
Publish 26+ personal interest blog posts (and matching vlog posts) like this one.
Complete 24+ bedtime journal entries.
Complete 24+ morning reflection and prayer journal entries. These are profoundly centering and give me great peace when I actually do them
Complete 6 BC hikes and 6 paddleboard trips in the summer.
Publish 12 long-form videos on each of my Vancouver reviews channel (in 2024 I published 2), travel channel (in 2024 I published 3), and my hiking and paddleboarding channel (in 2024 I published 10). The long-term goal here is to have 4–5 monetized YouTube channels by the time I retire from teaching.

Social/Relational

Meet weekly with other couples from our church community to share life, learning, and friendships together. This is a life-giving practice for me and my wife.
Organize and attend 10+ monthly father-son Zooms (we live in different parts of the country).
Complete a first-ever camping and hiking trip with my brothers and some of their children in August. I’m dreaming of an overnight trip to Landslide Lake on Vancouver Island.
Meet six times with three other male teacher friends in my area. We aim for monthly get-togethers, but about half of our meetings get knocked out by life.

Final thoughts

There you have them — most of my goals for 2025. They’re as specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timelined as I can make them.

What do you have in mind for this year? Whatever your goals, make sure they are quantifiable.

And if you DO make yours public, tag me below and share a link to your work. I’d love to check them out and cheer you on.

Let’s GO.