Tag: Writing

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Goal Setting Goals

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:

  1. When we write them down, our goals become a little more real.
  2. 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.
  3. 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

  1. Run 1,000 km. This will be tracked automatically on Strava.
  2. Complete daily mini-workouts (push-ups, squats, curls, stretches) for 300/365 days.
  3. 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.
  4. End 2025 at 189 lbs. I ended 2024 at 195 lbs.
  5. Complete the Vancouver Sun Run (10 km) in under 53:48 (my 2024 time).
  6. Complete 10+ chin-ups in one set by end of year.
  7. Bench press 135 lbs. x 20 reps (recorded PB is x 12 reps) by end of year.

Financial

  1. 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.
  2. Earn $240+ from blog posts on Medium.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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

  1. 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.
  2. Create some new travel memories together in July — location still to be determined.

Parental

  1. 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.
  2. Continue to match him dollar-for-dollar on his university tuition. His mother and I share finances, so this is a shared goal.

Professional

  1. Improve my contributions to my elementary team, students, and parent community. I’m happy with my current mix of teaching and administrative duties.
  2. Support my still-to-be-hired new principal (my seventh principal in nine years) this fall.
  3. Obtain my BCCT certification. I’m currently certified to teach at all schools in Manitoba, but only independent schools in BC.
  4. Publish 50 blog posts (and matching vlog posts) about my education practice.
  5. 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

  1. Complete daily goal tracking consistently (as in: charting my progress virtually every day) using the Strides app.
  2. 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.
  3. Publish 26+ personal interest blog posts (and matching vlog posts) like this one.
  4. Complete 24+ bedtime journal entries.
  5. Complete 24+ morning reflection and prayer journal entries. These are profoundly centering and give me great peace when I actually do them
  6. Complete 6 BC hikes and 6 paddleboard trips in the summer.
  7. 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

  1. 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.
  2. Organize and attend 10+ monthly father-son Zooms (we live in different parts of the country).
  3. 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.
  4. 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.

Standing near the peak of Brunswick Mountain in Lions Bay, BC

Categories
Content Creation Creativity Mindset Productivity

Mandate to Create: 6 Reasons to Write Over Netflix

When it comes to leisure time, the choice often comes down to creating or consuming.

@TimCavey on Instagram

I enjoy Netflix as much as the next person. There’s nothing like settling in at the end of a long day to the drama of Narcos or the amusement of The Office. My affection for the world’s greatest video streaming service hasn’t gone away, and there will always be a time and place.

But I don’t watch Netflix as much as I used to.

Last spring I made a personal commitment to create more and consume less. It was a significant shift, and I’m happy to say it’s stuck.

Since then, I’ve come to view my time differently. Among other things, I’ve reordered my days to go to bed earlier (ie. less Netflix) and get up earlier (ie. more creative time).

The results have been transformative.

This isn’t a dump on streaming video services. I’ll always save some room in my schedule for entertainment experiences — particularly those shared and enjoyed with family. But my priorities and management of time have permanently changed. Now, when scraps of discretionary minutes emerge, consuming media is no longer one of my first thoughts. Instead, it’s creation.

What I mean by creative work

For some, creation looks like cooking or gardening. For others, it’s vlogging, composing music, or building boats. For my wife, it’s carpentry. Creation takes many forms.

For me, creative work has taken the forms of writing and podcasting. Over the last year, these two activities in particular have energized me, inspired me, and redefined my ideals. I’ve created more content than ever, and I feel like I’m just getting started.

Create > Consume

I’m an eighth grade teacher, and one of the signs on my classroom door reads “Create> Consume.” It’s become my mantra and a regular rant. Our digital natives are keen on consuming, but what are they creating? That’s the challenge I put to them regularly.

Lately I’ve started the business of unpacking the motivation that now drives me to create first and consume later. Why do I spend valuable minutes crafting sentences and recording interviews instead of watching the next episodes of Black Mirror?

6 Reasons why ‘Create> Consume’ has become my paradigm

  1. Creation is cathartic. For me, writing is my jam. It’s rejuvenating — a deeply enjoyable deconstruction of all those fleeting wonders, regrets, and ruminations that appear randomly in my consciousness but don’t have the chance to take full form, definition, and expression on their own. It’s a process that helps me look squarely at life experiences, critically reexamine my positions, and thoughtfully clarify my intentions. It’s an experience that helps me know and understand myself. At the completion of every written piece or journal entry, I feel a sense of satisfaction and renewal. Whether you’re writing a song, planting flowers, or building a coffee table, there’s something cathartic about pouring an authentic part of yourself into a product.
  2. Creative work makes the world a better place. Creative activities contribute things of beauty and utility to our world. If consumption is an act of taking, creation is an act of giving. Sure, by watching The Office for the fifth time I’m not harming anyone — I’m simply enjoying the creative labours of others. But how can I actually add value to the world around me? How can I help, inspire, teach, amuse, or positively provoke others to action? Creative actions offer the power of betterment.
  3. Creation builds impact and legacy. Gary Vaynerchuk talks about how legacy is currency — how he measures the impact of his life not by how much money he makes but by how many people come to his funeral. Creation is not about earning cheap applause or padding one’s ego before death, but it is about making a dent in the universe. Creative activities have the power to change the environment and — if we create with persistence and excellence — leave a lasting positive impact. Brendon Burchard sums up our mandate this way: live, love, and matter. I like Netflix, but I don’t want my viewing to be part of my legacy.
  4. Creativity has become a critical skill. Our evolving economy has less need for automatons, more need for creativity, innovation, and problem-solving. Progressive school curriculums across the planet are shifting from content acquisition to skills development, from memorization to mindset. Design thinking and makerspace movements are pushing young learners toward cycles of ideating, prototyping, testing, and making that will guide them throughout life. It’s never too late to start developing the skills and habits of mind that make us more relevant, helpful in service, and valuable in the marketplace.
  5. Creative work produces personal growth, expertise, and self-actualization. When we shift our minds and energies from ‘entertain me’ mode to creation mode, we tap into our true talents and strengths. We connect with our life’s purpose and our deepest passions. We engage in activities of personal meaning and significance. We face our deepest fears, challenge our intellect, embrace uncertainty, and take calculated risks. We reinforce previous abilities and — through repetition, adaptation, and improvisation — we refine our craft and create with stronger proficiency over time. If 10,000 hours is the measure of a master, every minute invested on that formative journey is well-spent. The creative process helps us feel alive.
  6. Creative work builds new relationships and broadens opportunities.Writing and podcasting have connected me with people around the world that I never imagined possible just a year ago. Because most creative work takes us into the marketplace of ideas, we’re drawn out of our comfortable silos and into new relationship with others. The internet age allows us to connect with like-minded makers, creatives, and audiences the world over, and those relationships connect us exponentially with new learning and opportunities.

“Creativity is not a ‘talent,’ like the ability to run fast. Creativity is what makes us human. Creativity is what makes us happy. And creativity is something you can nurture, expand, grow, and learn.” — from Intention: Critical Creativity in the Classroom, by Amy Burvall and Dan Ryder

Creative work isn’t always easy, or safe, or comfortable. But it’s worth it. It’s in our design, our destiny. We were made to create. So get started.

What creative activity or project have you been dreaming about but have yet to put into action? I’d love to hear about it. Please comment below.