2025 Word Of The Year: Focus

It’s resolution season. The time of the year we ~~all dread~~ set big goals and intentions. While that’s all well and good, I’m more of a keep-it-simple, word-of-the-year type of person. My word of the year for 2025 is focus.

Why Choose A Word Of The Year?

A word of the year is like a mindset shift. It gives guidance not only for the way you want to live but for your goals and intentions for the year.

It’s kind of like giving my year a theme. And if there’s one thing I love, it’s a theme. Just ask Rowan as we’re down the birthday party theme rabbit hole. So far, the front-runner is Harry Potter and I am here for it!

A word of the year can help you stay on track when making shifts in your life or trying to live a little more aligned with your values. Value family time? Try “connection.” Are you looking for more peace and calm throughout life’s craziness, try “breathe.”

For me, the last few years have felt very chaotic, I’ve felt very unaccomplished, and I’m craving just a little bit less in life. By choosing the word focus, I want to drill down to just the most important tasks and duties, giving them my full attention.

From choosing the most important and rewarding house projects to complete to focus on just a few core activities with the kids, and even applying it to my kitchen garden (which often gets overwhelming) and focusing mostly on production this year.

My Word Of The Year For 2025: Focus

My word of the year is focus.

How Did I Choose This Word?

Two years ago, I felt like everything in my life was out of control. And it was!

I was a stay-at-home mom with a toddler and five-year-old, trying to contribute to family finances with this blog, grow all our vegetables for the year, and tackle big house projects while simultaneously failing miserably at keeping house and making healthy dinners.

Gardening with kids outside with raised garden beds and snacking from the garden

It was all too much. Every day I felt like a chicken with my head cut off. I know it was partly due to the season of life we were in (diaper changes and nap time madness are no joke!), but it still didn’t feel good. I constantly put too many tasks on my plate and attempted too much. No surprise, but nothing ever got “done.”

Learning How To Focus And Let Go

Last year, I wanted to work on my focus. I splurged and bought a set of four Full Focus Planners. They are pricey but SO worth it. 100% recommend if you need to learn to focus like I did.

The basic premise is there’s one planner per quarter. You set big goals for the current quarter through the entire year. Each month, each week, and each day you look at those goals and set small steps towards progress, tracking how much you’re moving the needle.

Each week, there was also a component of reflection. I spent time looking back to see what worked, what didn’t, and what to change. I learned SO much about myself in this process.

Writing down a basic decluttering plan in my planner to help me figure out the next steps of decluttering the entire house

I went into 2024 overeager and overextended, true to form, armed with my new planners. But over the year, the 14 big goals were whittled down to 10, then down to five, and right now there are three that I’m working on.

Did I finish any one of my big goals? Nope. However, I made progress and learned some serious lessons after working with the planners all year.

Moving Into A New Year

While I didn’t purchase the planners again this year, I did get a more affordable planner with a similar premise called The Day Designer. And I’m bringing those same concepts to my planning work.

This year, I want to take my focus to a new level. Like Joey from Friends taking his game to another level.

Big goals are in place broken down by category including health and fitness, work (both blog work and my new job as a ski instructor), house projects, gardening, family time, and personal growth.

The area I’m most trying to reel in is with house projects. I have a habit of not finishing projects for a variety of reasons. Like the budget ran out, it’s taking too long and I need some blog content, a sponsor contacted me and it seemed like a good opportunity, it’s One Room Challenge time, or even the weather not cooperating for outdoor projects.

Bathroom renovation DIY project reveal. White subway tiled shower and walls with black grout. Wood vanity with white vessel sink. Gold shower hardware.

And then there’s the regular joys of something unintended that came up and threw a wrench in the whole damn thing. Something ALWAYS comes up.

Like you underestimated how much paint you needed to paint the home office, go to get another gallon, then find out it’s not even close to the same paint color because the paint guy messed up the first one so you repaint the whole room yet again. True story.

How I’m Focusing On Projects In 2025

For 2025, I gave myself some project rules to help keep things under control. Here are those rules (subject to change) to help keep me focused:

One indoor project at a time. I must complete the indoor project before moving on to another one.
One outdoor project at a time. The outdoor project must be finished before working on another.
One organizing/decluttering project at a time.
If the weather cooperates, outdoor projects are prioritized over indoor projects.
On school days, blog work is done in the mornings, and project work in the afternoons. I want to keep projects moving forward every day. Weekends are more ad hoc and quality family time is prioritized.
During garden season, seed starting and planting projects are priority number one.

So basically, I’ll have only three projects going on simultaneously. One indoor, one outdoor, and one organizing/decluttering. Since winters are long, outdoor projects will always take precedence over indoor projects. The exterior painting days are limited here in Vermont!

Painting playground framing white with a paintbrush, holding a painting cup filled with white paint with a brush in front of in progress playground deck painting

As an Enneagram 1, I do well with rules and boundaries so I think this will help me focus on the projects and help me complete them. There are FAR too many half-finished projects around this house! This is the year to rectify that. Tally ho!

Resources To Help You Choose A Word Of The Year

For anyone interested in choosing a word of the year, here are a few of my favorite resources from people who are much smarter than me about personal growth. I’m better with a hammer and a paintbrush.