I tried every (ok, 10!) resolution planner, goal worksheet, and viral 2025 manifestation so you don't have to.
Reporting back after trying viral (and not viral!) methodologies like Grace Clarke's 2025 Planner, Dianna Cohen's 2025 moodboard, Sara Foster's "letter to your future self", and-- gasp!-- ChatGPT...
January is the best time to set some goals, make some moodboards, and manifest some shit. Forget December! There’s simply no time. You know what I have an abundance of now?
Time. Indoors. Months of it, looming ahead of me, in that ominous, depressing way that only Winter can truly master.
I like setting goals, intentions, plans, or aspirations for myself for the year ahead. They do feel a little useless if you don’t check in with them along the way. There were so many tempting methodologies on offer on my For You page or Substack feed that I decided to do something truly crazy, and try them all and report back, so you don’t have to.
What ensued was a veritable pu pu platter of New Year’s resolution and goal setting reflections, worksheets, and more. Here’s what I tried, and here’s what I learned.
What to expect below:
Links to all the different methodologies I tried/tested
Notes on each method in the order I tried them
My results, takeaways and goals once I did all of the above
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The 10 Frameworks I Tried:
Everything I review and share below is linked here. Come one, come all! Get the links here while you can!
Grace Clarke’s AI Prompts (at the end of 2025 Annual Planner above!)
- ’s One Sheet
- ’s 2025 Moodboard
Letter to your future self, a la Sara Foster
75 Hard (or 75 Soft!) but my own version, a la Clare Parker’s “Claire Parker 31 Hard”
Vision board party at my friend Emily’s house
The Playlist:
I made this when I was procrastinating instead of manifesting. But it was an excellent soundtrack to the 12 hours of reflection, writing and working on my future goals.
The Feedback & Process:
Grace Clarke’s 2025 Annual Planner (& ChatGPT Prompts)
Good for: overachieving eldest daughters.
This was my second year using Grace’s viral Google Slide deck— I admire her a lot for a lot of things, and think it’s really lovely that she makes this for a growing community each year. I print mine out because I love hand writing goals, but I realized that it was a little unsustainable and I’d have been better off using the Google Slide duplicate of her master, deck, which I eventually just went back and did. My advice to you would either be to do it digitally or to really diligently read the deck four or five times before printing so you have a sense of which pages you should print extra blanks of.
At the end of doing the whole exercise the old fashioned way, I did the ChatGPT bonus version Grace included. This was the first 2025 goal setting worksheet/process I did, so I was a little rusty and it took me a very long time to get through this before I tagged in AI to help guide me. The ChatGPT process really poured a little gasoline on the embers my brain had cobbled together and helped me move through the process a little faster.
Shockingly, an analog princess like me— I think we should all throw our iPhones in a river— became a total AI goal setting convert. This informed the rest of the exercises I did! (Perhaps it’s also the sheer volume I did. I needed a little help!)
My favorite part of Grace’s deck? The Board of Directors portion! How unique. Testament to her creativity as a marketer and a person! I really hope I remember to come back and ask my Board of Directors questions when I’m at an impasse throughout the year, I’ve asked a few the day I “made” them and I was pleasantly surprised by how on-brand some of the answers were.
Viral TikTok Prompt for a ChatGPT 2025 Plan
Good for: people with big dreams and too much ADHD to journal.
I might have scoffed at this video a few months ago, but here we are. If the idea of a deck so thick it could be a book makes you shudder, here’s the (kind of lazy) cheats version that helps you get to a similar outcome.
ChatGPT sort of acts like a schoolteacher just guiding you through the process. Millennials may like this, it’s like talking to someone on AIM. The pace and the guidance is really helpful to those who need a little structure and motivation and aren’t going to actually read through a slideshow or a bunch of pages.
If you have five minutes to give to your resolutions, this might be the pick for you.
’s One Sheet
Good for: people with a bulletin board and a penchant for mad libs.
This one-sheet is like a little mad lib of reflection and goals for the year ahead. It caught my eye in one of Erika’s letters and I thought it’d be a quick and easy addition to my line-up.
It was not as quick or easy as I thought! I was suffering from brain stew at this point, having now spent nearly 6 hours on goal setting and reflection and manifestation, but the answers merited some reflection, in a good way. This is also an accessible entry point for those who want to dabble but who aren’t the “full deck of self reflection” type.
’s Manifestation Moodboarding Process
Good for: creatives, visual thinkers, spiritual folks.
I was very excited to finally enter the visual medium after dealing only in words. By the time I got to this exercise, I was really quite clear on my tangible goals and values for the year ahead, and preferred to focus on vibes or creatively explore the possibilities that await me in 2025. This is all to say: I came to Dianna’s process with the exact mindset I needed. If you’re going to give this a shot, come in having done some journaling or reflecting before you just open Canva.
Dianna has you make one moodboard based on general vibes (above) and gut feelings, and another based on more tangible goals, actions, habits, etc (below.)
I ended up preferring the vibes one, visually, and I made it my screensaver. (Slay.) I thought I’d prefer this process of digital scrapbooking and moodboarding to the physical vision board exercise my friend Emily hosted in her apartment for a group of friends, mostly because I could use images I’d saved and clipped online over the years. I thought that curation process would lead to a board that was more relevant and specific… but now that I’ve done both, I think that’s not true at all! More on that below.
Sara Foster’s letter to your future self
Good for: fans of Gabby Bernstein who want to manifest vs. plan goals/outcomes.
I’d heard Sara mention this on her podcast many times over the years and liked the idea that at any given time, you could take on this exercise. It popped into my head around New Year, but I think it could be an always-on type of thing.
The gist of it is that you write a letter to your future self as though everything you want/dream of/are manifesting has already happened. Pretty simple.
I did this in the Notes app but you could do this and send it to yourself via future.me or similar tools. Tbh, I don’t like to do that because I’m scared I will get the email, none of it will have happened, and I’ll feel like shit. That fear alone probably tells you that I am not an effective manifest-er.
I will say, this was the only exercise where I addressed myself as “you” in the written word, and had to directly praise my (“your”) future accomplishments. It ended up being more emotional than I thought, since you end up really affirming this future you with phrases like “I’m so proud of you for…” or “You’ve built…”, etc.
This exercise ended up having nothing to do with the micro: fitness goals, the specific what or why of my next career chapter, the commercial trappings of life. Instead, it was about the macro: what I will be so proud of myself for letting go of, moving on from, etc.
I’d recommend this one to someone who is planning to work on self love, self respect, or self esteem this year!
75 Hard (or 75 Soft!) but my own version, a la Claire Parker’s Claire Parker 31 Hard
Good for: list makers with hyper specific diet, exercise or life hygiene goals (i.e. dry jan, etc).
I gave the good old fashioned Notes app list a go, but at this point, I’d done way too much inner reflection to feel satisfied with a list. If I’d done no other reflections this year, this would have been a great way to lock in on fitness or body or diet or drinking goals.
As it turns out, I have one fitness goal: exercise consistently 5 days a week. That doesn’t make a great 60 day challenge, more of a forever challenge! (I know setting habits with a solid first 60 days is ideal, so I get the psychology here, just not sure this was for me at this point in my process.) I don’t care about a crash diet or hard core reset because I’ve been working on my diet and health goals for well over a year, and I value that longterm consistency over a month of Whole30, etc.
TLDR, I made this list, I have many of these goals, but I don’t know if I need them in a “60 Hard” format. I just have them and remember them and I don’t think the “hard” or the “60” matters so much. When I do look back at my list above though, I’m like “oh, right. Those are good goals.” Maybe I wrote this one off too soon!
This strikes me as a good way to do a total lifestyle reset for someone who wants that.
Vision Board Party at my friend’s house
Good for: human connection, inspiration, accountability buddies.
My friend Emily invited a bunch of her friends over for a vision board party with snacks, mulled wine, etc. She had a big stack of newspapers and magazines and boards and glue sticks and scissors (actually enough for everyone to successfully make their boards at one time, thank you for that foresight, Emily) and most attendees brought their own magazines too.
We all cut out words and images that inspired us for the year, drew some tarot cards a friend brought too, swapped magazines, sipped wine, and yapped. Then we cut and assembled, all sprawled on Em’s apartment floor.
It was so fun.
At the end, everyone presented their board to the group and we all applauded and cheered for each other. It was a really fun thing to do on a frigid January Saturday.
Highly recommend trying this with your own group of friends, and you may be surprised by how much you like your vision board— I was! I actually like it more than my digital one, which is saying something since I had far more variety and control over what images to put there. (I think that’s the point, actually. Boundaries, parameters or limits tend to make any creative exercise better.)
Michael Bosstick’s 7-1-1 Plan
Good for: long term visions/dreams that can be broken up into short term goals.
This was a late in the game addition, but one I welcomed. I see 2025 as a building year for me that is going to help me unlock bigger goals in 2026 and beyond. A lot of my 2025 goals were simple and kind of humble or foundational. I don’t envision my basics changing a ton in 2025, with the exception of my career— we don’t plan to move, start a family, etc.
But in 7 years, I think my life is going to look really different. In an exciting way!
I liked the freedom to actually think a little ahead and then back track into how I can make this year a building year and to set myself up towards those goals.
I had ChatGPT walk me through this exercise again (lol) and found the month to month goals all really useless. But wow, was it helpful to go through a vision exercise where I described in vivid detail how I hope my life looks 7 years from now!! Even if the monthly goals for 2025 weren’t that great, it helped me really lock in on my “why” for the future— why I want to save up this year, and what I plan to be saving for, etc.
I actually really recommend at least the first part of this exercise, which could tie in really nicely with Sara Foster’s letter to your future self, above.
My Results & Takeaways
There’s such thing as too much of a good thing:
I did so many exercises that none fully stuck or took over the other. I have so many different 2025 threads open on ChatGPT I can’t totally remember which corresponds to which exercise.
I do not recommend this to everyone. Pick one, maybe at most 2 that are really different (maybe one text based and one moodboard?) and don’t think too hard. Can you even remember your goals from last January? I can’t even remember how I looked last January. The proof is in the pudding, when it comes to your year, as much as we’d like to all believe how you start it sets the tone for the whole thing.
Wins and what I’ll take with me:
The good news is that I feel so mentally clear on my goals having now spent over 10 hours (at least) exploring, reinforcing, and establishing them through every methodology under the sun.
Another win? I got really comfortable with ChatGPT and figured out what it’s good at helping me with. That’s not everything, so if you’re petrified of AI taking over the world, I’m not sure you should be. (For example, it was literally incapable of helping me find great workout recs near my address, despite 30 minutes spent coaching it and trying different approaches— so, yeah, not going to usurp mankind before it can recommend a good personal trainer.)
One thing I figured out when I finished the ChatGPT portion of Grace Clarke’s 2025 Planner was that it was really important to me to journal morning and night. ChatGPT and I collaboratively built a morning prompt and evening prompt and it suggested that I create a custom journal with these prompts so that I could follow my specific journal plan and progress.
I loved this idea and used the visual system, color palette and fonts that I use for my consulting practice, Bungalow (taking clients, if you love my color palette, lol!), to design a custom journal.
It’s not the most beautiful or my dream journal, but it’s not super easy or straightforward to have a single custom journal made, so I’m happy with the level of customization I was able to achieve. It hasn’t arrived yet, but I can’t wait for it to!
I did put 10 of my goals for the year— in my own words!— on the front page. I didn’t use any of the 10 frameworks I explored above to list out these goals in images or in “disciplines” or checklists, but the goals and aspirations that I listed certainly came out of the 10 frameworks I explored. Hopefully I can flip back to this page and find my North Star.
I also made this journal only for 6 months worth of morning and evening pages. I’ll reevaluate my goals and my journaling practice then. (This is also because I have no idea how misaligned or wonky my journal will be when it arrives from the printers, and I’d rather give myself the opportunity to correct those mistakes in a few months as opposed to be stuck with an expensive and flawed journal for a year!)
Thanks for accompanying me on this investigative goal-setting journey! I’d love to know if you’ve tried any of these frameworks and what you thought, if there are any tools you recommend, and any of the 2025 goals you feel comfortable sharing.
If you liked any of this ~reporting~, I’d love for you to consider subscribing. At present, this is my full time job, and I make issues like this free to try to find more of my people on the internet. 🫶
I’d love for you to share, share, share, if ever you feel comfortable. (As I’m sure you can tell, growing First Rodeo is one of my 2025 goals!)
Lastly, if you have feedback or want to work together, my contact info is always in the footer of First Rodeo letters. I love hearing from ya!
doing the lords work over here!! ty. i had a few of these bookmarked and was so curious. i also did grace's for the second year in a row and printed out one too many pages - doh! i didnt try the AI prompts but now im very curious!
Doing what we’ve all wondered about but couldn’t never be bothered to do. Thank you! I’ve just subscribed to you on the basis of reading this and a few of your other posts.