I'm not setting goals this year: I'm 'nurturing' my identity and my environment instead

It's that time of year when I sit down with a glass of (red) wine/strong coffee and ponder life's meaning … and come to the conclusion that this last year and life in general was, all-in-all, the same as any other year. I have been lax with the weekly reviews and the daily diaries so I don't really know what significant events to add to my as-yet-never-to-be-written biography. I guess good things happened. Bad things happened. Stuff occurred. I got older. The child got wiser. And the world entered the era of 'enshittification'. But once again, my '2025 goals' lie wasted at the roadside, feeding that failure feeling at this time of year.

Why can't I feel like I have achieved something? There must be another way.

Imagine, if I could write a blog next year titled: 'Here's My 2026 Contributions to the World'. Right now, I can't even fathom what that would look like.

I'm not against goals, but time and time again they don't work for me, and if you are reading this, they probably don't for you either. Yet come 1st January, I set myself up for another year of disappointment.

So here's what I'm exploring in this newsletter:

1. A quick look back at the last year.
2. Why (I think) my goals fail.
3. What plant ecology teaches us about working with who we are and where we find ourselves; I'm thinking about identity, environment and resources.
4. My 2026 identity - an experimental framework I'm trying for the coming year.
5. One critical thing I need to do to avoid feeling 'what have I actually done' a year from now.

A quick look back at 2025

I looked back at my 2025 goals and I failed at every single one: Complete PhD? Nope. Conferences? Maybe, but no talks. YouTube? Nope. Obsidian? Nope. "Up my output"? Nope. House DIY? Nope. Read 'The Artist's Way'? Nope. The only goal I achieved wasn't even on my written list: eating more legumes.

Yet, the underlying current of all of these is still present in my life. I’m still doing them, and I still want to do them, therefore I can’t have failed, right?

"You're not a failure if you don't make it; you're a success because you try"  (Jeffers, 2007)

But trying, trying, trying all the time doesn't feel successful, does it? What does a successful goal even look like?

My goals aren't wrong, so why don't they work? Curiously, the only goal I achieved—eating more legumes—wasn't even on my list.

Why I think goals don't work for me

Here's why I think goals fail:

• Goals end. Life doesn't.
• Goals conflict with deeper parts of ourselves in strange ways. I enjoy my PhD so the incentive for it to be finished is weaker than the incentive to do my best. Those deep down internal priorities might not be as clear cut as first appears.
• Goals assume I have control over the full process. I don't. I concede to curiosity, small children and cats.
• Goals are abstract. I can SMART-YO! them all I want but they're still just a stone plopped in the ocean.
• Each goal must break through multiple levels of doing, being, becoming and feeling. All these have different resistances, excuses, steps, processes and internal beliefs. It's not about reading a specific book called The Artist's Way, it's about being an artist, becoming an artist; feeling like an artist. These aren't goals, they are identities. And changing identities run way, way deeper than goals.

Identity and environment

I believe my goals keep failing because they circumvent two fundamental things: identity and environment. And more specifically the degree of control, both given and chosen, that we have over each. The irony of this, is that I literally study these exact two things. OK, different context - soil and plants - but there are many parallels, that I'm being ignorant if I don't explore them in the context of my own personal development.

Trees don't set annual targets, and grasses don't make vision boards. A potato plant cannot become a carrot, no matter how hard it tries. Nor can a plant uproot and move, tumbleweed aside. Yes OK, we exist in an evolutionary space that is a far cry from plants, but the idea is that there are limits to what we can control and what we can achieve. And this varies from person to person.

Everyone begins with an identity; a genetic blueprint defined through our DNA. We cannot change this, because like it or not, we are born with it. This isn't an excuse to say; "I was born like this therefore I can't adapt or change." It just means sometimes we have control over ourselves and other times we have less, and that some things are easy for some and hard for others. Goals try to set a metric by which we measure up our identity.

Everyone also exists within an environment; again sometimes we have control, sometimes we do not, most often it's somewhere in the middle. Plus, some of us are born into a tough environment and others a much easier, privileged environment. By environment I mean everything outside of ourselves; where we live, work, play etc. Goals rely on us being able to control, escape, create or ignore our environment.

Our identity adapts and changes according to the environment in which we exist. We also influence our environment in small and large ways. And in controlling or changing our own identities and environments we control or change the environments of others. Our personal goals are actually not very personal at all because something must change somewhere else.

"To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction; or the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts" Newton (1687); Principia

All-in-all we go about our lives with varying degrees of control over what we can or choose to, do. As a personal example, I could have a whole extra dimension to my life if I did not have a 7 year old daughter. Can I change it? No. Would I change it? No. Did I choose it? Yes.

The problem with goals is they're blind to environment and, to a certain extent, identity too. They might set out an identity but they ignore what must happen in the rest of your life that is, to the most part, outside your control.

Plants (and other animals) work with their identity, within their environment: they accept what they are and make the most of it. So what if I stopped setting a wish list of goals that ignore context? What if, instead of another list of things to achieve, I looked more closely at my identity in the context of environment?

Ultimately I see goals as dependent on four things:

• your identity - an internal influence on your ability, willingness and likelihood to achieve a goal
• your environment - an external influence on your ability, willingness and likelihood to achieve a goal
• the interaction between identity and environment - a modulator that may reduce or enhance your identity and environment
• resource availability - a currency of influence and control of identity and environment (resources include time, money, energy, emotion and network as well as physical 'stuff')

The typical model of 'success' is not resource realistic

If you have high control over identity and environment with ample resources, I believe goals will work for you. This is why successful people become, well, successful. They have a rare combination of a high degree of control over themselves and/or their environment and create something greater than themselves. Often - though not always the case - this is due to privilege: money, time, location, gender, network, family connections. But for the rest of us, we have relatively fixed identities in changing environments with limited resources. We just don't have enough.

Our role models of success have survivorship bias whereby goals = success. In many ways Darwinian evolutionary theory is exemplified through survivorship bias - 'survival of the fittest'.

But here is the interesting thing: once beyond a certain point, successful people have a different relationship with resources because they move up the trophic pyramid. Call them secondary or tertiary consumers—predators—if you will. Every ecosystem needs predators - don't villainise them - but every predator needs a whole trophic pyramid below them, to support what they do. Think cleaners and cooks, personal assistants and chauffeurs, software programs and accountants.

For every successful person, there are millions of others who are are not; prevented from progressing due to that selective filter of what 'success' needs and looks like. Goals mean sacrifice and we forget that these aren't just personal sacrifices, they require those around you too. We don't fail in our goals because we're lazy, but because we see the sacrifice of others and the environment and think, you know what? It's not worth it because I care more about them than being successful in my own goals. And that's OK. In fact it's admirable. It's not only about our personal resources but also about how we are able, or wish to, use the resources of those around us.

Society favours a 'success identity' that is not ecologically possible: being highly plastic and adaptive, with a large resource pool, whilst keeping going for the long run in a changing environment, whilst also being resilient to almost every stress event. Goals assume we have an open road, with people available to support us, when reality is laden with obstacles.

The person bestowed a boat is not hindered by the open ocean, but if you find yourself on a desert island without one, you've got your work cut out for you.

What matters more, therefore, are the people who get up time and time again. You are one of them. Because you keep 'failing', you keep trying, you keep getting up every day and you keep going. And you keep refusing to put your own desires in front of others'.

So if goals don't work for you, I'm here to say, don't beat yourself up about it.

Success is not a metric, it's a feeling tied to identity and influenced by environment.

Success isn't big or glamorous, it's continuing to try every day when you still have to cook and clean for your family, scrape together the pennies, care for the environment, and ensure you make the school bus.

Goals are summits, but it's the daily slog of climbing that gets us up there

Goals don't capture the things that really change. And when I say change, what I mean 'keep going with' or 'moving forwards with': increasing my confidence in writing by doing it most days, waking up at 5am most days, cooking healthy meals, walking my daughter to the school bus. Some days getting a grumpy child to the bus IS a rewarding day. These aren't goals. They just happen. I might not have written a paper yet, but we've only missed the school bus once in 3½ years. You choose your metric and I'll choose mine.

Goals push us to add and 'do more'. But change happens slowly. I can't predict the future, but I do know what's important to me each day.

Here's the crux question: have I not finished my PhD because I don't think I'm good enough, or because I love it and don't want it to end? I want my PhD to reflect me and what I'm capable of. I know hardly anyone will read it, but I will. I can't create something I'm not proud of because it sits on my mental and physical shelf for life.

And now I'll ask you a similar question: what is better? Developing a good compounding, yet unquantifiable habit you keep doing day-in-day-out, or achieving a one-off goal and moving onto something else?

What I actually achieved in 2025

1. I'm managing to keep going with a PhD—still love it—and be a great and present mum.
2. I'm still writing. I wrote 13 blogs and many more social media posts. I created 'The Joy of Writing: Researcher Edition' and sold two copies.
3. My note-taking system has settled. It works with my brain. It will always be work in progress and never perfect.
4. My house is functional. We got new front doors! We eat healthily, have clean clothes, and space to have fun. I'd rather read a book or colour Pokémon bookmarks with my daughter than have a tidy home.
5. My daughter is awesome, respectful, intelligent, and creative.
6. I've taken no flights, eaten legumes with most meals, switched to solid soap, bought few new clothes. I'm taking a 1% approach—small cumulative changes that add up.

My 2026 identities (not goals)

This year, I'm setting 'identities' instead of goals. Here's what I want to be:

1. Someone who contributes to planetary solutions. I'm morally obliged to do right, but I'm not perfect. I will always do my best because I don't want to be part of the problem.
2. A researcher focused on slow quality over fast quantity because I can't do both. I have a unique combination of expertise that no-one else can replicate. I love learning but accept my limitations in speed and output.
3. Someone who helps others become better researchers. I will share my experiences to help others maintain sustainable information diets because in the age of AI, authenticity, thinking and research practises are under threat.
4. Someone who is creative. Photography, collage, writing, scribbling, play doh, sofa cushion dens. It doesn't matter the medium what matters is the feeling and the expression.
5. The most supportive mum I can be. I will help my daughter create her own path to be strong, independent, healthy, kind, and respectful.
6. Someone with a functional home. Not perfect, but functional. Because at the end of the day, that's what we really need.

These identities aren't actionable (viz. ‘SMART’), but they are guidelines for everything I do. They prompt me: 'Am I living true to my identity?' They reflect my limitations, reframing them as strengths and they specify why they are important to me. Small things will accumulate over the year, but there are no end goals.

Now over to you

Think about your identity and the control you have over expressing it. Are you doing enough already? We all have different limiting factors, different DNA blueprints, different values and beliefs.

Consider your environment and how much control you have over it. We have different experiences, responsibilities, communities and expectations.

One thing I now understand: it's OK to feel like I am facing the same challenge over and over again.

"Our underlying personal challenges are just lessons in resilience."

Let's try combining this resilience with identities, and see what happens for 2026. Want to try it with me? Aim not for control, but for nurture. Of ourselves, our environment and those around us.

Oh and that one extra, critical, point? I'm going to actually record my year. How will I know if I have reflected my identities if I don't write down the daily experiences and choices that contribute to them?

In a twist of events, am I now setting myself a goal for this year? 🤔 Well, in the interests of having an experimental control, yes, yes I am...

Until next time - I'd love to hear from you! Just hit reply to the email version of this newsletter.

Annette x

📚 What I'm reading right now

I'm reading far too many books at the moment, but they each fit a certain 'reading mood' 🤣:

1. David Brooks - How to Know a Person: really enjoying this book
2. Sally Mann - Art Work: this book is amazing and a must read for any struggling creative (researchers included)
3. Daniel Priestly - Oversubscribed: better than I thought it would be; an interesting perspective on business methods
4. Simon Baron-Cohen - Pattern Seekers: slow going for me TBH
5. Daniel Levitin - The Organized Mind: a little dated in context but might just be my edition

This year I want to try and read more books by women. I recently finished Grit by Angela Duckworth - I would highly recommend.

🗨️ Quote of the month

"This is my truth, now tell me yours." Aneurin Bevin

And if goals are your thing and/or you want to try them out anyway, the best way I have seen is the GPS method used by Ali Abdaal.