New year's resolution 2025: do more, experience more

I'm not really a fan of new year's resolutions. They fail too quickly, they feel too pathos-laden, and they are mostly born on a New Year's Eve that isn't exactly known for clear-headed decisions. Even so, I have set myself a resolution for 2025 after all: to do more. Out of the everyday rut, into life.

Why I made a resolution I'd otherwise avoid

The resolution is deliberately ambiguous. In German, 'mehr unternehmen' means both 'do more' and 'undertake more'. For me it means, on the one hand, the concrete — more outings, more small adventures, more shared experiences with the family. On the other hand, it also means entrepreneurial: dare more things, push more projects forward, try more new things, in places where I have become a bit more cautious in recent years.

2024 was a very dense year for me. Professionally good, humanly demanding. A lot worked out, some of it was tiring. At the end I was left with a feeling I hadn't known from earlier years in quite this way: I had achieved a lot, but actually experienced few things. The calendar was full, the life behind it a bit thinner. That is a narrow ledge, and in 2025 I don't want to be standing on the same side I ended 2024 on.

What 'do more' actually means

I'm suspicious of resolutions that don't get specific. So I took my time and thought through what I actually want to change. It is a few simple things.

The weekend is a weekend. One fixed day a week is no longer a working day, not even secretly, not even briefly. I have undermined this too often in recent years, mostly out of honest motivation, rarely with an honest balance sheet.

Once a month, a day that consists of nothing but something new. No big budget, no big programme, simply out of the city, into a corner I'm not usually in. That is easier than it sounds. And it sets surprising amounts free, when I actually do it.

More time on the Mosel. The vineyard isn't a hobby you tick off on the side. It needs time, and it gives time back when you give it some. I was there too rarely in 2024. In 2025 that should change, even if the calendar protests. It protests anyway, no matter what I plan.

The entrepreneurial part

The second part of the resolution is entrepreneurial, and just as concrete. In 2025 I want to try things I would otherwise have postponed out of risk-aversion. That doesn't mean I take the existing business less seriously. It means I'm rebalancing the ratio between safety and exploration.

Concretely: more of my own content, more of my own formats, more direct exchange with people I would otherwise only have met in client contexts. I have noticed that what I have learned in client projects is interesting for many people who aren't my direct clients. Sharing that, in a form that fits me, is the small entrepreneurial resolution inside that big word 'undertake'.

Whether that turns into a big project in 2025, I don't know. I think the first step has to be enough. Resolutions that are ten kilometres long from the start often last only 300 metres. Resolutions that begin honestly small, on the other hand, sometimes carry surprisingly far.

Why I'm motivated despite my scepticism

As I said, I'm not a romantic about resolutions. Even so, there is a good reason why the turn of the year motivates so many people to such sentences. It is an arbitrary but shared cut-off point. Everyone has the feeling, at the same time, of starting again. Psychologically that is not a bad lever, even if rationally you could say that 14 March would do just as well.

I'm using that lever deliberately in 2025. Not because I believe a date changes anything. But because I know that collective stories provide energy. And a little extra energy is exactly what I need at the start of a full year.

Conclusion and a small invitation

'Do more, experience more' isn't a spectacular resolution. It stands in the room like a plain chair you can sit on at any time without admiring it first. I like that. I don't need a hero's journey in 2025. I need a yearly rhythm in which work, family and small experiences find a sensible balance.

If you find yourself in that sentence, feel free to take it with you. No obligation, no headline. Simply a compass. We'll see at the end of the year where it has led us. That is enough for me. And I think that is enough for most.