On Unmet Goals and Unexpected Progress
Published on 21.12.2025
This year had other plans for me
TLDR: An end-of-year reflection on the vast gap between the goals we set and the life that actually unfolds. The author finds that despite achieving almost none of her planned objectives, she accomplished far more meaningful and transformative things that were impossible to predict.
Summary: The author recounts her annual late-December ritual of reviewing goals at a coffee shop, a practice that this year proved humbling. She had accomplished only one of her resolutions (joining a Pilates studio), while completely missing her reading, running, and language-learning targets. A past version of herself would have framed this as a failure.
However, the author contrasts this with the profound, unplanned progress she made. She received a diagnosis for and began treatment for an eating disorder and lipedema, finally understanding long-standing health struggles. She left an untenable work situation for a new job where she feels valued and empowered. And she created "After Burnout," a writing outlet that has resonated deeply with others. None of these life-altering achievements were on her original goals list. The key realization is that the most important progress often emerges organically, in response to life's unexpected challenges and constraints, rather than from a neatly optimized plan.
For architects and teams, this personal essay serves as a powerful allegory for the limitations of rigid, long-term planning in a complex and volatile environment. We often set out with a clear roadmap, only to find that market shifts, unexpected technical debt, or emerging technologies render it obsolete. The author's journey is a reminder that the most valuable outcomes are often not the features we planned, but the resilience we built, the legacy systems we finally refactored out of necessity, or the new team capabilities we developed in response to a crisis. It champions a mindset of agile adaptation and holding goals "more lightly," valuing the emergent, often more critical, achievements over blind adherence to an outdated plan.
Key takeaways:
- The most significant personal and professional growth often comes from unplanned events, not from checking boxes on a goals list.
- Rigidly measuring success against a year-old plan can obscure the real, more meaningful progress you've made.
- Life, like complex projects, operates on its own timeline; the best we can do is meet it where we are, not where we planned to be.
- It is valuable to set intentions, but it is more valuable to hold them lightly and remain open to the unexpected turns.