2x Founder | Brand Builder | Creator | Investor
Featured in Forbes, Ad Week, Poosh, The Skinny Confidential
Over 110,000 people follow Amanda to learn how to get the most out of life.
Single mom x3
Teaching Productivity to emerging Leaders via Morning Brew
Share
🧩 Life's a Game: Your 2025 Game Plan
Published 4 months ago • 4 min read
Welcome to Life's a Game, a weekly newsletter to help ambitious people build a more meaningful and integrated life. Was this sent to you? Subscribe here so you don't miss the next one.
Life's a Game (Plan): How to make the most of 2025
↓
Every year I sit down and plan out my year ahead. Jesse Itzler is known for doing this with his “big a## calendar” but I just use a small a## google sheet.
Planning each year in advance has allowed me to do three things:
#1: Slow down time
Many people like to joke that I get more done in a month than most do in a year.
Planning my calendar ensures I inject my life with novelty which has been proven to slow down the feeling of time.
#2: Not waste time
Time is relative.
A week to a newborn is an entire lifetime. A week to a 1 year old is 1/52 of their life. A week to a 10 year old is 1/520 of their life.
Let’s look at Urban's chart of the "life of the typical American."
Each row is a year.
Each dot in each row is a week.
The colors show the basic periods in the typical life.
If I live an average life span for my gender (83), I only have another 2,340 weeks left!
So there’s no way I’m going to waste any.
#3: The Year Of.....
I always have a big hairy goal for the year ahead.
Finish this sentence: 2025 will be the year of _________.
2023 was the year of "leaving corporate America" and I will always look back and remember 2023 as the year I stepped out on my own.
2024 was the year of "finding my person" and I will always look back and remember knowing that I knew I wanted to grow old with Dan.
2025 is going to be the year of "becoming a published author". My book comes out October 21, 2025.
Some "Year of" statements have been personal goals (like running a marathon before each baby turned 1) and some have been professional (launching a company, newsletter or promotion).
So how will you finish the sentence?
2025 is the year of __________.
#4: Maintain relationships
As I get older it becomes harder and harder to get quality time with friends. People are busy, kids' schedules take over. By planning ahead, I can make sure months don't go by without seeing people who are important to me.
Ready to level up and get the most out of 2025? 👇
♟️ YOUR TURN:
I approach my yearly planning the same way I approach building a marketing calendar as a CMO. I slice the calendar in 4 ways:
Start by planning your tentpole moments in the full calendar year. Things that require you to step away from your life and do something new, exciting and different.
Vacations
Competitions
Conferences / Trainings
Sporting events
My tentpoles include:
Solo long weekend at the start of summer
Family trip during summer
Couples Trip during summer
October Birthday Trip with friends (this year is my 40th!)
Half-marathon in April
Step 2. Add your annual moments
Birthdays
Anniversaries
Holiday gatherings
I also add in preventative health at this stage of planning: it’s important to me and also a pain to stay on top of so I just pull them over from year to year. Feel free to steal my calendar below.
Quarterly: Now look at the year as 4 quarters
Step 3: Add your quarterly launches / goals
What do you hope to launch personally and professionally in the upcoming year? Let's break those now into quarterly launches and goals.
By putting that goal on a calendar you now have something to plan toward and hold you accountable instead of punting it into the obscure “in 2025 I want to do this” verbiage.
Things like:
The quarter I launch a newsletter
The quarter I run a half marathon
The quarter I get serious about Instagram
The quarter I move to a new apartment / home
I also have a few things that I want to happen every single quarter to ensure I'm staying connected to myself and my family:
Overnight staycation with my partner
1:1 dates with each kid
Quarterly solo staycation retreat
Monthly: Now look at the year as 12 months
Step 4: Add your monthly to-dos & non-negotiables
Every month it's important to create the things you want to complete and then schedule them into your calendar.
Here are my monthly staples:
Community: Every month I want to have at least one dinner with friends
Parenting: Every month I want one planned, fun outing with my kids
Relationship: Deep dive check in with my partner
Me day: One day to get a massage & facial & do whatever I want to do
Weekly: Now look at the year as 52 Weeks
Step 5: Add your weekly goals you want to maintain
Every week has a rhythm. Without planning ahead it can become easy to let it just slip by. Here are my non-negotiables in a week.
Kids: at least 2 family dinners together
Partner: 1 date night
Body: 3 workouts
Content creation: 1 day for social content creation + 1 day for newsletter creation
Finance Fridays: every Friday I review my P&L
By completing this planning exercise you've now got a HUGE head start on everyone else as you head into 2025.
♟️ Let's Win Together.
PS If you are ready to take your game to the next level this year, here are 4 ways I can support you in 2025:
🧩 Office Hours is group coaching & accountability for multi-hyphenate builders, founders and creators looking for tactical advice via daily slack, weekly group coaching and monthly live workshops. Click here to sign up
The next 35 Hard group challenge is kicking off in February. This quarter we are tackling digital courses. How to ideate, build and launch a digital course in 35 days! Sign up here
Life's a Game: The Masterclass is my 10 module productivity and focus course teaching all the frameworks I use to juggle 3 kids and 5 income streams. Click here to get the course for just $143.
Do you have a newsletter and think my content would be valuable to your audience? I'm now on Sparkloop and ConvertKit's Creator Network so you can earn $ by referring Life's A Game.
2x Founder | Brand Builder | Creator | Investor
Featured in Forbes, Ad Week, Poosh, The Skinny Confidential
Over 110,000 people follow Amanda to learn how to get the most out of life.
Single mom x3
Teaching Productivity to emerging Leaders via Morning Brew
Welcome to Life's a Game, a weekly newsletter to help ambitious people build a more meaningful and integrated life. Was this sent to you? Subscribe here so you don't miss the next one. The Great Wait... ↓ Quick Spin: Story: The Chinese bamboo tree The Psychology of Quitting 3 Strategies I use to Keep Going ♟️ MY TURN: For the past two years I've been in a quieter season of life - growing roots and being a bit more silent (at least compared to my days as a VC backed startup founder traveling...
Welcome to Life's a Game, a weekly newsletter to help ambitious people build a more meaningful and integrated life. Was this sent to you? Subscribe here so you don't miss the next one. The Reflection Pause + Why I'm Listening Less ↓ Quick Spin: The reflection pause The 3 Step Process to ⬆️ Reflection Pause ♟️ MY TURN: Listen up. We need to stop listening so much. (That irony was intentional) Story time…. When I was going through a big growth chapter and found myself repeating some old...
35Hard: Newsletter Edition - Kicks off May 5th! Happy Monday, Welcome to the second of 5 behind-the-scenes emails I’m sharing before we kick off my next 35Hard Series: Newsletter Edition on May 5th! If you are ready to get off the sidelines and start, grow and monetize your own newsletter - click here to reserve your spot. Today I’m giving you a BTS sneak peek of the content you’ll get in the 35 Days + 5 Live Workshops. How did I choose the content? As I started creating this challenge I...