What's on Your Bingo Card? Try This Goal-Setting Method for 2025
Forget the vision board. As promised last week, Vonda and Lori are goal-setting for 2025 with a bingo card instead — a grid of squares, each one a goal, worked toward all year until somebody gets to yell BINGO. It's simple, it's visual, and as Vonda admits, it's the version she can actually do: "I can do a bingo card. I cannot do a vision board." But first, a Life with Lenny update that doubles as a case study in why one of these squares exists at all.
The great key hunt (three hours, zero keys lost)
Lori's dad, who has Alzheimer's, is moving into his new place, and the family has been making small daily trips — a trash can here, toilet paper there — to practice the route, the stairs, the key. On Saturday, the apartment keys vanished. Cue an hour of searching the house, the car, the laundry, the kitchen trash; a drive back to the facility to retrace steps and quiz the lovely new neighbors; a detour through Target, TJ Maxx, and Ross in search of a dark purple shirt. Three hours in, back in the car, Lori looked down at the console — and there they were. Her husband Mark's explanation: "Don't get mad. Your dad had them in his pocket." The whole time. In jeans he hadn't even worn the day before. As Lori says, with Alzheimer's you either laugh or you cry, and this family chooses to laugh — but the episode fed directly into the biggest square on her bingo card.
Lori's card: let them, and be bored
Square one, top of the card: "Let them." It's borrowed from Mel Robbins' book of the same name, and for Lori it means relinquishing control of what she can't control — adult kids who are going to act how they're going to act, whatever happens with her dad, whatever people think of her reasons. She's honest that it's the hardest square on the card, because feeling responsible for everyone is her factory setting. But standing in a parking lot interrogating a man who genuinely doesn't know how the keys got in his pocket is a pretty vivid reminder of the assignment.
Square two is stranger and maybe smarter: be bored. Lori read an article about how overstimulated we are — always on a screen, always with something blaring — and how the path back to reading a book or noticing nature runs straight through boredom. She thought about how she learned to love looking at clouds: stuck in the backseat on long drives with nothing else to do, making up stories because a bored brain starts creating. She even got a preview: she accidentally left her phone home during the key hunt, and instead of scrolling in the car, she and her dad just talked. Vonda's version of the same square comes from Matthew Kelly: build in a "classroom of silence." Different words, same medicine — and Lori suspects the boredom square is the missing link to more creativity in her work.
Vonda's cards — yes, plural
Vonda finished her bingo card, then realized after a conversation with Lori that nothing on it was work-related. So she made two: a personal card and an FC card. On the personal side: ongoing health and fitness — deliberately worded, because (as their friend Odonna advised) "exercise six days a week" is just a pre-written failure; "ongoing" isn't. Also on the card, to Lori's delight: finally look for a cleaning lady, freeing up the sacred Saturday "domestic day" for nine holes of golf. On the work card, Vonda added her word of the year — aware, shared last week — because a word you never see again is a word you forget; on the bingo card, it's in her face all year.
Lori's scariest square went on the card last, though it was in her head first: take a solo vacation. She has never traveled anywhere alone, not even a work trip, and even her lifelong best friend Julia's reaction was "that's such a great idea — I want to go." (They agreed that after knowing each other since age four, they might legally count as one person.) Even a drivable weekend counts. It's a challenge square: can I do it?
How to build a card that works
The rules the hosts landed on: every square should be achievable — no "travel the world in 80 days." Goals can be personal, professional (Lori's: create more content and presentations for Flower Clique — a goal from inside her, not imposed on her), or honestly just to-dos you keep dodging. The card should live where you see it, so one or two squares pop out daily as reminders — "decrease scroll time" links arm-in-arm with "be bored." Nobody's beating themselves up over unfilled squares; unlike the vision board hidden in the closet, this one can hang in the open. And when you hit a bingo — a row, or go for the full blackout — there must be a reward. Lori's blackout prize: a spa retreat, inspired by a trip with Ellie where massages instead of a nice dinner bought her the best night's sleep in two months. Vonda, not a spa person ("that sounds like torture"), is still negotiating with herself — possibly a cup of coffee and petting Bella.
The idea with the most potential for shops: a team bingo card. Give every employee one square for their vision for the store in 2025, hang it in the back, and watch what happens when people see their own goal — and each other's — getting checked off. It's the leadership principle the hosts teach constantly: everybody wants some skin in the game, and a square with your name on it is exactly that.
Key takeaways
- Swap the vision board for a bingo card: goals as squares, visible daily, with a real reward for bingo or blackout.
- Make every square achievable — word goals like "ongoing" instead of rigid quotas that set you up to fail.
- Mix personal and work goals (or keep two cards), and put your word of the year where you'll actually see it.
- Consider a "let them" square and a "be bored" square — releasing control and reclaiming quiet are goals too.
- Build a team bingo card for your shop: one square per employee gives everyone skin in the game.
Calling all young professionals: Next Gen Live! 2025 — the annual 3-day event for young floral professionals — runs February 23–25 in Dallas, packed with education, networking, and on-site tours. Early bird registration ends January 20th, so grab the discount while it lasts. Details at safnow.org/next-gen-live.