Setting goals without forcing them: Interviewing Malvika Joshi

Happy New Year, dear Sage Sayers listeners. Welcome back. 2026, Year of the Fire Horse, will be awesome. If you're stuck on how to approach goals this year, or even to bother with them, British tech marketer and coach, Malvika Joshi, joins me for episode 1, season 5, with her approach, and how to communicate goals (to ourselves, and others.)(Popular data tells us 80-90% of professionals abandon their resolutions, and usually by mid-January, highlighting the need for clear plans, new approaches, and accountability.)  Malvika likes to see her goals compound interest over time and to let curiosity vs strict structure lead the way. She creates themes to her goals, like health and growth, and pledges daily write ups on her progress. So far, two weeks in, she's maintained this flow. Public building of goals is another strategy, one I've played with on LinkedIn, which helps with accountability and brings interesting opportunities with communicating our success and failures. If you’d like to find Coach Malvika, reach out to her on LInkedIn. D G McCullough has written for the Economist, FT, and Guardian and taught business communications and journalism at UNC Chapel Hill. She runs Hanging Rock Coaching and serves as a communications coach to leaders at Fortune 500s/100s, including Google. Find her on LinkedIn.  Or book her for a consult on your communications challenges bothering you the most.