This viral trend might be the key to getting everything you want in 2025.

I remember once, when I was 16 or 17, going over to a friend's house. She was a bit older, in her early 20s, and to my teenage mind she was the definition of having your sh*t together.

Case in point: hanging on the back of her bedroom door was a beautifully crafted, decorated-with-glitter-and-stickers poster, proudly displaying her ~Five-Year Plan~.

Twenty-plus years later, I'm breaking out in a sweat just thinking about it.

Look, I love the idea of making and achieving goals, I really do. I mean, obviously. Who wouldn't? Getting what you want feels great, whether it's writing a bestselling novel or clearing level 73 on Mario Cart (is that… even a thing?).

But setting clear, concise goals, and devising a plan of action to achieve them hasn't ever come easy to me. It's boring. Tedious. Overwhelming.

So I have no five-year plan. Honestly, I don't have a vision for what my life will look like a few months from now, let alone in the deep future.

But there's a trend going viral online right now that has inspired me to dive into goal setting in a way that feels fun, fresh and creative.

Meet: the 2025 bingo card.

What is the 2025 bingo card trend, and why is it going viral?

The 2025 bingo card trend is, well, exactly what it sounds like: creating a 'bingo card' filled with things you want to do or achieve over the next 12 months, and crossing them off as you hit your goals.

Simple, right?

FUN, right??

TikTokkers are taking up the trend as a way to keep their visions for the year front and centre in their minds, and to make the task of goal-setting more fun, interesting and engaging.

"Such a fun and creative girls night where we are creating our dream lives and becoming the best version of ourselves," TikTokker Kaylen Faye captioned a video of herself and friends creating their 2025 bingo cards.

Watch TikTokker Kaylen Faye's 2025 bingo card creation night. Post continues below.

It's an approach to goal-setting content creator Camille Smith has used in years past.

"The bingo board is more like gamifying your goals," she told Good Morning America. "And at least for me, it's been able to keep me engaged with my goals."

Of course, you don't have to do this at the start of a new year. You could do a bingo card for a month, or just whenever you like! No rules! No restrictions!

And according to Sahra O'Doherty, Principal Psychologist & Co-Director at Mindscape Psychology and President of the Australian Association of Psychologists Inc, creating a bingo card can be a great way to help us identify our goals and put them out into the world.

"Creating a 2025 bingo card to help keep track of goals and to make the experience fun and a little bit more interesting sounds like it could be a really helpful tool for a lot of people," she said when I desperately sought validation asked for her thoughts on the trend.

"It also sounds like it could be a way of having a visual representation of your goals, and a way of keeping track of them in a more fun and unusual sort of way."

Yes! Fun! Unusual! Goals!

Keeping that visual representation in a spot you'll see regularly — like on your fridge or your wall — helps keep those goals top of mind. As Camille explained, "I accomplished so much because I was consistently thinking about it all year, which is something that I hadn't experienced when I had just written my goals down."

Turn goal-setting into a game: The psychology behind bingo card success.

Okay, we love it, but why is it so great? Apart from the fact that you can whip out the old markers and go to town making a cute, colourful craft project to hang in your home (which just sounds like a great way to spend a Sunday arvo to me, TBH).

"I like the gamification of goals, and this sort of approach does work for a lot of people," said O'Doherty. We can see in the way we use apps like Dailyo or Finch, she explained — "where if you complete a number of tasks, you get a cute little reward at the end".

Even if the goals seem small, crossing them off can give us a sense of achievement, and a cheeky feel-good dopamine hit.

"If we are not feeling that intrinsic sense of reward or satisfaction when we have completed a task, having that visual or the extra step of giving ourselves a 'reward' by crossing off an item can be a really nice way of reaffirming that dopamine hit," explained O'Doherty.

If you need inspo, TikTok's your gal. Image: TikTok.

Of course, as with *checks notes* pretty much everything, there are potential downsides to watch out for in the 2025 bingo game.

"It's all well and good to have a goal, but unless you have a plan, and you've worked out the steps in order to achieve that goal, it can be really difficult to actually complete that task," explained O'Doherty.

So yes, there's more to achieving your goals than JUST putting them on a bingo card.

And this is where things can get sticky.

"For a lot of my clients, what becomes really challenging for them is, when they're breaking down goals into manageable chunks, the sheer number of steps can become so overwhelming that they end up not wanting to do the task at all.

So make sure the goals you're setting for yourself are achievable, and you can create a plan to reach them.

"We don't want to be overwhelming ourselves with the sheer number of tasks or goals that we're setting ourselves for the year ahead," added O'Doherty.

How to make your own 2025 bingo card.

Okay, are you convinced? Good! Gather your textas and put on your crafting hat.

Oh! You look so cute in that hat. Let's go.

There's no right or wrong way to do this; all you need is a grid and a dream.

I created mine in Canva, but you can find templates online that you can print and fill in, you can make your own… heck, even draw up a grid by hand if you want to go super old-school.

You can pick how many boxes you want to set, too, keeping in mind you'll use one square per goal. I went for 5x5 AKA 25 squares (Hey! Math!).

Then write one thing you want to tick off this year into each box. Aaand you're done! Sure, you can add little graphics or draw pictures for each goal (that's part of the fun for me). But you don't have to. You do you!

She's a work in progress! Image: Supplied.

And the goals don't have to be lofty. They could be as simple as not snoozing your alarm for half an hour every morning (guilty), or spending 10 minutes in nature once a week. On my bingo card, I popped down everything from going on an overseas holiday (bigger) and finally finishing decluttering my home (okay, also big), to reading five new books this year — not a lot, I know. But I'm okay with that. Five is achievable, and I want to be able to cross that sucker off.

When you're done, display it somewhere you can see it regularly, so you're reminded of your goals and inspired to reach them. And at midnight on December 31, shriek "BINGO" at the top of your lungs. People will look at you funny, but who cares? Because look at everything you've achieved.

Feature image: Supplied; TikTok/meagintexas.