A little post about new year resolutions for 2026

Hi. What are your new year resolutions? Eating healthy? Working out? Learning to code?

Dare I say, these are a little to vague to stick to. Of course you might say “This is intentional because you can’t plan too far ahead!” but excuse me when I say that this is bullsh!t.

If it’s too vague to be a goal, it’s too vague to become a routine. There are different levels of specificity. There is “I wanna live next year” and then there’s “At 6:57 a.m., on the 10th of October this year, I will exactly drink one sip of champagne in Napa”. Do you see the difference now? We need balance as with all things in life.

Let me explain the concept of S.M.A.R.T. goals simply. It’s an acronym which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable/Attainable/Attractive, Relevant and Time-bound.

We'll start with the letter S first.

As we saw there are extremes in specificity.
You don’t wanna be too vague or too specific.

A good metric I use is to try to keep it as simple as possible while not letting it be too vague so you would have to explain more to your basic goal setting sentence.

For example: “In the year 2026, I will walk for 15min around the block each week on at least two days a week.”

This sentence leaves little room for questions that are needed to understand it while being vague and realistic enough so you don’t feel suffocated by your goal.

So now we move into the letter M.

Making goals measurable is not about being obsessed with calories, kilometers or pace. It’s about making progress tangible.

As you know feelings are already hard to describe so measuring them isn’t any less of a challenge.

We try to use numbers and measurable units to make the whole progress overviewing easier.

If your goal is to improve your mood, assign different values to your state and make a range like 1(bad) to 10(fantastic) or something as tangible for you.

This ensures even vague things you wanna measure get more tangible which lets you see patterns more clearly.

This next letter is one of the most important ones in this acronym. It's the letter A.

If you wanna stick with a goal you gotta sweeten the deal.

If you can’t reach this goal (either because it’s to vague or just very unlikely) and it isn’t appealing to you then you won’t stick with it no matter how you articulate it.

Like with every routine or goal you gotta keep it specific and reward yourself.

Similiar to other things in life there’s also balance here so don’t reward youself too much for each step but rather after an accomplishment(tweak rewards based on size of the accomplishment).

Also, customize the rewards to your goal (e.g. not chocolate as a reward everytime if you wanna loose weight)

The letter R is next on our list.

Your goals have to be relevant for what you want to achieve.

For example: It doesn’t make sense to practice running if you want to learn how to play the guitar.

Do you get it? It’s about making goals that align with your intentions.

Last on our list is the letter T

Goals should be time-bound to be effective. How you set the duration is really up to you.
But if the duration gets too long you might benefit from breaking down your goal into smaller ones.

What do you think about the S.M.A.R.T. goal setting framework? Still to complicated?

Then I suggest you start with “the motto of the year”.
Try to think of one word that sums up what you wanna achieve this year and let that word guide you through the year.

That’s all for now. Thanks for checking in and I’ll see you in the next post!

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