How to set effective New Years resolutions

Over the last few years,‘New Years Resolutions’ have seemed to decrease in popularity; At least: In the social media self-development bubble in which I often find myself. Advocates for periods such as the ‘Winter Arc’ point to the ineffectiveness of postponing reaching your goals to an arbitrary date. And they’re not totally wrong: Only about 1/100 of people stick to their goals for the entire year. To ensure you end up in that magic 1%, I’d like to share some of the knowledge I’ve gained over the past 5 years that I’ve been setting goals (and succeeding!), as well as some of the new things I’ll be trying this time around.

Tried and Tested

These are the habits that have allowed me to hit x+ percent of the goals I’ve set for myself in the past. Take what resonates, and leave what doesn’t! 

Share sooner than feels comfortable

Sharing your goals can seem very scary at first, and even deter people from actually setting goals: Because, what if you change your mind? This was a thought I had myself. Some ideas to challenge this belief: 

Change is good! Acknowledge that just deciding on something and fixing it later if it doesn’t work out, generally takes less time than making the ‘perfect’ decisions. Worst case scenario: you set a goal, decide it’s not for you (this is important knowledge!), and move on. Best case scenario: you continue with the goal and will have saved so much time. I am not saying to set goals you made up on a whim; I am encouraging you to spend less time pondering, and more time trying. 

You should not shy away from sharing goals of new experiences if you’re unsure whether you’ll like them! Perhaps you’ll even find likeminded people who can help you get into your aspirations. Fear of being seen trying is real, but don’t let it keep you away from growth.

Set yourself up for experimentation

Continuing the previous: Challenge yourself to set experimental goals, and allow yourself to discard them if they do not serve you. This does not equate to not following through on your promises, but it also does not mean you shouldn’t take these goals seriously. It simply means you should get clear beforehand on when you will, and when you won’t stick to them. 

Furthermore, when setting a goal regarding something you’ve never even tried, either: challenge yourself to try it for a limited, doable, amount of time and evaluating after (e.g. exercising 2x a week for a month) ór challenging yourself to try a few different things in the same niche and comparing them — and setting a more definite goal afterwards (e.g. trying 5 different workout classes). 

Be effectively vague

You’re probably sick of being told to set SMART goals, at least I am (although they unfortunately do work). I like to take a slightly different approach: As I don’t like to pin myself down on goals in unpredictable areas of life, I decide on which goals to be extremely specific (i.e. SMART), and on which to be more effectively vague. To give an example: Last year one of my goals was to ‘work on my future’ (I provided a few different options). This is about as vague as you can get, but the options gave me a sense of direction, whilst the goal itself gave me more lenience to play into opportunities coming. This was more of a ‘theme’-goal than one you can tick off – something I’ll come back to later. 

Keep  a combination of ‘habit-’ and ‘achievement-based’ goals

If you’re already doing this, which you probably are, keep going! This combination – along with the previously mentioned experimental goals – allows for tickable goals and daily improvements. Of course, achievement-based goals also require daily/weekly/montly work. To ensure you stick to reaching these, I’ve made a template to fill in, so the threshold for actually doing this is as low as possible. This leads me into the next tip:

Plan, plan, plan

Motivation subsides, a thought out (back-up) plan does not. Don’t try to rely on motivation to reach your goals. Boredom will hit and catch up to you if you haven’t solidified the habits of working on your goals. Want to create a new habit? Habit stack, create a routine or time block it. Want to break a habit? Create a new (better) routine that replaces it. Check out the template at the end of this blog to help you incorporate this!

Want to know more about ‘Habit Stacking’? Check out James Clear’s ‘Atomic Habits’.

Be realistically overachieving 

Set goals that you think you just may or may not reach. This one is very obvious, so I won’t spend too much time on it. You are only as capable as you believe yourself to be. Combine these sorts of goals with current habits you want to continue in the new year. An important side note for this tip: Speaking for myself, I am always looking to overshoot my goals. Because of this, setting relatively realistic goals is effective. However, if you’re the type of person to be satisfied with simply reaching the level you’ve set for yourself, I would recommend shooting higher with the goals you set.

New and Improved

Apart from solely improving myself by setting new goals each year, I also try to improve the way I go about this process. Below you’ll find some of the things I’ll be experimenting with in planning for 2026.

Setting 6 months goals

This year, I’ve decided to set 30 weeks, instead of 1 year goals. Why?

(1) I’m in a phase of life that’s changing increasingly fast. Don’t get me wrong, routine is incredibly important — especially with the lifestyle I’ve had for the last 6 months — but when I set goals I want them to enable me to grow, not keep me tied to a version of myself I’m not anymore. 

And (2): It enables me to prioritize. In life, everything is a tradeoff: You’ll always sacrifice something you have right now (e.g. scrolling on social media) for something you’d rather have. Choosing a shorter time span clearly shows what is, but most importantly what ISN’T possible just yet (remember: you can have everything you want, just not all at once). Some goals I’ll be putting on hold in (the first half of) 2026 include: Playing piano, learning chess and travelling. This leads me into the next point:

‘Anti-goal-setting’

Like I stated earlier: everything you want is tied to something else you’re willing to give up. This sounds very depressing, and it is in a way, but so is staying the same year after year. Ask yourself this question: What can I give up to make time for this goal? This does not have to be some big activity. Even watching Youtube whilst you eat can be swapped for a more consciously chosen habit. In 2026 I want to incorporate daily journaling. However, this is something I have struggled with doing consistently in the past. To set myself up for success this year, I’ve decided to swap a current habit (doing a sudoku whilst eating my breakfast) with journalling. This way, incorporating new habits becomes a way of curating your life, instead of endlessly adding more to it. A nice bonus of this approach is that it allows you to plan curbing your bad habits simultaneously, and gives you a tangible reason as to why you want to quit these to hold on to when motivation subsides.  

Choosing a theme

I’ve seen this making the rounds on social media, and it has made me curious enough to want to try. The idea is that you pick a word or sentence that embodies your focus in the year ahead. Usually, you’ll give your theme a central place in your environment. This can be: on your lock screen, in a central place of the house, or in the middle of your vision board (see the ‘Visualize!’ section). Supposedly, It’ll help you attentive to the direction you’re working in throughout the year. 

Give yourself a ‘why’

Sustainable goals are made up of two components: something that excites or interests you, and something to hold on to when the novelty wears off. Prepare for the excuses you’ll inevitably come up with somewhere along the way by making a list of reasons as to why this goal is worth pursuing. This is something I haven’t done before. I’m curious to find out how big of a difference this will make in my life.

Habit tracking

Habit tracking involves making a standardized list of daily habits, in a calendar format. You can track your desired habits on a physical planner, or in an app, for example: ‘Habit Tracker’ (https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/habit-tracker/id1438388363). I’m going to experiment with using a physical habit tracker, and keeping it in a public space to keep me accountable. Interested in habit tracking? Stay posted for a future blog that will dive into this subject a lot more, including the template I’ll be using. 

Visualize!

Thought up all your goals for the year? Now it’s time to attach a concrete vision. For this step, you definitely don’t have to go all out and create multiple mood boards (although I certainly will). Visualizing will not only (hopefully) get you excited for the year ahead, but most importantly it will help you get clear on what these goals represent. As covered earlier. ‘eating healthier’ is vague and unachievable, attaching a picture of unprocessed swaps for snacks helps planning out the process of achieving said goal. If you’re not the creative type: some alternatives for the arts-and-crafts approach:

• Putting together a folder of motivational content on Instagram surrounding your goals:
• Making a Pinterest board
• Setting a carousel background of pictures that visualize your goals

In short

Tried and tested:

• Sharing sooner than feels comfortable
• Set yourself up for experimentation
• Be effectively vague
• Keep a combination of ‘habit-’ and ‘achievement-based’ goals
• Plan, plan, plan
• Be realistically overachieving

New this year:

• Setting 6 month goals
• Anti-goal-setting
• Choosing a theme
• Give yourself a ‘why’
• Habit tracking
• Visualize!

Action it!

You’ve made it so far. Now what? To effectively action this knowledge, I’ve created the following template you can use to become the person you want to be this new year.