Setting Myself Up for 2026
I'm a sucker for a New Year New Me moment
Excuse my French, but I need to get my shit together. I’m a procrastinator at heart, who thrives with structure and a schedule…yet tends to avoid them like the plague. Since we moved to NYC, I’ve been using the excuse of needing to set up the apartment, exploring the city and getting into a routine to avoid doing the things that will actually make my life better here. Mainly, getting a job and making new friends. But I am a lover of the energy of the new year, and you can can always count of me to be making resolutions and vision boards come January 1st.
This year, after much reflection, I came up with a plan of action to actually make the changes necessary in order for me to feel happy and fulfilled in 2026. It started off with this Dianna Cohen post…
I worked my way through her process, and ended up with my favourite yearly vision board yet. In the past I’ve made my boards chocker block full of images…but really only focused on the activity collaging of it all—not actually working on bringing the things into fruition. I love that Diana’s process starts off with creating a text-based vision board to put into words what you want out of the different areas of your life. This allowed me to be clear and direct about what I wanted to accomplish and create in the next year. The next step is to build a vibe-based vision board—a collection of visuals that emanate the feeling you’re aiming for.
And finally, you end off with creating your actual vision board for the year. Where my past vision boards have been overfull and obscure, Dianna encourages you to be specific—create a vision board that reflects the things you want to do or achieve. Overall, I really enjoyed Dianna’s new year manifestation process and I can already see myself doing it yearly.
After all my reflecting and visualizing, I knew that the main thing in my life that I was missing in order to achieve all these goals…was discipline. I’m a planner at heart, but where I fall short is with follow through. I love making lists, Pinterest boards, and goals—but I have a hard time taking the steps necessary in order to achieve them or bring my ideas to life.
Being currently unemployed, it’s much too easy to fall into disarray. So my next step was to make myself a daily schedule that I could keep. I enlisted the help of Google Tasks, and created daily repeating to-do’s and time blocks to help add some structure to my life. Right now, that looks like scheduling in the gym first thing in the morning (because even though I could technically workout at any time during the day, getting it done in the morning has a positive impact on my mood and motivation), blocking out 2 hours to write, an hour and a half for job searching, and another half hour or so for community outreach. I’ve also made myself a weekly cleaning list on Google Tasks, to help keep my apartment clean and tidy without feeling like I have to do a big clean once a week—10 minutes a day really does make a difference! All of these obviously don’t make up my entire day, but they’ve added enough structure to help me feel accomplished, while still leaving room for tasks or errands that may pop up.
My next project is to build an adult binder. I saw this idea on Pinterest, and the idea is to essentially organize all your important documents and information in a binder. Think tax info, birth certificates, mortgages, leases, insurance info, etc. Since getting married and moving to the US—plus just getting older—the admin part of my life has definitely gotten a little more complicated. So as a favor to my future self, I want to start organizing the important things in one spot. To make this a more enjoyable experience, I’m of course going to pick a cute binder and color-code the different sections.
One thing I’ve done which has already proven to be a huge help, is create a meal plan…for the entire year. This might sound crazy, but to be clear, I’m only doing this for Monday to Friday dinners. I rotate between the same 3 or so breakfasts, and I always make enough dinner to have leftovers for lunch the next day—so the first 2 meals of the day are almost always taken care of. I scoured NYT cooking, my cookbooks, and the internet for recipes that I actually want to make, and I imputed them all into a Google Sheet that I’ve organized by month. Not only has this so far saved me from decision fatigue and the eternal “what do you want for dinner?” question—but it’s also already saving us a decent amount of money. I’m only buying the groceries that I need, and my husband hasn’t had to buy lunch at work. I also can’t even begin to describe how nice it is when lunch rolls around, my stomach’s grumbling, and all I have to do is pull out an already prepped and portioned meal from my fridge. This takes a bit of time, but I already know it’s going to be one of the best things I’ll do for myself this year.
When it comes to my relationships, I want to be more intentional with my time this year. In order to do that, I’ve started scheduling quality time. For example, last year my husband and I fell into the trap of spending our evenings on our own separate devices, looking up every once in a while to say hi. This left us feeling disconnected and didn’t do much to alleviate the anxieties from the day. At the beginning of the year, we sat down together and made ourselves a weekly evening schedule. Mondays and Wednesdays we’d meet at the gym after work, Tuesdays we’d go for a walk and have a game night, Thursdays we’d make mocktails and cook dinner together, then Friday was left open for fun. We’ve also started watching shows together…which may sound weird, because doesn’t every couple watch TV together? Nope. We literally never do. BUT, starting a series and sticking to just one episode a night where we both have to be completely present (no phones!!) has been really nice! Added bonus, scheduling more activities and committing to less doom scrolling has made our evenings feel a lot longer.
Once I’ve grown my circle here and made some more friends, I’ll definitely be implementing this mindset into those relationships. And even though I’m not in the same city as a lot of my friends and family anymore, I can still be intentional about my time spent with them—scheduling FaceTimes and calls, reading the same books from afar, sending good old fashioned snail mail, and being better at keeping in contact in general.
Lastly, I want to create a budget, and ideally use a budgeting tool to implement it. I’m really intrigued by Rocket Money, and I think being able to track my spending will alleviate a lot of anxieties around money. While it might seem counterintuitive, I think being super aware of my spending will have a positive effect on my relationship with money. I won’t have to second guess whether or not I can buy a coffee out or splurge on a new piece of clothing—if it’s in the budget than I can! A budget that’s ideally linked with my banking will take away the guesswork of spending and will allow for more freedom in mine and my husbands life. No more questioning whether or not we can afford things. It’ll also help with saving for bigger things like travel, a car, furniture and eventually a home.
So that’s my game plan for 2026—all the different habits, tools and mindsets I’m implementing in order to make my life better, my anxiety lower, and my future brighter. I know resolutions aren’t for everyone, and you don’t need to wait for January 1st to make changes in your life—but this is what works for me! What are your ambitions for 2026…and what are the tools and practices that are going to help you achieve them?