My historical success rate on New Year goals is not very high, but over the years I’ve made some pretty great improvements to my life from them. Maybe by writing them down publicly, I’ll have a better chance of following through this time! If not, it will at least force me to reflect on them if they don’t work out.

1: Consume higher-effort media

I want to save as much time as I can that retroactively feels “wasted” on low-effort content. This type of content can take many forms:

  • Posts optimized for “engagement” rather than something that would actually make anyone’s life better.
  • Videos that are optimized for consuming as much time as possible. Examples for me include low-quality Podcasts, TV series, and Youtube channels.
  • News or similar content from lay-people rather than more reputable sources.

One (clearly imperfect) theory I have behind each of these is that it has to do with the input and care that goes into the content. If someone genuinely cared and put time into crafting the content, there seems to be a higher chance I’ll find value when consuming it.

More simply, I want to spend less time on Reddit, YouTube, Netflix, etc. and more time reading books, watching movies, or reading longer-form editorial content (blogs included!) from trusted sources.

2: Build more for fun

I’ve struggled while working professionally to have substantial side-projects too. Some of this is intended - I build all day at work, so I’m often tired of building by the time I’m home and need to do something else. Often, that something else meant playing video games, or consuming media as mentioned above. Now in 2026 even when I’m tired, my AI agent friends aren’t!

To help with this, I’ve also abandoned WSL on Windows 11 in favor of using Linux directly once again. If you’re interested, you can follow along with the saga through the ubuntu-configs repo I’m using to keep track of my setup and log of things I’ve needed to configure. So far, this has been a total blast! I can often fix annoying Linux issues in minutes (or seconds) that used to take hours before LLMs.

3: Get away from the desk

With my new job, I’ve been spending a lot more un-interrupted time at my desk than before. With hardly any meetings, it’s really easy for me to sit in one spot all day while I work.

A few years ago I had a goal of exercising for more than 30 minutes every day. This was a lot, especially during the pandemic (2021), but I did it. Then the next year (2022) I did something similar, but based on the “green” Apple watch ring, so it didn’t have to be a fixed amount of time. After two years of that, it still felt too stressful - I sometimes need a real rest day, and maintaining “streaks” stresses me out. But not doing something like the above two goals for the intervening years has also been bad - it’s too easy to get to the end of a day and realize “Oh, no - I haven’t moved around much today”.

So to that end, this year I’ll try to do some exercise at least five days a week.