New Year's Resolutions 2026

2026-01-02T12:30:12.000Z

It was impossible for me not to include this image. I am not sorry.

I was never big on New Year's resolutions. However, as I get older I appreciate that there are natural moments of reset in your life. New decades, new jobs, new homes.

New years are one of the predictable ones. Conveniently, they come with a built in universal counter and even a glass of champagne and fireworks at the end. Might as well take advantage of the infrastructure.

So, I've thought about what I've been doing over the last while that I'd like to continue doing, do better, or do less, and come up with what feels like a pretty achievable list:

Run 5km twice weekly
Weights twice weekly
Eat less meat
Drink less, and less frequently
Read more adventurously
Write every day
Publish every week

Some of these are measurable, some a bit more vague. Drink less, for example. I'll get into my rationale below.

#Run 5km twice weekly

The idea of running 5 kilometres regularly, and trying to improve my time consistently is far more appealing than aiming for a 10k or marathon, etc.

I've had a couple of false starts at running. It seemed pretty simple: leave house, run.

But if you just start running without warming up you can do damage. I'm assuming this is something that changes as you age, and so the first time I started running I ran like I would have run for the bus when I was 17 – except this time I was 30 and sedentary. Instant plantar fasciitis. Could barely walk for a week, then hobbled for months. End attempt one.

So now I've got decent running shoes, and after a slow build up got to a decent frequency of running in 2025, interrupted significantly by my three month trip to Japan with Ash. No such once-in-a-lifetime trips planned this year, so back to a regular cadence^[1] it is!

#Weights twice weekly

I've solved a few health issues just by taking up some regular weight training. Nothing spectacular, 15-20 minute sessions with a bench and some adjustable weights. It's been genuinely life changing though. I've been doing it for long enough that it feels like baseline. If I miss it for a few weeks I can feel my shoulders starting to develop twinges. My main goal there is to not let that happen.

#Eat less meat

This one has been on my todo list for a couple of years. Eating meat has various links to cancer, and eating plants has a lot of positive correlations. I can eat less meat and eat more plants, and hopefully end up healthier overall. I also sporadically feel guilt over an animal dying for my food. Not truly enough to stop entirely, but enough that I would like to be some percentage less part of the problem.

I've already made pretty good progress, but it's taking me time to build up a repertoire of vegetarian meals that I want, and make the time to prepare them. I mostly have porridge in the mornings now, and a vegan soup for lunch. Dinners have remained elusive though, and that's what I plan to improve this year.

#Drink less, and less frequently

A cop-out, you might say– cold turkey or no turkey! But I'm just not convinced that just cutting out alcohol entirely is the best thing for me. I like drinking socially, I just don't like the increasingly long hangovers that result from overdoing it. Being wooly headed from poor sleep, or suffering a pounding headache, is just not a price I'm willing to pay as often. I'll drink on special occasions, or try zebra striping^[2], and basically just make a more concerted effort to wind down my alcohol consumption.

#Read more adventurously

I am an almost embarrassingly single-genre reader, but I've not found myself moved by much that makes the top lists of science fiction for the last few years. I'm probably not checking the right lists. I do still like a well-structured space opera, but my favourite novel in recent memory is The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin. I found it gripping – beautifully written, desperately and probably eternally relevant, and a revelatory exploration of anarchism.

It is a book from an author who is considered to transcend genre, and it has made me want to dig deeper to find other novels that require critical engagement, both inside science fiction and in broader literature.

To that end, my first read of the year is M. John Harrison's Light, which is certainly turning out to be a worthy contender.

#Write every day

I'd like to write more, always have, and I keep putting it off^[3]. I'm starting to realise now, though, that not only am I not immortal, but in fact, am increasingly mortal^[4]. Anything I'm not immediately working towards is not likely to happen.

I can do a few things with this information. I can be angry about it, deny it, make my peace with it, or I can get working. Maybe all of those things in order.

#Publish every week

Weirdly I think this will be the hardest one.

About the only saving grace here is that I am a working software developer and have a close and wry understanding that any software which is not released essentially does not exist.

Another lesson is that releasing software is one step of a many-stepped process when building a product. Not even necessarily the first step, depending on how you want to think about it.

Despite knowing this I just don't post anything that feels too incomplete. Yet occasionally I re-read those posts and wonder whether they could ever be more complete than they already were.

Publishing a post feels like a big step, and it is in one sense, but it's also just one step. You can fold in whatever you want after it; sharing the post around, corrections, additions, or responding to feedback/comments.

But the real outcome of publishing a blog post is mostly nothing external. Maybe some people read it, maybe nobody does. But the act of publishing itself is a useful line to draw under it. A way of moving on to the next thing.

Ultimately that's what we get out of a New Year's resolution, too. Draw a line under the last year, and make some space for a change.

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Notes:

Pun intended. Running jokes! Ho ho ho. 🏃‍♂️
Zebra striping is when you alternate between alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks.
Like the black and white stripes of a zebra, this method creates a pattern that helps moderate your drinking. Because of this technique, you’ll find yourself able to still enjoy social occasions that typically involve alcohol.

via drinkaware.co.uk
I decided when I was young that the only chance of succeeding at either writing or software engineering, would be to put all my effort into one at the expense of the other. Software won. Not because I thought it was a hot career, but because I thought it would be easier to get a job with than writing. It was 2003, and software was interesting to me, but not seen as prestigious or valuable amongst my peers.
As far as I know, I'm the only person that pursued software engineering in my entire year of ~150 male students.
Hence the health goals 😅

@duggan — 2026