I wanted to share something with you that I came across on YouTube, which I think is probably the best video around goal setting and habit creation I’ve seen in years.
It’s called: If you want 2026 to be the best year of your life, please watch this. It’s by the respected behavioural scientist and best-selling author, Daniel Pink.
I’ve watched it four or five times, and each time I pick up something new from it that I’m going to apply this year.
I did a ChatGPT summary of the video, but I felt it missed the mark and left out several key bits.
I also felt that by writing this blog for you, Pink’s points and tips would sink in more deeply. This is something scientists swear by – teaching someone something helps the teacher understand the topic far more.
Pink breaks the video into four ‘acts’ and shares 20 tips/techniques (I’ll share some, but not all, in this blog).
Act 1 is to carry out a regret review of 2025. Take 10 minutes to think about your biggest regret last year, then write it down on a piece of paper. Then, on a separate piece of paper, write down ways you can avoid feeling that same sense of regret at the end of this year. Once that’s done, tear up the regret sheet.
Then write down your goals for 2026.
Pink proceeds to talk about conducting a pre-mortem, where you fast-forward to December 31st 2026 and consider what may have prevented your 2026 goals from being achieved. Was it a lack of time? Money? Resources? Maybe poor systems or a lack of accountability? I found this a very useful exercise. Then work on a plan to avoid these issues from happening.
Next up is my favourite part of the video – Having a theme for 2026. Along with this theme needs to be one guiding word to accompany it – my word is Discipline, as I lack it, and it feeds into so many other areas. Yours could be anything – sales, organisation, health, wealth, patience, etc., etc., etc. This word is your guiding light in 2026.
Act 2 is full of handy little ideas and is my favourite section of the video. These include projecting your first hour of the day. This is because it’s often the most productive and is usually wasted by people answering emails, working on others’ priorities, or doomscrolling on social media. I’m aiming to use my first hour to work on my health and fitness – as Pink says, think about how those daily hours add up over 365 days.
He also discusses the Two-Minute Rule in this section. If something will take less than two minutes to do, do it immediately rather than adding it to a to-do list, which creates more mental clutter than is necessary.
He also discusses the science behind taking walking breaks and having weekly resets on Sundays.
Act 3 looks at something called the 85 % rule – Pink says people often overrate perfection. He uses the example of a system that works 100 per cent of the time; he thinks it’s probably not being challenged hard enough, and that scoring 85 per cent shows there’s always room to improve.
In this section, he also talked about discomfort being the biggest indicator that you’re learning. Other little gems covered in Act 3 include how your environment nearly always beats your intentions. i.e. If you want to lose weight and your office cupboard is full of biscuits every day, you’ll probably struggle to shift the pounds.
The final act, 4, covers an interesting range of ideas about creating a challenge network, where you have a small group of trusted friends you seek honest feedback from. Pink suggests Feedback Fridays – which I really like the sound of and will offer to EAN members in some form this year.
He also talks about taking ‘micro sabbaths’ where each day you sit and do nothing, with no agenda other than thinking for 15 minutes.
He also looks at ‘to-don’t lists’ which have echoes of the ‘do less, but better’ approach I’m a big fan of.
I’ve not covered all twenty tips, as it would mean this blog would end up more like a book (Pink has several books on behavioural science if you’re interested).
Thanks for reading, and good luck in 2026, whatever your goals, dreams, and ambitions are.
To watch the 26-minute video, I think it’s time very well spent. Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q10H5RA3eCA
