Setting goals for 2026

At the start of each year before I start back at work, I take some time to think about what I want to achieve in the coming year.

I generally break my goals into 4 main areas:

1. Health
2. Business
3. Relationships
4. Wealth

I did better in 2024 at achieving my goals, last year was a bit of a bust though. I try to make my goals achievable but even then it doesn't always work out.

2025 Goals #

I had a few goals for 2025 which I mentioned some of them briefly last year.

Let's see how I did:

🏋️‍♀️ Health

I said last year that I wanted to get in shape as I am getting closer to 40. I can't say that happened so it is definitely on my list for this year.

• ❌ Workout at least 40 times: I only managed 15 workouts last year and workouts promptly dropped off after June.
• ❌ Complete 1 month without sugar: I lasted 2 weeks, and I was pretty cranky. I have quite a sweet tooth, so I found this especially hard. Even so I don't think my sugar consumption is that high anyway, and I saw no benefits in those 2 weeks.
• ✅ Buy smaller plates and eat smaller portions. This was a fairly easy win, so I can't really pat myself on the back too much.

💼 Business

• ❌ Record and publish at least 6 YouTube videos: As you know, I only managed 2 last year so that didn't pan out. I plan to do more this year, but Google is doing it's best to demotivate me (more on that in a minute).
• ❌ Plan and record my next course: I really didn't plan for AI to change the industry as much as it has. There is still a place for high quality courses, but their popularity is definitely going down thanks to AI.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👧 Relationships

• ✅ Have family time (day out, play game) at least once a month: Technically we didn't do something every month but some months we did a lot more. We had around 40 days when we played games or had a day out, so a lot more than 1 a month but there were a few months we missed.
• ❌ Have a date day once a month with my wife: We only managed 4 date days last year. We try to do something on a Friday once a month while the girls are at school, but life gets in the way, unfortunately.

💰 Wealth

• ✅ Invest more: I am not going to share numbers, but I hit my modest goal mostly due to the stock market doing well for the last 6 months.
• ❌ Spend less of my “guilt free” money: My wife and I have a small amount each month that we can spend on what ever we want. Generally it goes on books, clothes, and meals out. I spent too much last year so didn't build up as much as I wanted to.

🎸 Hobbies

I also had an additional hobbies' category last year as I wanted to get better at guitar. I did pretty well at this as I had weekly guitar lessons.

• ✅ Complete grade 4 book on guitar: I completed grade 4 and grade 5 last year so that was good.
• ✅ Master 2 songs from grade 5 book: I managed all 3 songs in the book.
• ✅ Learn to improvise on guitar: I am still not great, but I can now use the Major, Minor and Pentatonic scales in all keys across the whole neck.
• ❌ Learn how to read music: I know the notes (mostly) but I can't read and play at the same time.
• ✅ Learn all the notes on the fretboard: Learning the scales and a few methods for learning the notes helped a lot with this.

2026 Goals #

My goals for 2026 are quite similar to 2025, but I have tried to make them a bit more achievable and give myself some leeway, so I don't get too demotivated when I miss something.

🏋️‍♀️ Health

• Walk 4 times a week (at least 20 minutes): I walk my daughter to school every morning, so this one is an easy one during term time. During the school holidays though I am going to have to make sure I get out.
• Workout once a week : I am hoping to do more, but I should be able to do at least one workout at the weekend.
• Pushups + Chin-ups 5 times a week : I think this might be a bit ambitious. It was achievable over Christmas, but now I am back to work I am only going to manage 4 sessions this week.
• No Alcohol : I don't drink much anyway, at most 1 beer a week. I did dry January last year but this year I am thinking of giving it up completely.

💼 Business

• Release my HabitTed app : While trying out Cursor in March last year I put together a rough app for habit tracking. I have been polishing it when I can, and I would like to release it this year.
• Create an app with monthly revenue : I am not sure how long software engineering as we know it will remain as a career. I would like to have some form of recurring revenue coming in as a backup in case I get laid off.
• Publish at least 15 YouTube videos : I hit 70,000 subscribers on my channel over Christmas. It would be nice to get to 100,000 by the end of the year. Google however have demonetized my channel, so I am not sure whether the effort is worth it any more.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👧 Relationships

• Date day every month : We failed last year as life got in the way. Hopefully this year we can do more together.

💰 Wealth

My wealth goals are much the same, invest more and spend less. Although I am half expecting my investments to drop due to WW3 starting at some point. If that happens it will be the least of my worries anyway.

My YouTube channel got demonetized 😭 #

This year hasn't started off great to be honest. At the end of last year I set up a limited company for all my business income and I have been in the process of transferring everything across.

Google doesn't let you convert a personal AdSense account to a business one, you have to create a new one for the business.

On the 6th January, I went through YouTube Studio to create a new AdSense account for my limited company. I uploaded all the documents and everything got verified.

The next morning I get an email from Google to say my AdSense account has been disabled due to “Invalid Traffic” and I have been removed from the YouTube Partner Program.

This hasn't been a problem for the last 2 years and I can't see anything on my account that looks suspicious. I certainly haven't done anything that could have triggered this.

I filled out the appeal form, but it has been rejected:

Hello,

Thank you for your appeal. We appreciate your continued interest in our program. However, after taking into consideration the information that you have provided, we have confirmed that we are unable to reinstate your publisher account.

Please note that your account will not receive further payments. You are not eligible for further participation in our publisher programs, and may not create new accounts.

Thank you for understanding.

Sincerely, The Google Ad Traffic Quality Team

I only earned between £100 — £200 a month from YouTube so it isn't the end of the world and for most large creators it is only a small portion of their income. It is pretty disheartening though.

Not only can I no longer monetize my channel, but I am not allowed to create a new channel and monetize that either.

If I continue with YouTube despite not being monetized I will have to focus more on Patreon and paid sponsorships to make it worthwhile.

---

❤️ Picks of the Week #

📝 Article — Self-Hosted Software Names You're Probably Mispronouncing — I have definitely been mispronouncing some of these.

📝 Article — I got hacked: My Hetzner server started mining Monero — In this guys case it was due to a vulnerability in Next.js which was used by Umami. Worth checking what all your applications are using and making sure they are up-to-date.

📝 Article — Classical statues were not painted horribly — I know not tech related, but I found this fascinating. Essentially, scientist painted the statues based on the paint particles they found on the statues, but this was likely only the base layer of paint.

👾 Game — A digital museum of video game levels — When I first looked at this I didn't realize you could move around. These bring back some memories.

📝 Article — The Strange Case of Engineers Who Dismiss AI — I have seen this a lot too. Developers dismissing AI based on what it could do 3 years ago. Claude Code in the right hands often feels like magic. It doesn't replace engineers (yet) but it does make them more productive.

📝 Article — Apple releases open-source model that instantly turns 2D photos into 3D views — This looks really impressive. I have been impressed with Qwen Image Edit for images where it can rotate an object and has an understanding of what the other side might look like.

🎨 Art — Floor796 — There are so many pop culture references in this that it would take you days to find them all! Very cool.

🛠️ Tool — Calendar — If you need a printable calendar that has every day of the year this is perfect.

📝 Article — Non-Zero-Sum Games — My final year project was related to game theory. This is a really fun website for learning about

📝 Article — Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame — I played quite a lot of Stardew Valley during COVID. It is a great game, and it is amazing that it was built by one person. It is great that ConcernedApe is giving back to the project.

📝 Article — 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop — If I was still using Windows I would definitely have switched to Linux by now. I mostly use Macs for the hardware, but I can see myself going back to Linux at some point.

📝 Article — The Most Popular Blogs of Hacker News in 2025 — I have a few of these on my RSS list and will definitely be adding a few more.

📝 Article — Swift on Android: Full Native App Development Now Possible — Over the last year I have been learning Swift, and now it can be used on Android as well.

🎬 Course — Neural Networks: Zero to Hero — AI isn't going anywhere and the more you can learn about it the less likely you are to be laid off. This is a great resource.

📝 Article — It's hard to justify Tahoe icons — UX on Macs is definitely going backwards. I agree that too many icons is not helpful.

📝 Article — I switched from VSCode to Zed — I keep finding articles about people switching. I am still not fully using Zed yet as some languages I use don't have syntax highlighting, but I definitely enjoy using it more than VSCode.

📝 Article — Google broke my heart — It is hard to imagine that Google's motto used to be “Don't be evil”. That clearly isn't the case any more.

📝 Article — Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far — I have still be mostly using Sonnet but if Opus is this good I will have to give it a try.

🗺️ Map — Shipmap.org — This is fascinating to watch and the guys' explanation is fantastic. The visualizations are also really impressive. I wonder what he used to make them.

📝 Article — Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team — This is a real shame for the Tailwind team and will be one of many AI casualties. Give AI a picture of a UI, and it will be able to recreate it so no one is buying Tailwind templates any more.

🚎 Bus — London–Calcutta Bus Service — I am surprised that a bus service like this existed. 50+ days on a bus but at half the cost of air travel at the time I can see why it was an option.