New Year Journal Prompts Instead of Resolutions

What should you write before setting new year intentions?

January planning done without looking back is planning from ambition rather than evidence, which is why so many new-year plans are indistinguishable from last year's.

Spend the first session entirely on what actually happened. What the year was like, what you kept meaning to do, what you were carrying by December. The plan is much more realistic when it is written by someone who has just reread the previous twelve months.

• What am I glad is over?
• What did I not get to, and do I still want it?
• What was I carrying by December that I do not want to carry into March?
• What did last year cost me?
• What did last year give me that I did not expect?

What are new year prompts instead of resolutions?

A direction survives a bad month; a target does not. If you miss a target by February the whole thing is dead, whereas a direction can be resumed at any point without ceremony.

• What do I want more of this year?
• What do I want less of?
• What would make this a good year even if nothing else went to plan?
• How do I want my ordinary Wednesday to feel by June?
• What would I like to be true in December that is not true now?
• What am I willing to be worse at in order to be better at something else?

What should you stop doing in the new year?

Almost all new-year planning is additive, which is why January is so consistently overwhelming, the new commitments arrive on top of everything already there.

The subtraction questions are more useful and much less popular, because stopping something requires admitting it was not working.

• What did I do all last year out of obligation?
• What am I still doing for reasons that expired?
• What commitment would I be relieved to be released from?
• What am I maintaining that nobody would notice if I stopped?
• What am I tolerating?

Do New Year's resolutions work?

Some do, and the way they are phrased matters. In a 2020 study of more than 1,000 people, Martin Oscarsson and colleagues found that people with approach-oriented resolutions, which aim to start or increase something, were more successful after a year than people with avoidance-oriented resolutions, which aim to quit or avoid something, at about 59 percent compared with 47 percent. Participants who received some support also did better.

That supports writing "more of" alongside "less of": for each thing you want less of, name what you will do more of instead.

Why not set goals at all?

You can, and specific goals work well for things that are genuinely under your control and have a clear finish. Learn to drive, fix the leaking roof, take the exam, those are well suited to being written down in January.

Where it goes wrong is character resolutions: be more disciplined, be more present, be less anxious. These have no finish line and no defined action, so they function mainly as a standing reminder that you are not yet acceptable, which is a poor engine for anything.

If you do set goals, write down what would have to be true for them to happen. Most January goals fail not through weak will but because they required time nobody had allocated.

What is the best new year journaling exercise?

This is the single most useful January exercise and almost nobody does it. Not the year, a specific ordinary week in June, hour by hour, as you would like it to be.

It is much more revealing than goal-setting, because the answer is concrete and immediately checkable against your actual life. Most people discover that what they want is not a set of achievements at all but a differently shaped Tuesday, which is a considerably more tractable problem than any resolution.

What is a good word of the year?

Choosing one word for the year is a lighter alternative to resolutions. Good words describe a way of living rather than a result: steady, outside, fewer, closer, finish, gentle. Pick the word by looking at your "more of" and "less of" answers and asking which single word would move both. Write it at the top of your journal and check in with it at the start of each month.

When should you revisit new year intentions?

January entries are worth rereading precisely when the January feeling has worn off, which is around week eight. Not to check compliance, but to see what still sounds right.

Usually some of it does and some of it is clearly a December mood. Knowing which is which is far more useful than either abandoning the whole thing or grimly persisting with all of it, and it requires that the January entry is somewhere you will actually come across again in March.

Can a journal help you keep new year intentions?

Intentions fade mostly because nobody brings them back. Many of them are about a person, like a parent you want to call more often or a cousin you keep meaning to visit, and as an AI journal, Reflectize keeps track of the people you write about. If you write your "more of" and "less of" in Reflectize, it can save them as goals once you confirm, and its insights show what keeps coming up in your entries, which is a kinder check than counting broken resolutions.

Is January the best time to start new goals?

It is a useful fresh start, but not the only one. Research on the fresh start effect found people are also more motivated after other landmarks, such as a birthday, the start of a month or even a Monday. If January goes badly, pick the next landmark and start again rather than waiting a year.