What does it mean to “be successful” over the course of a year?

In my early 20s, I believed success meant setting lots of New Year’s resolutions and then maintaining all of them throughout the year. But I kept failing at that. So at some point, I started thinking success might be about hitting certain milestones. “Get 10,000 email subscribers.” “Make $100,000 in revenue.” “Sell 10,000 copies of my book.” And so on. But I kept failing at those, too. Even when I reduced my goals down to just one ambitious target per year, I still kept failing.

Eventually, it dawned on me that goals might be a bad way to define success — and thus, to some extent, my happiness — altogether.

As soon as you set a goal, you’ve declared a void in your life. “Until I achieve this outcome, I won’t be happy.” It’s a choice to fight against some self-inflicted lack until it’s fixed, and once it is, you’ll quickly move the target further away. Goals are a great way to exact pressure and make yourself feel inadequate. That can work in the short term, but if it’s your only strategy in the game of life year after year, you’ll be miserable most of the time.

Once I was fed up with arbitrary numbers, I took a break from goals for a few years. But my life still needed direction. Over time, I slowly built a new process. That process involves a short annual review, a yearly theme, and a few simple experiments. It has just the right balance of ambition, contentment, and flexibility.

Thanks to this process, my big-picture happiness no longer depends on whether I hit some goalpost or win a trophy. “Did I have fun?” “Have I been learning and growing?” “Am I moving towards where I truly want to go?” These are the kinds of questions I ask myself when I look back at the end of a year. Answering them with an enthusiastic, genuine “Yes!” — that’s what having a successful year means to me.

If you’d like to measure yourself against healthier, more sustainable yardsticks too, here’s how you can do it. It only takes two tools, one commitment, and absolutely zero goals. Oh, and you can do it in the next 30 minutes. Let’s begin.

1. Conduct an annual review in 10 minutes

The best time to do an annual review is when the year is almost over, but your memories are still fresh. The second half of December is a time of rest in many countries, so it’s not a bad period to reflect. But if you don’t have a process or are considering one that feels like a lot of work, you likely won’t complete your review to begin with.

This is a classic example of the self-help industry trying to sell us overly complex solutions to simple problems. There are thousands of templates and courses out there, and many of them take hours to complete. Instead, I found I could cut through the noise with three simple questions:

1. What did I do well last year?
2. What did I not do well last year?
3. How will I change the things I didn’t do well?

The idea here is to focus on behavior, not outcomes. It’s great if you got promoted, but your manager probably had a major hand in making that happen. Similarly, there’s little you could have done about a car accident caused by another driver. In order to maximize the impact of your changes, stick with what was truly in your control.

Write down the first three instances that come to your mind for each of the first two questions. Don’t overthink it! You can always expand and update your reflections later. I did mine for this year in 10 minutes, then later came back and spent another 30 minutes revising. Set a timer if you find yourself drifting off. The benefit of getting your first thoughts down quickly is that you’ll zone in on the big, obvious sticking points from the last 12 months. Good! That’s exactly what you want.

Chances are, what you did well and not well will be connected. If so, even better. When your points build on or complement one another, their combinations will reveal clear lessons on how you’ll have to adjust. For the last question, list three ideas you’ll try to change what didn’t work well. These are the end result of your annual review and, best of all, the only action items you’ll need to remember.

Here are three actual answers from my review of 2025:

1. **What did I do well last year? **I didn’t compromise in my creative work.
2. **What did I not do well last year? **I didn’t invest enough of my non-job time into writing my next book.
3. How will I change the things I didn’t do well? In 2026, I want to embed a dedicated book writing block in my weekday morning routine and stick to it as consistently as possible.

Here’s a bit more context: Since taking a full-time job for the first time in early 2025, I’ve made full use of my creative freedom in my personal writing projects. I stopped twisting my work to make a buck and only wrote what I cared to write. I put much effort into my daily blog, and my creative work became a true labor of love. However, my chief aspiration is to be an author, and despite working on several books, I fell short of actually publishing one in 2025. What’s a behavior I can change to try and address that? Make book writing part of my morning routine, perhaps! I already dabbled with this in late 2025. Now I know I want to double down on it.

That’s it! Locate what worked. Investigate what didn’t. Set up simple experiments aimed at turning the latter into the former. You can do this in as little as five to ten minutes — yet it will probably put you in the most deliberate 1% of people who are starting the new year with clear yet manageable intentions.

Note: If you want a more detailed breakdown of my short annual review process with even more examples, see here.

2. Choose a one-word theme for 2026 in 10 minutes

Running three experiments to improve your life in the new year is a great start, and if that’s all you’ll do, it’s already plenty. But if you’re like me, you also want a consistent source of guidance. Some North Star you can follow even after your experiments are done. How do you find such a compass without falling back into the goal-obsession trap?

Every year for the last seven years, I’ve set a one-word theme. A one-word theme is a singular, universal, behavior-based standard which ties your entire life together.

Why are themes more efficient and sustainable than goals? For one, you can compare any thought, action, or decision against your theme. It’s meaningful and ambitious but also realistic and easy to use. For another, themes aren’t pass-or-fail. All that counts is today. Act in line with your theme in the smallest of ways, and you’ll go to bed happy each night. And if you do fail? Then every next morning, you can try again.

How do you pick a good theme? Three pointers:

1. Make it a single word that’s easy to understand and remember.
2. **If you can, choose a word that doubles as both a verb and a noun. **These tend to have many different definitions, allowing you to engage with your theme from multiple angles. Examples: Love, Work, Build, Grace, Share, Act, Believe, Rest.
3. Pick positive and encouraging words over strict and demanding ones.

If you’ve done the annual review, chances are your theme will emerge naturally from the results. Just ask yourself: “What’s the theme I need most right now, given everything that happened this year?” Once again, start with the first word that comes to your mind. Does it feel like it’s guiding you in the right direction? If yes, check a thesaurus for its synonyms. There’s bound to be one variant whose sound and different meanings you’ll resonate with.

For some inspiration, here are my themes of the last seven years:

• 2019: Focus
• 2020: Balance
• 2021: Matter
• 2022: Joy
• 2023: Focus
• 2024: Rise

In 2025, my theme was “Reset.” I wanted to make the most of my transition from entrepreneur to employee and really start over. That meant changing how I work, scrapping nearly all forms of monetization on my blogs, and completely revamping the business model of my now-side-gig. But “re-setting” also means realigning. To adjust and push back into place. So I also began cleaning up my writing artifacts of the last ten years, for example by starting to import everything I’ve ever written on various platforms to my blog. Ultimately, I’m slowly merging all my efforts into one vehicle which I can keep building in the time I have next to my job.

Can you see the theme’s effortless nature in this scenario? My theme provided direction, but it didn’t dictate any particular goals or deem me a failure for not completing a project by a certain date. It gave me permission to start from zero and settle into my new life at my own pace. Am I done resetting now that 2025 is over? Of course not! Much of that work will continue through 2026, but that’s the point of a theme: momentum over milestones. The best you can do is pick a path and start walking. Life will always happen, but movement is what counts — which also includes moving on to a new theme each year, by the way.

Note: For more on goals vs. themes, see here and here.

3. Visualize and cement your theme with a wallpaper in 5 minutes

How can you stay aware of your theme throughout the year? There are many ways. You could journal about it or set regular reminders in your calendar. Personally, I share it on my blog and then reflect on it at the end of the year as well.

But the fastest, easiest, and perhaps most fun method to make your theme ever-present is to create a dedicated wallpaper for your most commonly used devices. This’ll ensure you encounter your theme multiple times a day and have a visual to go with the concept.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Pick an inspiring image that represents your theme, resonates with you, or even comes with personal meaning. I like Tithi Luadthong’s illustrations, for example, but if you just search for your theme plus the word “wallpaper,” you should find plenty of ideas.
2. Write your one-word theme onto the image. You can use a simple editing tool like Preview on Mac or Canva to do this. Just add a textbox, make it bold and large, and move it where it fits.
3. Set the image as the background on your phone, laptop, tablet, and any other devices you use daily.

If you’ve chosen the right theme, finding the image will be the easy part. You might even have a custom idea, and maybe AI can help with that.

I find striking, clean, beautiful scenes I would want to be in work best. They make it easy to remember my theme, and every time I do, I can picture the image in my head. As long as your wallpaper makes sure you come in contact with your theme at least once a day, even passively, it’ll get the job done.

Here are some real examples I used over the last few years:

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I don’t hate goals. Goals can be useful. But I’m also not immune to their allure. Goals are an easy way to measure, and the truth is, most of the time, we’re measuring ourselves and our happiness too much already.

Plastering goals over everything is, therefore, a quick way to ruin your year in advance. You’ll set too many, fail three weeks in, then take months to recover when, actually, life is not about goals at all.

When I say I want to spend more time writing books, I don’t think about how many titles I can crank out in one year. I think about being an author. That’s the vision that inspires me, and, having published two books already, I can wholeheartedly say that the path to getting there is more important than the destination itself. If I can’t have fun and learn along the journey, then I’m going about my vision the wrong way.

We are neither our rap sheets nor our CVs. We are not how many deadlines we hit on time. We are not even how we got here. We are what we do next — and it’s never too late to choose a new direction.

Do a simple annual review. Pick a theme. Keep it front and center with a cool wallpaper. And let the new year surprise you.

Oh, and me? My theme for 2026 will be “Make” — but that’s a story for another day.