Plan With Me For 2026: A Step-by-Step Framework For Actually Effective Goal Setting

0:11What is up? I'm Grace Beverley and welcome back to Working Harder. the podcast shared guidebook on how to improve your own life and achieve what you actually dreamed of doing. Because life's too short for boring podcasts and bad advice.

0:24What is up and welcome back to Working Hard. Today's episode is something that has very much become tradition for us. We are going to be planning for 2026. As we near the end of the year, my planning brain kind of goes into overdrive. The closer we get to January, the more I start craving structure, lists, a clear planner page. And I've always said that I don't truly believe in new year, new me, because facing 365 days at once is very overwhelming and doesn't necessarily set you up for success. But breaking it down makes it not only manageable, but also genuinely exciting. It is exciting to have the sense of a reset, a chance to realign, reflect, set goals that actually feel right for where you're at at the moment, because a lot changes in a year.

1:02And we've done these Plan With Me episodes for the last two years now, and they are always one of your favourites. So I wanted to bring it back with everything that I've learned since the end of last year. Also with new tools, better systems and a more realistic way to approach planning for the year ahead. The whole reason for effectively planning for your year ahead is that you can really touch base with yourself and understand what do I want by the time I get to 2027? Like what do I want to look back on and think, yeah, I did that and I'm so glad I went through XYZ this year to be able to put me in the position that I want to be in going into 2027.

1:33And I know that feels crazy looking at it now because you're like 2027 even I just had to ask the team whether 2026 was actually next year. That's how far out I am. But I feel like planning is what makes that possible and you don't need to be achieving all these massive things at once but you do need to know what you want to achieve. There is no way you are going to be able to get to where you want to get to if you don't even know the destination. If you're not paying attention to the journey, you are probably going to miss the destination and you're probably not going to have planned effectively for what you actually want when you think about where your life is now, where you want your life to be in a year.

2:08And so for this session, I wanted to really think about the past two years, think about what we've learned, where I've missed my goals, where that was the right thing to do, like where I recalibrated halfway through the year and thought, no, do you know what, this no longer serves me. And where certain things fell off because I just wasn't effective enough about my planning. And part of that is using new tools. And when I say new tools, I mean new tools. The last two years that I have done this, I've done this exercise on our digital planner. And about a month ago, we released a totally new updated version, which I've been using as my personal homepage for months now and I honestly couldn't live without and this as a product is something that took a year to build based on these plan with me sessions.

2:45Like the whole idea of this digital planner is that you have a personal homepage that has all of your goals, your vision boards, your lists, all of these different things in one place so that you can effectively go throughout the year, actually reach your goals, then go to the next year and feel like you're not just starting from square one. Now I want to say that obviously you do not need it to plan your year. All you need is a notepad or your notes app but if you are someone who loves a planning system like me or you know that you don't have effective planning systems of your own, I highly recommend getting something like this so that it takes a lot of the guesswork out for you so that you don't need to go into the year kind of manually trying to put everything into your diary and trying to check in on yourself a few months later when everything is all over the place.

3:24If you know you are not an organised person and you would like to be an organised person, using something like this, I don't care if it's mine, I don't care if it's someone else's, using something like this is going to make a lot of the difference because you are just taking that guess work out and I do think that is very important. If every year you get to the end of the year and you think oh I haven't achieved a lot of the things I want to achieve, change doesn't happen unless change happens. So maybe think about the system you're using as well and at the end of this episode I have put in a specific offer for the first a thousand people who use the code.

3:51So if you're in the market for a personal home page, a digital planner, now is your time to get it. It is a very good offer. So it is time to grab your coffee, grab your tea, grab some water or a matcha, maybe something stronger, a little glass of wine if 2026 is looking a little scary right now and let is get into it. This is how to make 2026 your most intentional year yet. Now I would never usually say this but this is one of those episodes that is made for watching. We have spent a huge amount of time making sure it is as visually interactive and engaging as possible with things like having my planner on screen, talking through what I'm doing at any one time so that we can do it together.

4:25So if you are listening to this just a reminder that we are on YouTube. If you just search working hard pod plan with me you will be able to find us and then you'll be able to follow along but hopefully it will still be super helpful on audio as well.

4:40Okay we are going in steps for this session and the reason for going in steps is so that we have a really clear plan for exactly how to plan and that is a lot of fucking planning but it is important because if you just go in and do the most exciting parts of vision boards and all of that you're not going to have an effective way to go into 2026. So this is based on what actually works and what is actually going to help you reach your goals. So step one is all about reflecting on the past year. Before setting new goals, you have to take a minute to look back because, and this might sound like a quote that they'd sell in TK Maxx, but there is no point planning for the future if you haven't understood the past.

5:15I always start by checking in on last year's goals. What worked, what didn't, whether they still feel right for the person I am now. Reflection is not about shaming yourself for what didn't happen. It is about learning from the year and acknowledging everything that you did achieve even if it wasn't what you would originally plan. So you might go back to 2025 and look at it and there might be a lot you didn't achieve but also lots you did achieve that wasn't even on your original list. So do make sure you are acknowledging that because I think it is very easy not to acknowledge something like that and spend a lot of time kind of self-flagellating on what you didn't actually do right and that's not helpful.

5:52We are making sure we are doing things that are helpful and productive and effective over here. So just spending loads of time being like, oh, I didn't do this, I didn't do this, I didn't do this, isn't important. It is important to look at where you quote unquote failed or fell short from what you wanted to do. It's important to look at what you did, even if it wasn't originally written down. And it's important to look at the things that you did and plan to do and achieved. So to do this, I go through my digital planner and I revisit my goals and I ask myself, what have I achieved this year? What ways of working have I enjoyed?

6:21Which habits have helped me the most? What do I wish I had more time for? And what's stopping those things? And what didn't work and why? And all of this is very important because, again, it's not just about telling yourself off. It's about working out where your current lifestyle is holding you back from the things you actually want to achieve. What's going right? And what other things you want to achieve that maybe don't come up as traditional views of success in your head. like it might be that you actually want to take on more of certain hobbies rather than go for a promotion that you would have wanted last year it will be different for everyone and it will be different at different stages in your life then for all those things that didn't work from the questions you just answered i'll split them into two categories one category is things i could control and one category is things i couldn't control and this helps me know where i need to take accountability and where i just need to give myself some tenderness like maybe i had a super tough year in terms of my health or maybe i had a super tough year in terms of some things that i can't control that just went way off plan and it's not actually helpful spending loads of time fixating on that and being like oh well that year could have been different.

7:22It wasn't. There are things you can control next year and so let's control those next year. Let's not focus on things that you couldn't control this year and that made your plans go slightly differently from expected. So on to step two. This is all about knowing where you're going. So before diving into specific goals I think it's essential to get clear on the big picture of what you want out of life and what you going into 2026, what are your biggest kind of goals and desires and what does a successful life look like to you? If you haven't done a vision board before, I would really recommend doing one.

7:52I like to do one every single year. I have one that I stick at the top of my planner. I haven't made it fully available for you to see here. You can see a nice aesthetic version because I like to keep it to myself until I do it. And I also have one that I make my phone screen when I open my phone. Like it's not my phone screen when I just look at my phone. Otherwise I'd be like to everyone like here, hi. but it is when I actually open my phone. You can do it how you like to do it but I do find it super effective in terms of visualising the life you want to live and I'm not necessarily big on visualisation generally like it's not something that I naturally turn towards.

8:25However this is one version of visualisation that I find really really effective because I do think seeing something makes it really easy to imagine what your life could look like in that way. It's just more exciting than writing something down, to be honest. And it's a great prompt. Whereas if you just had a prompt for your goals in the background of your phone, you're probably not going to feel them in the same way every time you open it. So I like to divide my board into three areas. And I would say one thing that I think people do wrong with a vision board a lot of the time is just making like an aesthetic mood board.

8:53That's lovely, but it's not necessarily that effective. Yeah. I mean, it's lovely. You can do a mood board if you like, but I don't think it's actually part of goal setting or planning for your future. So the three areas I split it into are who I want to be, how I want to live and what I want to do. And I generally find that that covers pretty much everything that I would want for a vision board, for the vision of my future, both in terms of what that looks like, how it feels, all of these things. So to do this, I start with a big brain dump for each area. I like typing out random notes about each part of my life, what kind of house I want to live in, what I want the next year to bring me, what friendships I want to cultivate, experiences I want to have.

9:31I find this super effective in not just looking at your life in terms of work and I do think that I tend to look at my life just in terms of work like that's something that I just tend towards because it's an easier area to set goals in than things like your personal life but I find doing it this way gives me a really even spread across the two and a great tip I have here which you can start for next year is to make use of your saved folders on Instagram so I have folders for all parts of my life whether that is recipes I want to try places I want to visit date nights I want to do or general quotes that have like changed my brain chemistry and I find that super effective.

10:05It's a great place to look for inspiration when you're building your vision board and I often find that building a vision board is something that's really fun that you'll come into at this time of year and be like oh my god yay fun I get to make a big mood board. You actually want to make it effective for all of the things you've thought throughout the year and what you want your life to look like in the future. So I wouldn't actually rush it. You could even spend some time collating things like over the next few weeks you could get into your head that you're going to do the planning now and you're going to spend time saving things over the next few weeks on Pinterest or on Instagram or whatever it might be.

10:33I personally do them from the whole year before so next year you won't have to do that because you'll already have them set up but I do find it super effective when it comes to actually making a vision board that genuinely reflects my next year or the next year that I want rather than doing something that is based on how many things I can find in half an hour. Then as a final stage almost like a fun reward I head to Pinterest and I start pulling from there to get putting together my vision board in my digital planner, what I'll often do is start like a wider vision board on my Pinterest and then I'll be able to distill it down to the things that I really find.

11:03Touch my heart and get me excited about my next year and that's what will end up the vision board. But the visuals do come last because it is about having a clear vision before you just add pretty little pictures that don't mean a huge amount. That is not effective. Okay, now it's time for the big one. This is step three and it's about setting your goals. This is the exciting part if you're someone who loves planning as much as me. So I head over to the yearly goals section in my planner, which I organize into six key categories. And these categories I have refined over the past 10 years of planning my life extensively.

11:33And you can add different ones. We all have different lives. But these are good prompts for me personally to make sure I'm not just setting goals when it comes to like finances and business and work. Because as I've said, I'm pretty good at only doing that. So number one, health, then career and business, relationships, personal development, finances, and attitude and mindset. That feels like a lot. You don't need to have 20 goals for each one but this really helps keep me balanced. So as I said I'm not just focusing on one area and this is the bit that I'd repeat every single year. So you have to make the goals you are setting smart.

12:07That is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound. And this is not to make this exercise really boring. It's actually to make your goal setting more effective and it's going to make reaching your goals a lot easier. Let me explain. So instead of having, for example, eat healthier, you could instead put in the goal of cook a home, cook dinner three times a week. And instead of be better with money, you could have something like check my spending every Sunday or review my finances every Sunday. The more specific you get, the easier it is to actually track your progress and not just feel good about it, but actually reach your goals.

12:41If you think about it, putting eat healthier down or be better with money as a goal, you can never reach that goal because those goalposts are always going to be sliding. You don't know. It's very easy to forget how unhealthily you are eating at this time of year. You need to set things that are actually measurable and that you can tick off. You cannot tick off eat healthier because with any one week, you're going to have a chocolate bar here or there or say yes to some birthday cake at work or whatever it might be. It is not an effective way to plan your life if you are constantly judging it on arbitrary things, if you're constantly judging it on things that cannot be judged because they are not measurable.

13:14So just do not write anything down. that is not measurable and that does not follow that smart structure. You can start jotting your goals down but then you have to go back through and make sure they're smart otherwise you can't actually physically achieve your goals because they are not something that is achievable because you cannot tick them off and I think this is really the key to setting goals that you will actually achieve because so many goals are just wishes without a plan you can put that on a t-shirt and I was really conscious of this when we were redesigning the digital planner because it used to be a lot of lists of yearly goals and I wanted to make a key feature of this something to make your goals more tangible so that you could actually take the steps to achieve them.

13:49So the way we've set this up is we've actually called these milestones and this is something that I was really missing in the past few years of my planning. So I've added into my own goal setting and then added into the planner. So when you set a goal you essentially add milestones towards achieving that goal and you add them into your planner and then basically you can tick them off. So if your goal for example was to spend one weekend offline every quarter you could set a milestone so that each time you have an offline weekend you just tick it off and that automatically updates your progress on your yearly goals tab.

14:16Not only is this motivating, it also makes you realise if your goals are realistic because you know deep down if you can actually achieve these milestones by the points you've set them. Now onto step four, which is tracking your habits. Here is the catch, which I speak about all the time on this podcast. You will get a dopamine hit every time you set a goal, but goals without accountability and goals without a plan don't actually get you anywhere. And that is where habit tracking comes in. This is literally the most crucial part of the process. And this is something that you will be doing more as soon as we start 2026 rather than right now.

14:46So it probably feels less fun in your head. You've probably just listened to that and just been like, oh, okay, that's not a fun thing to do today. No, it's not a fun thing to do today. And not everything's about dopamine. And you need to note that not everything's about dopamine. Otherwise, you're not actually going to achieve this plan. So I've done a whole episode before on the magic of habit theory, which I'll link in the show notes. But essentially, your year is a collection of 365 days. And the little habits you practice daily are what will see you make actual change throughout the year and keep you consistent.

15:11The large majority of big life changes do not come about through one action. They are from cumulative actions that you do every day or every other day or every week. So the first step you need to do here is to now distill your goals into habits. This could be the time you wake up on weekdays. This could be what you have for breakfast. This could be how many days you work late or your step count. It's basically all the little things that will feed into your wider goals. And if you're unsure of how your goals can actually become habits, depending on how you feel about chat GPT or other AI. These are super helpful to use to break your goals down into habits and then you can feed those into a habit tracker in your planner like I do.

15:47I personally like using a habit tracker so that I can literally see how I'm doing and see how I can also get the dopamine every single day from my yearly goals rather than just at the end of the year. It keeps me accountable but it also keeps me motivated when I can see how the small things are adding up over time. So another thing I really wanted to do to again help with that dopamine hit as you go through the year rather than just looking at the end goal is that I've added streaks to the digital planner and I love it because personally I don't want to be someone who will miss my streak so I'm more likely to like take my greens just to be able to tick something off but the whole idea of that is that you are getting dopamine hits from your habits rather than just from the big things so it is actually based on habit theory you can see that you're taking them off every day so you get that reward but you don't have to use a planner at all as I've said this is about how you plan and this is about how you approach your yearly goals so when I wanted to go all in on workouts before my wedding.

16:35I literally wrote myself a little like star chart type thing on a whiteboard in my gym and I crossed off every single workout I did and that was just as effective. But that's kind of where the inspiration for this comes along. It's very important to give yourself the daily reward that you would otherwise only have from reaching the big goals. Otherwise you're never going to reach the big goals because they come from doing the daily thing. Now on to step five and this is all about staying consistent. Now this is the biggest warning I will give you in this episode. Once the plan is set, this is not like a I'll see you next year situation.

17:07You need to check in on your goals every single month. I personally do this to see how I'm doing and adjusting them as my life changes. Just because you're going into January, that doesn't mean that that is the only time your goals can change. I think it is such a lie that changing your goals halfway through the year is cheating. Like flexibility is key and some months are busier, some are slower. Some will give you entire mindset changes on what you actually want your life to look like and that is completely fine. I think it's just about knowing whether you are the type of person who changes your goals every two months.

17:36Like then you probably need to take it down a lot. But having view changes and wanting to change what you're actually achieving out of your year because an opportunity came up or whatever it might be, that's more than fine. That's actually a very, very effective way to live your life. I also make sure to break down my big yearly goals into monthly targets and then smaller weekly actions. So I always feel like I'm moving forward and the way I do this is that I set sub goals each month as part of my yearly goals section and they all link together, which means that you're never forgetting your yearly goals because you can't go into your monthly planner without seeing them.

18:03But again, you could do this however you want. You could get to the last Sunday of every month and you could go back and look at your monthly and yearly goals and tick certain things off. Whatever works for you. This personally works for me because I literally can't forget it. And the aim is not to sit and forget. So anything you can do to make your goals visible, whether it's a planner or a poster on your wardrobe door, anything like that is progress. Because the real truth is that consistency does not mean doing everything perfectly. It just means showing up for yourself over and over and over again, even when you don't feel like it.

18:33And I'll say it time and time again, that is where the real progress happens. And in case it's not blatantly obvious at this stage, this entire process is based on the fact that we are so good at setting goals and we are not necessarily great at making those happen. And the reason for that is because when you set a goal, as we've talked about on this podcast before, you fall in love with the version of yourself that you were going to become in your head. Like you're like, I'll set these goals and I'll be this type of person. So you get really excited about that. It's less exciting doing the actual work every day.

19:04It's just not exciting at all. And so it's really easy to fall off on things like this when you haven't necessarily effectively planned and put things in place to make sure you are coming back to see things time and time again. 10 % of the battle of having a good year is sitting down and planning the year. The other 90 % comes in the year and how you check in on your goals and how you measure your goals and how you make your habits work and all of these different things. So as much as this video will give you a huge dopamine hit if you actually follow it and you spend time writing out your goals and doing your vision board and all of this, don't cheat yourself by letting that be the only thing you've done because that's just like an arts and crafts day.

19:45And as fun as that is, you are here because you want to achieve certain things in 2026. So let's actually make that happen. That is how I've designed this whole episode is trying to make sure that you can make this happen by using the actual science behind habit theory and things like making goals measurable and making them obvious and all of these different things. That is my planning routine for 2026. Hopefully this gives you some ideas to plan your year in a way that feels exciting, but also doable. And if you found this episode helpful, please do subscribe. It honestly makes such a difference and helps us keep bringing even more great episodes in 2026.

20:16and if you're on Spotify head to the Q &A section below and share your best planning tips or hacks to help the whole community I would love to read them and see how you're getting ready for 2026 too