The enthusiasm of January 1st rarely lasts all year. When motivation fades, following through on your 2026 goals takes more than the memory of a resolution.
Research suggests that a concrete plan can help. Studies covering activities from exercise and voting to attending a colonoscopy appointment have found that specifying when and where you will act makes follow-through more likely.
The templates below turn common New Year’s goals into practical plans, whether you want to manage your money, cook at home, or launch a side business.
Make the Templates Your Own
Each template combines initial setup tasks with daily, weekly, or monthly actions that help establish lasting habits.
Import a template, then adapt it: retain useful tasks, revise others, and add details and due dates, particularly recurring ones, that suit your schedule. You can also share goal projects with an accountability partner for mutual support.
One lesson from 2026 is that rigid plans struggle when circumstances change. Review your goals weekly, assess your progress, and update anything that no longer fits your life.
Put Your Finances in Order
Money worries can make other priorities harder to pursue. Organizing your finances can free up attention for your personal and professional goals.
Created in partnership with budgeting app YNAB, short for You Need a Budget, this template offers a step-by-step approach to organizing personal finances, reducing debt, reaching savings targets, and making budgeting a habit.
Make Home Cooking a Habit
Cooking at home can benefit both your physical and financial health, but it may feel daunting if you don’t enjoy cooking itself. The aim is a manageable system that fits your life, not a complicated routine.
This template covers worthwhile basic tools, an efficiently organized grocery list, advance meal planning, and simple, tasty go-to recipes for evenings when you have little energy left.
Set Boundaries With Technology
Technology helps us stay connected, learn, develop our careers, and enjoy ourselves. It can also undermine focus, mental health, and self-esteem. The beginning of 2026 offers an opportunity to keep its benefits while limiting its place in daily life.
This template includes ways to step away from devices and use them more mindfully, alongside downtime and self-care tasks.
Build a Reading Routine
Books offer a screen-free way to discover imagined worlds and understand the real one. If you want less scrolling and more reading in 2026, this template helps you find appealing books, choose approachable reading goals, and make accountability enjoyable.
The aim is both a year’s worth of completed books and the groundwork for a lifelong habit.
Get a Side Business Started
A side business can help you develop skills, strengthen your resume, and earn extra money. If you’ve been imagining an online store or another venture, this checklist helps turn that idea into action.
Use it to reserve time on evenings and weekends, move your passion project forward, and prepare to launch.
Bring Order to Your Home
Clear crowded cupboards, countertops, and closets by making deliberate choices about what to keep and what to remove.
The template guides you through decluttering, sorting, and cleaning room by room, helping you establish an organization system in which everything has a place.
Keep Track of Goals and Everyday Tasks
Major ambitions share your schedule with ordinary obligations: putting out the garbage on Wednesdays, remembering Grandma’s birthday call, and booking that postponed colonoscopy. Keeping all of it in your head can leave you overwhelmed.
This template helps you establish and maintain a system for tracking everything from long-term goals to small household chores.
Try Monthly Healthy-Habit Challenges
A month-long challenge can feel more manageable than a year-long commitment. It also brings novelty: twelve opportunities to begin again rather than just one.
This template contains 12 small daily-habit ideas intended to improve well-being and productivity. Practice each habit for a full month, using the Don’t Break the Chain method to track progress and build a streak.
Keep Your Priorities Visible
Goals often slip from view within days or weeks. A useful tracking system connects them to everyday actions, keeping them relevant on July 16th as well as January 1st.
The Goals Tracker template provides a high-level view of your priorities throughout the year. Use it to connect daily tasks with larger aims, monitor progress, adjust to changing circumstances, and decline—or postpone—activities that don’t support your current goals.
Share screenshots of your 2026 goal projects with the Todoist Team on Twitter (X) or Instagram.
By the Todoist Team
