Quick note from me
Before 2026 properly starts, I wanted to share how I’m actually planning this year.
In 2025, I realised something important. Tracking goals, metrics, and patterns about myself brought more joy, not less. In my work and in my personal life. And it also led to better results.
It’s the same principle we use in design. When you observe, test assumptions, and look at real data, decisions get clearer. The same applies to your career and life. If you’re curious about this mindset, it’s closely aligned with Designing Your Life or Tiny Experiments.
I know this can sound intimidating. Who wants to track themselves? But in practice, it changed a lot for me.
Daily energy tracking helped me spot burnout early
Content analytics checks led to 10M Instagram views in November
This became my strongest career year so far
Yes, I hustled. But it was intentional, not chaotic.
So don’t copy everything below. Start small.
One tracking habit
One planning layer
One simple to-do system
Just like in design, look at your career from two levels. The big picture and the daily reality. More work works until it doesn’t. At that point, clarity beats effort.
Story outline
Level 01: Planning is about awareness
Level 02: Daily and weekly tracking
Level 03: Monthly reviews are for decisions
Level 04: Quarterly reviews are about experiments
Level 05: Yearly review is narrative
Level 06: Planning pages are not task lists
Level 07: Execution lives somewhere else
Level 01
Planning is about awareness
Every year I start planning by looking backwards, because plans only work when they’re grounded in reality, not ambition.
Before I plan anything new, I want awareness of:
When I feel energised vs drained
What type of work compounds
What creates stress without results
What I keep avoiding
What actually moves the needle
If you skip this step, every plan becomes wishful thinking.
Page with all reviews I do
Level 02
Daily and weekly tracking
The foundation of my system is simple. I track signals, not productivity.
Through a CEO diary and weekly tracking, I capture:
What I worked on
One small win
One pain point and why
One thing I learned about myself
Cash flow awareness
Content or work performance
One word for the week: calm, chaotic, focused, reactive
I’m not trying to optimise here, but to recognise patterns. Patterns help me understand myself, my business and my life.
My CEO Diary (daily review system)
Level 03
Monthly reviews are for decisions
Monthly planning is not about doing more next month. It’s about deciding what changes.
Once a month, I check:
Am I on track with goals?
What worked and should continue?
What clearly didn’t work?
What needs to be adjusted or removed?
Then I make 1 or 2 decisions, for example:
Slow something down
Double down on one channel
Drop a commitment
Change the focus
My monthly review setup
Level 04
Quarterly reviews are about experiments
Quarterly reviews help me separate effort from outcomes and assumptions from reality.
At quarterly level, I look at:
What experiments I ran
What I expected to happen
What actually happened
Which metrics moved
What constraints showed up
This removes self-blame. Something didn’t work? Good. That’s data. Planning works when it’s treated like experimentation.
Level 05
Yearly review is narrative
The yearly review answers a different question than weekly or monthly planning. It’s about meaning, not metrics.
I reflect on:
What this year was really about
What energy dominated
What experiments defined it
What changed permanently
Who I became this year
This matters because 2026 should respond to the truth of 2025, not ignore it. That’s how planning becomes grounded instead of performative.
Sneak peek from my top level yearly review
Level 06
Planning pages are not task lists
My planning pages exist to give direction, not instructions. Each level answers a different question:
Year
One word or theme
A narrative sentence
What I’m explicitly not doing
Quarter
One main problem I’m solving
Why it matters
Experiments I’ll run
Success metric
Acceptable trade-offs
Month
North star
One top outcome
One experiment in focus
What’s deprioritised on purpose
This keeps planning light, intentional, and realistic.
My planning page (not a to-do list)
Level 07
Execution lives somewhere else
Planning and execution shouldn’t compete for attention, so I separate them on purpose.
Planning lives in Notion
Execution lives in execution boards
Daily tasks live in Todoist and paper
For 2026, I’m intentionally bringing paper back.
Muji calendar
Midori notebooks
Simple daily lists
Paper slows me down in a good way. It keeps me present and prevents over-tracking. Sometimes the most strategic move is removing a tool.
My collection of Japanese stationary for 2026
Want help with your UX portfolio? 🎁
Build your UX Portfolio with this course
Book a portfolio strategy call with me
Happy New Year 2026 🎉
If you want this as a template for the next year, hit reply and let me know.
Keep designing ✨
Aneta
