Looking 4 Adventures

How I celebrate my NYEs

Yesterday night at 11 pm Bas and I sat on top of our rooftop terrace in our hotel, listening to the party going on below us in the city of Galle,  Sri Lanka, with one early stray firecracker here and there and I put on Wicked songs until a few minutes before 12.

When the clock ticked into the new year we wished each other a happy new year, kissed and watched the fireworks around us with a little bit of awe.

We had spent the evening eating at a nice Italian restaurant, having some wine, good food and better company.

I think in most years that we have celebrated the change of the year, not once did we not enjoy it. I don’t know if there’s kind of a secret sauce to it, that we choose activities or locations that are just working for us, or if it’s the lack of expectations or just the good company.

And we also don’t always go for the things that are as calm as last night but choose experiences instead like watching the Taipei 101 fireworks from up close like last year after way too many cocktails and sake.

It’s kind of a “where are we?” And “what is the nicest thing we can do here?” assessment with a sprinkle of “what’s the mood today?”

And if the most important thing for you is the company you have, then any new year’s eve is a good new year’s eve.

The change of the year, new year’s resolutions or annual goals

I typically set myself goals for the new year. I have done so because a friend inspired me to do it and it’s now the third year, I intend on being specific about my goals for the coming year.

It’s not so much new year’s resolutions but according to a study I’ve read, if you are setting goals for yourself in January, you are more likely to actually follow up on them throughout the whole year instead of setting them in May.

If you set them, write them down and share them, you create accountability and that alone makes you more committed to the goal itself.

Now, here’s the thing, I’m dreading a fine line here, because I am fully aware that I’m dealing with the fun condition that is called demand avoidance, and if I set myself goals, I need to be incredibly careful to not trigger my demand avoidance. So far this wasn’t too much of an issue except for with the last year’s goal of trying to learn playing the ocarina. That failed miserably!

At work one of my dear colleagues is doing sessions on goal setting and he has shared his format with me that I am using since the beginning of last year. It actually focuses on several areas of life you want to see improvements in.

I used to forget some areas where I was unhappy but I didn’t set myself goals in those because I wasn’t intentional about them. But then I only looked at, for example, goals in the area of health but neglected family or social life that certainly deserved my attention equally if not more.

The areas of life that I focus on are the following:

• Health & Wellbeing
• Career Development
• Personal Growth
• Relationships
• Family
• Finance
• Recreation & Leisure
• Home & Environment

For each of those focus areas I developed either one or several goals for 2026.

I know this looks extensive and a lot, but I need to be specific if I actually want to see improvements in the areas and this is working quite well for me.

I want to also emphasise that whichever way you want to measure your success is valid. Nobody else but you can define what counts and what does not.

I give you an example. When I talk about workouts, I also talk walking (low impact workouts) because for me, they count. If you ask another person, they might not count them but I see this as valid contribution.

Okay, so here is my list (as inspiration if you will or as a way to hold myself accountable)

Let’s start with Health & Wellbeing:

• I want to work out 4-5 times a week (BJJ, treadmill, swimming, hiking or similar)
• I want to earn my second stripe in BJJ & participate in one tournament
• I want to eat fruit 3 times a week
• I want to have one wholefood meal a day
• I want to give myself 75 tokens for drinking days, so I only drink on 75 days plus 1 token extra if I do a 1.500 kcal workout
• I want to drink at least 2 liters of water every day

This overall should lead to a loss of 10kg of fat while retaining the muscle mass.

I want to have a body composition scan once more in November to see where I am and if there was any improvement from when I did this test in November 2025.

The reason I focus on this a lot in this year, is that I carry a lot of weight around while being in general really healthy. I love that my health is great but I’m sometimes still a little discouraged when there’s no shift in size or on the scale. This is also a thing I want to see a change on.

For the area of Career Development I have the following goals:

• Complete one specialised training relevant to my role
• Deliver one internal knowledge-sharing session
• Use a professional clarity checklist to reduce misunderstandings (this is quite important as I have had  some trouble setting boundaries in the past on which tasks I am responsible for and which tasks should be delegated to others)

Actually this is kind of a shoe-in goal because I do these trainings and knowledge sharing things so often that I can’t even count them. But I do want to be more intentional about them and not do them just because others are asking me.

For the area of Personal Growth, I have the following goals:

• I want to hold a 10 minutes casual conversation in Dutch by December
• I want to read 6.500 pages in fabulous books in 2026
• I want to paint 1 piece of art once every 2 months
• I want to update the blog 2 times each month

I love this area because it actually lets me focus on my language skills but also creativity. Because my job is more technical and less creative, I wanted to have some aspects in my life still reflecting a more artsy creative approach to life.

In the area of Relationships, I have the following goals:

• I want to join 1 social event once a month
• I want to meet up with colleagues at least once per month
• I want to have two friendship contact points per month (at least 1 call or proper meet up once per month)

For the area of Family, I set myself the following goals:

• I want to call my family at least once every 6-8 weeks for at least 30 minutes
• I want to visit twice throughout the year

Both of those core areas, Relationships and Family are very important to me. When I checked for how satisfied I was in those, it actually scored quite low. I started to intentionally focus on them last year and feel like it has improved my relationship with my family at home in Germany quite a lot. Because I am living far away, it is so important to visit or call or make contact as much as possible, so that there’s still a connection.

For the focus area Finance it’s the following:

• Save 10 percent of my salary at least 8 months of the year
• Reach 50% of savings increase by December 2026
• Track monthly spending totals

This is actually a tricky one because I have set myself financial targets over the past few years that I have never reached but I hope that I will be able to keep this a little more in line throughout 2026.

For Recreation & Leisure I have the following goals in 2026:

• Do the 10k in Pyongyang in April and finish it within the set time limit
• Participate in the Kirirom Ultramarathon in November 2026
• Travelling to 8-10 new countries
• Visit 6 art galleries or exhibitions
• Attend 10 concerts
• Perfect 3 cookies recipes

I love setting myself not only challenges in this area but also some relaxation goals. So, it can be quite a diverse mix depending on what you actually like doing.

And last but not least Home & Environment:

• I want to create 3 new art pieces for our home
• I want to paint a large scale watercolour piece (A2)
• I want to join a weekend pottery workshop
• I want to do a quarterly home refresh (plants, fabrics, reorganising)
• I want to create and maintain an arts & blogging corner in the apartment

These are the total madness of goals for 2026. It’s admittedly a lot and it’s very detailed.

Setting these goals is only the first step though. Keeping up with them and actually following through is much more difficult.

I have had some apps that worked quite well for me, like the app Habits that lets me follow up on my page count when reading or my tokens for the year.

I also downloaded an app called Me+ that helps with the hydration but is a little annoying and kind of triggers my Demand Avoidance, but I have yet to get rid of it.

I track workouts with my fitbit but I have just switched to the whoop and will probably continue using the whoop rather than the fitbit for the future because then I can also track BJJ properly.

That’s pretty much all about this topic.

Maybe to summarise:

I’m intentional on purpose because it works for me. If you think it works for you, let me know in the comments, and try it. Also, maybe a small thing but something powerful. We often focus on the things we haven’t reached. Last year, I focused a lot on the fact that I did not reach my quota of 4 times working out in May even though I did reach it in most of the other months.

I think we should much rather look at the other 11 months than on this one month where life was a little too hectic to actually make this happen. The switch in focus kind of recalibrates on how we perceive a success rather than seeing it as a failure. But hey, who am I to talk? All or nothing approach is written all over my neurotype.