Happy new year!

I hope 2026 brings you new projects and growth as a filmmaker. And hopefully even money from your skills too. As they say in China on new years: “I hope you get rich.”

This time last year, I wrote an issue about a different approach I was going to try for setting goals in 2025…

TLDR: Instead of setting routines or creating new habits, I just reinforced to myself in the beginning of my daily journal entries what type of person I was, because that type of person would naturally do the things I wanted to do.

Today, I’m going to tell you how that actually worked out, and what I’m doing to steer the ship in 2026.

Results of the 2025 Method

So did it work?

Not at all.

As is usual with New Year’s resolutions/plans – the first few weeks went great. I was journaling every day without fail, and topping each entry with the mantras about the parts of myself I wanted to reinforce (”I love screenwriting” blah blah).

But soon it started to feel silly. Especially when my actions weren’t aligning with what I was typing. When things get busy, writing is usually the first thing to drop on my daily to-do list. Yet there I still was, writing about how much I LOVE writing everyday.

I started feeling like I was trying to brainwash myself, and I lost faith in the process.

Then, my journaling habit started faltering, and I was no longer doing it every day.

At that point, everything fell off the rails, and none of my goals came to fruition with consistency.

Damn. And I really thought it would work. What a whiff!

Lesson learned though.

Here’s what I’m aiming to accomplish this year, and the simple way I’m going to try to do it.

Goals for 2026

First and foremost – I still need to make writing a daily practice. It’s by far the biggest lever I can pull to get where I want to go. And the more I practice and improve my own writing, the more I can share with you the useful things I’ve learned.

…Unfortunately, it’s hard to do!

But like going to the gym, the more into the routine of writing you get, the more you enjoy it. So if I can build even a little bit of consistency there, I’ll be fine.

Speaking of going to the gym, that’s my other goal. 2025 was easily the most sedentary year of my life. Yikes, I can’t be pickling my own body at 36 years old – the wheels are going to fall off any day.

So at this point I don’t care what kinds of workouts I do, the plan I stick will be better than the optimal one I never do.

Same with writing.

The Plan

I’m keeping it dead simple this time around.

No hacking my own brain into loving these things.

I’m just going to focus on consistency over quality.

This is basically the Atomic Habits approach, or the “No Zero Days” method I talked about in this video. By doing the smallest amount of each of my goals every single day – you’re keeping momentum moving in the right direction.

If you do a single push up in a day, that’s not a great workout.

However, you still made time for it, you made the effort, and you got just a little bit stronger. Do that every day, and that’s 365 pushups you wouldn’t have done otherwise.

Likewise with writing.

If you only make time to open your Notes app and type out one sentence – “short film about the worst surprise birthday party imaginable” – that counts.

Open that note up again the next day and add another line to it (”House seems empty bc everyone he knows is hiding in it, but he’s going on a racist tirade as he enters, they hear him inviting his mistress over, learn he’s stealing from work, etc etc”).

Worst case scenario – you slowly write a new film, one sentence at a time.

But usually, once you make the effort to start – you wind up continuing and doing much more.

So you just need to force yourself to do the absolute bare minimum every day. That makes it unintimidating to get started, and getting started is the hardest part.

New Year, New Film?

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