A new year means new opportunities, and it’s the perfect time to take on new challenges. In this article, you’ll find 17 inspiring and diverse ideas for New Year’s resolutions.
To turn your resolutions into a routine, you should always start small. This increases the chances that you’ll stick with your challenge in the long term.
- Try new recipes: Cook a new recipe once a week. If you’re short on ideas, grab a cookbook and let chance decide.
- Strengthen your back: Do a few exercises every day to strengthen your back and prevent back pain. A great app for this is Perfect Posture.
- Meditate: If you’re feeling stressed, try to meditate for a few minutes every day to find inner peace. A good meditation app with a wide selection of meditations on various topics and in various lengths is Serenity.
- Learn a new language: With just fifteen minutes a day, you can learn a new language in small steps. The app Duolingo is great for this because it allows you to learn and practice all aspects of a language in small, playful exercises.
- Screen-free time: Statistics show that we spend more than 10 hours a day in front of screens. If you work in an office, it’s probably even more. A good New Year’s resolution could be to try to reduce your screen time. In our article, you’ll find some ideas on how to achieve this.
- Learn something: Try to learn something new every day. It can be something useful in life (e.g., taking a lesson in an online course to acquire a specific skill) or simply gaining new knowledge (e.g., reading the article of the day on Wikipedia or subscribing to the Now I Know Newsletter).
- Reduce endless feeds: Nowadays, many people spend endless hours scrolling through endless feeds, whether they are news sites, video platforms, or social media. These platforms are designed to keep the user engaged for as long as possible. The problem is that the value of these platforms is very limited, and you end up wasting a lot of your life’s time. Try to reduce the time you spend on such platforms. For example, set a goal to spend only 5 minutes a day/week on your social media feed.
- Take a photo every day: Document each day with a photo. It can be a selfie of yourself or a photo related to a specific theme. You can also choose a new theme every month or week.
- Lift weights: To strengthen your arm muscles, take some dumbbells and lift weights every day. Start with 50 reps and gradually increase. If the weights become too light, choose a higher weight class. Even on days when you’re not motivated, commit to lifting weights for at least one minute – you’ll see, it will increase over time.
- Walk for 0.5 hours per day: Physical activity is always good and keeps us fit. Commit to walking for at least half an hour every day or achieving a certain number of steps. To accumulate steps faster, you can implement small habits, such as parking further away, taking short walks instead of using public transport or a car.
- Try new things: Doing new things is important to prevent your life from becoming monotonous. It also helps you anchor your memories in time, preventing your life from passing by unnoticed. Try to do new things and add variety to your life regularly. These can be small things like changing an ingredient in a recipe, but also more significant experiences like visiting a new city, learning new things, or meeting new people. You can make lists of new things you want to do every week or month to make it practical and plan your time accordingly.
- Write a diary: We often forget the things we experience quickly. Therefore, keeping a diary can be a great challenge. It can be minimal, in the form of keywords, detailed, or simply in the form of photos that reflect your day.
- Be creative: Try to do something small and creative every day that enriches you in some way. It can be writing a section of a book, drawing a mini-illustration, or simply creatively capturing a moment with your smartphone camera.
- Savings challenge: Are you always short on cash, want to save up for something, or put some money aside? Then a savings challenge could be a good New Year’s resolution for you. For example, you could set a maximum daily budget that you want to spend, or you can try to find two things in your life every week where you can save.
- Do good: Doing more good can’t hurt the world. Get involved in volunteer work or simply try to bring a smile to someone’s face every day.
- Social contacts: Has your social life hit a plateau? Then it could be a cool challenge to refresh your contacts or meet new people. For example, you can set a goal to meet with at least one person every week or write to one person.
- Declutter: Commit to getting rid of things you no longer need and removing unnecessary clutter from your life. You can set a goal to get rid of one item every day or collect a total of 100 items.
