I spent most of 2024 making lists.
Goals for the year. Habits to build. Books to read. Courses to take. By February, I had a beautifully color-coded spreadsheet and absolutely nothing to show for it. Sound familiar?
What I’ve figured out since then: a remarkable year isn’t built on lengthy to-do lists or perfectly optimized morning routines. It comes from a handful of things done consistently, with intention, over twelve months.
Not fifteen. Not fifty. A handful.
What follows are the twelve things that actually move the needle. Some are backed by decades of research. Others are just patterns I’ve noticed in people who seem to squeeze more life out of their years than the rest of us. None of them require you to wake up at 5am or become a different person.
You just have to start.
1. Pick One Goal That Terrifies You a Little
Not ten goals. One.
The kind that makes your stomach flip when you say it out loud. Running a marathon when you currently can’t run a mile. Starting the business you’ve been talking about for three years. Writing the book that’s been stuck in your head.
Most people set goals they already know they can achieve. Safe, comfortable goals that don’t require them to stretch. And then they wonder why January feels exactly like the previous January.
Researchers have found that specific, challenging goals outperform easy or vague ones almost every time. “I’ll write a 300-page novel by December” lights up different parts of your brain than “I’ll try to write more.” The ambitious version forces you to plan, to prioritize, to actually become someone capable of doing the thing.
That’s the real gift of a scary goal. It’s not about the finish line. It’s about who you become chasing it.
Pick one thing that excites you and scares you in equal measure. Write it down somewhere you’ll see it daily. Break it into quarterly milestones so it doesn’t feel impossible. Then protect time for it like it matters, because it does.
Related: 10 Atomic Habits Hacks That Actually Work
2. Build One Keystone Habit
Over 40% of what you do each day isn’t a conscious decision. It’s habit. Automatic. Your morning coffee ritual, whether you exercise or scroll when you get home, what you reach for when you’re stressed. These tiny repeated actions are quietly running your life.
A keystone habit is one that creates a domino effect. You change one thing, and other things start shifting on their own.
For a lot of people, exercise is the classic example. When people start working out consistently, even just once or twice a week, they often start eating better without trying. They procrastinate less. Sleep improves. Stress drops. One habit cascades into five or six improvements across different areas of life.
It doesn’t need to be exercise though. A 10-minute morning walk works. Making your bed. Cooking dinner at home instead of ordering out. Meditating for five minutes before you look at your phone.
Choose one. Start embarrassingly small. Do it every single day until it stops requiring willpower.
If you want to understand why this works, Atomic Habits breaks it down better than anything else I’ve read. The core idea is that habits compound. Tiny daily actions, repeated over months, create massive results that feel almost magical when you look back.
Related: 15 Daily Habits That Will Change Your Life
3. Do Something That Scares You (Regularly)
When’s the last time you did something that made your heart race a little? Not skydiving or bungee jumping necessarily. Just… something outside your usual safe zone.
Volunteering to lead a project at work when you usually stay quiet. Starting a conversation with someone who intimidates you. Signing up for the class where you’ll definitely be the worst one there. Saying yes to the trip even though you don’t have all the details figured out.
Growth lives in discomfort. We all know this intellectually, but most of us spend our days optimizing for comfort anyway.
Something worth sitting with: research consistently shows that people regret the things they didn’t do far more than the things they did, even when those things didn’t work out perfectly. Missed opportunities haunt us. Failed attempts rarely do.
So when you’re on the fence about something this year, ask yourself which you’ll regret more. Not doing it? Or doing it and maybe stumbling?
Usually the answer is obvious.
4. Actually Take Care of Your Body
I know. You’ve heard this a thousand times. Move more. Sleep better. Eat real food.
But this is why it actually matters for having a remarkable year: everything else on this list requires energy. Big goals require energy. Showing up for relationships requires energy. Being creative requires energy. If you’re running on four hours of sleep and gas station coffee, none of the other stuff is sustainable.
Nobody’s saying you need to become a gym person. Find movement you don’t hate and do it a few times a week. Walking counts. Dancing in your kitchen counts. Playing with your kids at the park counts.
Sleep is non-negotiable though. Seven to eight hours. Protect it fiercely. Everything looks harder and feels worse when you’re exhausted, and everything feels more possible when you’re rested.
One thing that’s made a noticeable difference for my sleep quality is taking magnesium glycinate about an hour before bed. Nothing dramatic, just deeper sleep and waking up actually feeling recovered instead of groggy.
Think of yourself as an athlete training for the sport of your own life. You need fuel, rest, and recovery to perform. This isn’t selfish. It’s foundational.
Related: Mel Robbins’ Morning Routine
5. Build a Daily Reset Practice
This combines two things that research keeps pointing to: gratitude and mindfulness. But instead of treating them as separate habits to add to your already-long list, think of them as one daily reset.
Five to ten minutes. That’s it.
Could be sitting quietly with your coffee before anyone else wakes up, noticing your breath, letting your mind settle. A short meditation using an app works. So does writing down three things you’re grateful for in a journal before bed.
Don’t overthink the how. What you’re building is a daily pause where you stop reacting and start noticing. Your thoughts. Your body. What’s actually going well that you’ve been too busy to appreciate.
People who practice gratitude regularly report better sleep, lower rates of depression, and stronger relationships. Meditation has been shown to reduce anxiety and help people feel less hijacked by their emotions. Combined, you’re basically training your brain to be calmer and more focused.
When things get hard, this reset becomes your anchor. And when things are going well, it helps you actually notice instead of rushing through to the next thing.
6. Invest in Your People
If you do nothing else on this list, do this one.
Harvard ran an 80-year study tracking what makes people happy and healthy over a lifetime. Eighty years. Multiple generations. Thousands of data points.
The single biggest predictor of long-term happiness and health? The quality of close relationships. Not money. Not career success. Not fitness or genetics. Relationships.
People with strong social connections lived longer, stayed healthier, and reported higher satisfaction with their lives. People who were lonely showed faster cognitive decline and earlier health problems.
In practice, that means being intentional.
Schedule time for the people who matter. Actual time, on the calendar. Weekly dinners with your partner where phones go away. Monthly catch-ups with close friends. Regular calls with family members you’ve been meaning to reconnect with.
Listen more than you talk. When you feel appreciation, say it out loud instead of just thinking it. Don’t let conflicts fester into something bigger. And show up for the small stuff, not just the big moments.
When you look back on this year, the moments with people you love will stand out more than any achievement or acquisition.
7. Become a Beginner at Something
Think back to the last time you were genuinely bad at something.
Not just mediocre, but actually bad. Fumbling and confused and starting from zero.
Being a beginner is uncomfortable. We spend most of our adult lives building expertise, getting good at things, avoiding situations where we might look foolish. But something valuable happens when you let yourself be a novice again.
Find something you’ve always been curious about and dive in. A language, an instrument, pottery, coding, woodworking, photography, baking bread. Doesn’t matter what, as long as it’s genuinely new to you.
Research on older adults found that people who spent a few months learning multiple new skills showed significant improvements in memory and cognitive function. Learning literally keeps your brain younger and more adaptable.
But beyond the brain benefits, there’s something freeing about giving yourself permission to be terrible at something. To fumble around without pressure. To make ugly pottery or play wrong notes and keep going anyway.
A year from now, you might have a new skill. Or you might have abandoned it for something else that grabbed your attention. Either way, you’ll have reminded yourself that you’re still capable of growth, which is worth more than the skill itself.
8. Give Your Time to Something Bigger
Volunteering sounds like something you should do. Which is exactly why most people don’t actually do it.
But the selfish reason to help others? It makes you happier.
Studies consistently show that people who volunteer report higher life satisfaction. Acts of kindness trigger dopamine release, sometimes called the “helper’s high.” And it pulls you out of your own head, which is often the best cure for the low-grade anxiety of modern life.
Find something that connects to what you actually care about. If you’re passionate about literacy, tutoring kids or helping at the library might feel meaningful. Animal lovers can always find shelter dogs that need walking. Food banks are chronically understaffed if food insecurity is something that gets under your skin.
Even a few hours a month makes a difference. Both for the cause and for your own sense of purpose.
9. Put Your Phone Down
You already know you spend too much time on your phone. Everyone does. The question is whether you’ll actually do something about it this year.
Heavy social media use is correlated with higher rates of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and self-esteem issues. Not surprisingly, given that most platforms are literally engineered to hijack your attention and keep you scrolling.
I’m not saying delete everything and become a digital hermit. But you do need boundaries.
Try a few things and see what sticks:
Get your phone out of the bedroom entirely. Buy an actual alarm clock. Leave your phone charging in another room overnight. The difference in how you start and end each day is massive.
Meals should be phone-free zones. With family, with friends, even when you’re eating alone. Just… eat. Notice your food. Have conversations that don’t get interrupted every thirty seconds.
Most phones let you set app time limits now. Try capping social media at 30 minutes a day and watch how fast you burn through it.
If you want to go deeper on why this matters, Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport is worth reading. It’s not preachy, just practical.
The hours you reclaim from mindless scrolling can go toward literally anything else on this list. More time for relationships, hobbies, rest, movement. Whatever you’ve been saying you don’t have time for.
10. Plan Experiences, Not Purchases
What do you actually remember from last year?
Probably not the things you bought. The new jacket, the kitchen gadget, the upgrade you were excited about for a week. That stuff fades fast.
What sticks are experiences. The trip. The concert. The weekend camping with friends. The random Tuesday you decided to do something spontaneous instead of going home and watching Netflix.
Research backs this up. Experiences bring more lasting happiness than material purchases. The thrill of buying something new wears off quickly, but memories of experiences can bring joy for years. They also often involve other people, which makes them doubly valuable.
Put at least one or two adventures on your calendar now. Doesn’t have to be expensive or elaborate. A day trip somewhere you’ve never been. A cooking class with your partner. A weekend hiking trip with friends. First-time experiences are especially powerful because novelty makes memories stick.
Stop waiting for “someday.” Pick a date. Book something. Build anticipation.
11. Write It Down
Journaling sounds like homework. But hear me out.
A year goes by fast. Without some record of it, months blur together. You forget what you were working on in March. You forget the small wins. You forget the lessons you learned from things that didn’t work.
Writing things down changes that.
It doesn’t have to be elaborate. A few lines at the end of each day. What happened. How you felt. What you’re thinking about. That’s enough.
Research from Dominican University found that people who write down their goals are 42% more likely to achieve them. Something about putting pen to paper makes things more concrete and keeps you accountable to yourself.
Beyond goal-tracking, journaling helps you process. When something’s bothering you, writing about it gets it out of the endless loop in your head. When something good happens, writing about it helps you actually absorb it instead of rushing to the next thing.
I’ve been using the Clever Fox Planner Pro because it combines daily journaling with weekly planning in a way that doesn’t feel overwhelming. But a simple notebook works too. What matters is showing up consistently, not having the perfect system.
By December, you’ll have a record of your year. Flip back through it and you’ll see patterns, growth, and progress you would have forgotten otherwise.
Related: The Morning Routine That Changed Everything
12. Subtract Instead of Add
Everyone’s telling you to add things this year. New habits. New goals. New routines.
What if the answer is actually subtraction?
Look around your home. How much of it is clutter you don’t need, don’t use, and don’t love? Studies show that cluttered environments actually increase cortisol levels, your body’s stress hormone. One UCLA study found that women who described their homes as cluttered had higher stress levels throughout the day compared to women in tidier spaces.
Your stuff is literally stressing you out.
Now look at your calendar. How many commitments are there because you felt obligated? How many things drain you more than they give back?
This year, practice saying no. Clear out the closet. Cancel the subscription you forgot about. Stop attending the thing that makes you feel worse every time. Protect empty space on your calendar like it’s valuable, because it is.
When you remove what’s weighing you down, you make room for what actually matters.
Sometimes a remarkable year isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing less, better.
Make It Count
You don’t need to do all twelve of these things. Pick three or four that resonate. Start there.
A remarkable year isn’t built on perfection or massive transformations. It’s built on small, consistent choices that compound over time. You show up for the scary goal even when you don’t feel ready. You protect time for people you love. You take care of the body that carries you through everything. You notice what’s good instead of only what’s wrong.
Twelve months from now, you’ll look back. What will you see?
You get to decide that, starting now.