Happy new year! I hope you all had a restful and restorative break and are ready to jump back into things. Even though I’m not big on new year’s resolutions, I do love the feeling of January because there’s so much possibility ahead of me, and I like to capitalise on that energy to get some plans in place.

Today, we’re going to continue on our exercise from December when we reflected on our year. If you haven’t done it yet, you’ll want to start there – and come back to this when you’re done!

Here’s my foolproof way to make the changes you want to see in your life. If you stick with me til the end, there’s a free template you can download to get started right away! In this post, though, we’re going to work through an example of how you can transform those end-of-year reflections into real plans.

These are the steps we’re going to go through:

We’ll work through all of these with an example of a hypothetical engineer, Mark¹¹, so that you can see how it all comes together.

From your December reflection, you’ll have surfaced some insights about what energises, inspires, or excites you about work. You’ll use that to inform what you want to focus on doing more of in 2026 – and for each one, you’ll also write “what good looks like” as well as why it matters to you personally.

Mark’s December reflection really highlighted how his favourite parts of 2025 were when he was involved in doing technical solution design, especially when he got to lead the design for really complicated and ambiguous problems.

What good looks like for him: getting involved in the early discovery and shaping phase of all projects his team tackles, not just being someone who executes on the design. He also wants to spend time regularly thinking about complexity and collaborating with other engineers.

It matters to him because: solution design makes him feel the most energised at work and sets him up to stay excited throughout the project, because he knows why certain decisions were made. He also wants to demonstrate his ability to lead complex solutions to set himself up for a promotion to Lead in the future.

Once you have your goals, you’re going to pick the most important one to you right now and figure out what experiments you can run against it.

You’ll also need to figure out your actual reality – things you need to design your experiments around. These are blockers, rituals, or things you’ll need to keep in mind when you’re deciding what to do. Being upfront with these commitments means you’re set realistic targets.

Here’s Mark’s reality:

Now that Mark knows what he’s working with, he can start brainstorming experiments:

Experiment 1: Sketch proactively
Twice a week, when I see a technical or design problem in Slack, I’ll take 15 minutes to do a quick sketch of how I might tackle it. That should mean I get to dip my toe in areas of the product that my squad doesn’t work in without it getting distracting, and I should hopefully get some conversations going.

Experiment 2: Guard design time
I’m going to block out 2 hours from 10-12 on Wednesdays to work on solution design. Maybe I’ll read some articles about it or have the time to explore deeper ideas without getting distracted.

At the end of every Friday, take 5-10 minutes to complete a quick reflection. This is to help you actively think through how your experiments performed, and make any adjustments for next week.

How did this week go?

Sketching was really good, better than I expected. A lot of people started bringing problems to me to explore together but it didn’t take so long that it affected my actual work. I really liked getting to collaborate with different engineers in short bursts.

The design time didn’t really work. I think because it was a bit vague, I didn’t really know what to do so I just ended up working through my tickets as usual.

What should I adjust for next week?

I think I’ll keep the sketching experiment as-is for another week, and see if anything changes.

I like the idea of blocked design time, but I realised I really need a focus. I’m going to choose a focus project by end of day Monday (after all of the meetings, so I know what the plan is for the week) and then rename the calendar event to reflect the task I want to work on. Hopefully that means I use it more effectively!

After 4 weeks, we can drop the weekly reflection. The experiments that worked are now just actions you take to help you achieve your goals. From here, keep those actions, and when you’re ready, you can pick another focus area and start all over again!

I’ve set up a Notion template that you can use to reflect, design experiments, and adjust! To use it in your own Notion workspace, simply click the Duplicate button in the top right.

You will need a free Notion account to use this template. If you don’t or can’t use that, you can still view the template and copy-paste it into whatever tool you like.

Welcome back, everyone! 🥳 I hope you give this a go – even if not for a work goal, then something personal. If you need some inspiration for non-work things, here are a few experiments I have on the go right now:

Last year, I did a lot of experiments to reduce my screen time, improve my sleep, and reduce my stress – and a lot of them are now part of my daily routine! How cool is that?