Oliver Burkeman has a proposal to make:
2026 should be the year that you spend more time doing what you want. The new year should be the moment we commit to dedicating more of our finite hours on the planet to things we genuinely, deeply enjoy doing – to the activities that seize our interest, and that make us feel vibrantly alive. This should be the year you stop trying so hard to turn yourself into a better person, and focus instead on actually leading a more absorbing life.
In the end, though, there is a consideration even more fundamental than any of these, which is that it’s not clear what life is really for at all, if it isn’t for doing more of whatever makes you feel most alive. It’s notoriously easy to slip into the unconscious assumption that any such aliveness is for later: after you’ve sorted your life out; after the current busy phase has passed; after the headlines have stopped being quite so alarming. But the truth for finite humans is that this, right here, is real life. And that if you’re going to do stuff that matters to you – and feel enjoyment or aliveness in doing it – you’re going to have to do it before you’ve got on top of everything, before you’ve solved your procrastination problem or your intimacy issues, before you feel confident that the future of democracy or the climate has been assured. This part of life isn’t just something you have to get through, to get to the bit that really counts. It is the part that really counts.
Read the whole piece: The secret to being happy in 2026? It’s far, far simpler than you think…