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There is a product associated with this idea, and I have a few, they're pretty nice, I would recommend them, but you *absolutely* do not need this specific notebook, and I might even recommend you try doing this without buying anything. Depends on your personality type though, and the documentation for the product can be helpful: https://www.themesystem.com

If you'd rather not read all that or watch a bunch of videos though, here's the toot-length version:

A good theme is one which you can reflect on daily that will nudge you in the direction you want to go. Instead of "walk a mile a day", have the Year of Activity. Every time you reach a fork in the road, if you have 25 free minutes and you can go for a quick walk or you can get a bit more work done, you can think: this is the Year of Activity, I should do the walk.

For me, last year's theme was the Year of Momentum. I had been struggling a lot to just keep things moving along, to execute consistently in several areas of my life. I cannot detail all the ways that this year went, some are quite personal, but one is quite public: I did 46 updates on my patreon in 2024, up from 6 in 2023. <https://www.patreon.com/creatorglyph>. If I had made that resolution "do a weekly update EVERY WEEK" (which is what I wanted to do) that's a failure. But I *maintained momentum*.

I don't typically have my theme ready and committed to on 1/1, I start re-theming and reflecting on new year's day, and I have a deadline for 2/1, but I try to set it as soon as I find one that resonates.

Using the changing of the year, the season, your birthday, or whatever arbitrary boundary you like to motivate personal change is great. But find a way to make that change gentle, gradual, and most of all, resilient to failure. Any attempt at change will fail many times before it succeeds.

@glyph I am thinking I may choose 2025 to be the Year of Small Wins after 2024 as, retrospectively, the Year of Graceful Recovery (to my intended plan)