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Theres something incredibly compelling about a brand-new year. A fresh start beckons, with each day untroubled by your past decisions. Whatever mistakes you made in 2025 are old news. They were sooo last year. Youre a new person now with new priorities, new habits, and new strategies. Its in this spirit of new-leaf-turning-over that nearly a third of American adultsand almost half of 18- to 29-year-oldsdecide to make New Years resolutions for the coming year. Unfortunately, making resolutions doesnt work. Baylor College of Medicine reported in January 2024 that 88% of people who make resolutions abandon them within two weeks. That doesnt mean change or improvement is impossible. It just means were going about it wrong each year on January 1 by declaring, This year will be different! If youd like to improve your finances, your health, your relationships, or any other aspect of your life in 2026, try some anti-resolution strategies for making the year greatsince your resolutions probably wont live to see Groundhog Day. Why resolutions dont work Before choosing the best anti-resolution strategy for 2026, its a good idea to understand the psychological reasons why resolutions just dont work. One of the problems has to do with the fresh start the new calendar year offers to us. We are anticipating a “new year, new you” moment for ourselves, which often leads to unrealistic and overambitious goals. We love to tell ourselves the story that we could go from broke and couch potato on December 31 to frugal and running 5Ks on January 1 through willpower alone. This story doesnt give us room for struggle, frustration, or failure. Additionally, a New Years resolution is an external motivation. That decision to change comes about because the calendar is changing and not because of an internal push to change. This means that when the external motivation has disappearedat about the same time Planet Fitness has stopped airing New Years membership deals 24/7weve usually moved on, too. Finally, we often make resolutions that require us to give something up. Financial resolutions ask you to deprive yourself of luxuries or conveniences, like streaming services or DoorDash when youve had a rough day. Health resolutions expect you to live without ice cream or fried foods indefinitely. While the intention behind these deprivation resolutions is goodsaving money or improving your cholesterol levelsyou cant expect to white-knuckle your way through these losses for an entire year. Humans are wired to be loss-averse, which means the pain of giving up things we like feels more intense than the pleasure we enjoy when we receive the same treats. Unresolved in 2026 Looking at the start of a brand-new year makes me want to harness the excitement and enthusiasm of starting over with brand-new behavior. But Ive learned over the years that I need actual strategies that will help me change my habits if I want to make lasting improvements to different areas of my life. The strategies that work tend to have these things in common: The changes are bite-size. Rather than changing your entire life, you should focus on little habits you can adopt one day at a time. You leave room for imperfection. Pobodys nerfect! And you will not pick up your new habit without mistakes, setbacks, and failures. Plan for them. You want to make the change. We often make resolutions that dont really reflect our actual wants or motivations. But change happens only when we want it to. The change adds something to your life. Rather than making you feel deprived, habit change should offer some kind of benefit that you can name. Here are the anti-resolution strategies that will make 2026 your best year ever. 2026 Bingo In December 2024, instead of setting resolutions, I created a “2025 Bingo” board, after seeing several individuals on social media posting about the trend. For this gamified goal-setting exercise, come up with 25 different aspirations you would like to achieve in 2026 and fill a 5-square-by-5-square poster board with them. Setting your 2026 intentions this way offers a number of benefits. First, it allows you to keep thinking about your goals throughout the year. For example, I ran a 5K in October of 2025, filling in that square of my bingo board very late in the year. Had I simply resolved to run a 5K in January, I would certainly have forgotten about it by fall. [Photo: Emily Guy Birkin] In addition, by giving yourself 25 spaces, you have room for audacious, silly, unrealistic, and embarrassing goals. While some of my goals were entirely within my control, such as running the race, going to the theater, and visiting a new state, there were other goals that I only had some control over, such as my goal for a certain level of income and my long-term goal to get a Wikipedia page. (Did I mention you can put embarrassing goals on here?) If you decide to create a “2026 Bingo” card, consider giving yourself a free space in the middle, and aim for five in a row by the end of the year. Whether or not you make it, youll set yourself up to think about what you want and how you can get itand you’ll have some fun with it. Set monthly resolutions Part of what makes a New Years resolution so daunting is the fact that youre trying to make a change that will last for the entirety of 2026. But committing to a change for a single month is much more doableand it can lead to long-lasting behavior change. For example, studies show that people who take part in the annual Dry January sobriety challenge do not return to their former drinking habits after the month ends. Additionally, they tend to make long-term changes to their drinking habits and see sustained health benefits after takng part in just one Dry January challenge. Start thinking about what you would like to tackle each month. Perhaps you might focus on paying down debt in January. February could be when you focus on your taxes. March might be about getting your retirement planning started. Another benefit of this strategy is that you dont have to decide all at once what your resolution will be for each month. As the year progresses, you can make new resolutions for each month as you reach them. And even though your focus may change from one month to the next, you can feel confident that youll reap benefits from each months focus long after it ends. Find your 2026 mantra You may have seen people talk about choosing a word for the year (often in the same corners of the internet where you might find people with unironic “Live, Laugh, Love” decor). The idea behind a word for the year is to choose a guiding ideasuch as abundance, grace, or explorationthat you will use to focus your mindset for the year. Health writer Tara Parker-Pope describes these as nudge words and says choosing one will nudge you toward positive change whenever you think of it. But rather than a single word, you may find it even more helpful to adopt a phrase for the year that embodies the change you want to make. For example, if you are hoping to pay off debt, the mantra “Slow and steady wins the race” could be a regular reminder to keep making payments whenever you can. Alternatively, the phrase “Progress, not perfection” could be a good mantra for someone who puts off contributing to their retirement account for fear of making suboptimal investment decisions. And someone who is trying to save up for a down payment might adopt the mantra “Any amount of money I can set aside today is better than none.” Because even saving a couple of bucks consistently will add up over time. Plan for all of 2026, not just January New Years resolutions may feel good on January 1, but they dont last. Not only do we make unrealistic and ambitious plans for ourselves with traditional resolutions, but we are also trying to make changes based on external motivation. No wonder the vast majority of resolutions fail before February. To make changes that will really stick in 2026, your strategy needs to rely on bite-size changes that dont require perfection and that add something beneficial to your life. Creating a 2026 bingo card allows you to choose 25 goalsfrom the sublime to the ridiculousand will keep you invested in your goals all year long. Setting monthly resolutionssimilar to the annual Dry January sobriety challengemakes it less intimidating to adopt new habits while reaping the long-term rewards. And choosing a mantra for 2026 can help nudge you to make the positive changes you want to see in your life.
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E-Commerce
The tech industry has endured another turbulent year, buffeted by the continued rise of artificial intelligence and the economic threats posed by President Donald Trumps tariffs. Even the most prominent companies encountered challenges they never imagined theyd have to face. As 2025 comes to a close, here are Apple’s biggest wins and greatest failures of the year. Apples biggest wins of 2025 iPhone 17 series Without a doubt, Apples biggest win of 2025 is the iPhone 17 series, which includes the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max. Myriad reports suggest that iPhone 17 series sales have exceeded both Apples and investors expectations. Apple redesigned the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro this year, giving the former a much-improved display, a vastly better camera system, and longer battery life. The Pro versions got an all-new unibody design, the best cameras in an iPhone ever, and up to 39 hours of battery life. While these improvements are mainly iterative, they ticked the boxes that consumers care most about in their phones: camera and battery life. And those consumers have rewarded Apple for it. iPhone 17 sales have surged in the U.S. and, more importantly, in China, the worlds largest smartphone market after the USA. Apples iPhone sales were a key factor in the recovery of the company’s stock, after it got hammered earlier this year due to its possible exposure to Trumps tariffs. Liquid Glass After the iPhone, Apples next most important product is iOS, the operating system that powers its handsets. This year, Apple made the rare move of completely revamping the look of that operating system with the introduction of the Liquid Glass design language in iOS 26. It was the first time the company had radically changed iOS’s look since 2013. While iOS 26s Liquid Glass faced early criticism, as most visual overhauls do, Apple has continued to tweak the look and feel of the new design language. As a result, much of the online furor over the changes seems to have died down. More importantly, iOS 26’s new design gives Apples smartphone software a distinct look that immediately distinguishes it from Android. In the end, the softwares ability to mimic the way light bands and warps through glass has brought a level of fun and playfulness to Apples flagship product not seen since the days of Steve Jobs. Apples simplified branding The final big win for Apple in 2025 is not a product or feature, but a branding strategy. As Apples product lineup has grown in recent years, its product names have become confusing, particularly when it comes to software and services. But this year, Apple decided to simplify things. Previously, Apple’s operating systems were branded with different version numbers (iOS 18, macOS 15, watchOS 11, etc). Now they’re named after the upcoming year: iOS 26, macOS 26, watchOS 26, iPadOS 26, tvOS 26, visionOS 26. This streamlined naming structure makes it easy for users to determine whether their device is running the latest software. And Apple didnt stop there. The company also mercifully decided to drop the overused plus sign from its streaming services name, too. Apples greatest failures of 2025 iPhone Air While the iPhone 17 series may have been full of iterative updates this year (which consumers seem to have loved), Apple swung for the fences with another 2025 iPhone: the all-new iPhone Air. At just 5.6 millimeters, it is Apple’s thinnest iPhone ever. Yet multiple reports say that there has been hardly any demand for the companys newest smartphone. The main problems with the iPhone Air seem to be its subpar camera system and relatively short battery life. As the success of the iPhone 17 series teaches us, those are the two things customers care about most. Demand for the new device is so weak that Apple has reportedly cut production by more than 80%. Still, Apple may have already gotten what it really wanted: proof of concept that it could make an iPhone so thin that it could join two together to create the first dual-screen iPhone foldable. Apple Intelligence 2025 may have been a year of continued artificial intelligence progression across the tech industry, but Apples AI system, Apple Intelligence, hardly added any new AI featuresnot worthwhile ones, anyway. The company added some useful Live Translation features, but other than that, it mainly just enhanced Apple Intelligence with gimmicks that other AI systems have long been capable of, such as on-screen image recognition and new AI slop filters. Those hoping to see a revamped Siri that could compete with the likes of OpenAIs ChatGPT and Googles Gemini will have to wait until 2026or later. Yet I question how much consumers care about Apple lagging in the AI space, given that they can already run nearly any third-party AI app on their iPhone. Still, the lack of innovative AI advancements is a bad look for the company, which is otherwise the de facto innovation leader in the industry. Apple Vision Pro M5 One area in which Applehas undoubtedly innovated in recent years is augmented reality, thanks to its groundbreaking Apple Vision Pro headset. In 2025, Apple announced the successor to the original Vision Pro, updated with the M5 Apple Silicon chip, which enables higher resolution and other display enhancements. Yet Apple didnt address the myriad other issues with the technologically impressive device, notably its heavy weight and eye-watering $3,499 price point. Because of this, the headset remains a niche product that is unappealing or financially out of reach to the average user.
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E-Commerce
Have you ever tried quickly looking something up on Wikipediajust because youre curious or maybe for workonly to, a half an hour later, wonder why youre reading about the history of the European Space Agency? In my opinion, Wikipedia is one of the last good websites on the internet. Outside of the occasional fundraiser, there are no ads, no dark patterns, and no clickbaitits just information. Which leaves no doubt in my mind that falling into a Wikipedia rabbit hole is healthier than scrolling on social media. Even so, it can be addictive, and links are the reason why. Every Wikipedia article is jam packed with links to other Wikipedia articles, which is exactly why you end up down rabbit holes. Often, though, you dont understand how you wound up where you didso what if you could visualize exactly that? This tip originally appeared in the free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. Get the next issue in your inbox and get ready to discover all sorts of awesome tech treasures! Your new digital cork board To create a visualization of how you got from point A to point B on Wikipedia, head to Wikiboard. Wikiboard creates a mind mapwhich allows you to see how various concepts are connectedas you browse Wikipedia. You can start browsing immediately. To get started, open Wikiboard and enter your search termit will pull up the corresponding Wikipedia page. The first article you select opens in its own box on Wikiboard, and as you browse, the site creates new boxes for every link you click, drawing lines from one article to another as they open. Once your board is created, you can scroll and zoom as much as you like. You can also rearrange the boxes and add sticky notes, allowing you to organize and add a bit of context to everything as you browse. ~wikiboard.pngThis isn’t your father’s Wikipedia.~ One note: Wikiboard is currently only for larger screens, so you wont be able to use it on your phone. This could be a useful research tool, enabling you to see how concepts relate to each other as youre learning. You can even save separate boards in your browser so you to come back to them later. And while I could spin this as purely a research tool, its also just plain fun. Theres something amazing about visualizing your Wikipedia rabbit holes. Next time you feel like going on a deep dive, give Wikiboard a go. Going back and seeing the steps you took on your Wikipedia rabbit hole is endless entertaining, and can teach you a lot about your interests as well. You can open Wikiboard in your browser on any desktop-sized device. Wikiboard is free to use. You can opt to make a donation to support the developer if you like, but its not required. You dont need to create an account to use Wikiboard, and the site has no ads. Treat yourself to all sorts of brain-boosting goodies like this with the free Cool Tools newsletterstarting with an instant introduction to an incredible audio app thatll tune up your days in truly delightful ways.
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E-Commerce
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