My 2026 Theme – More of the Same

It is time for a new yearly theme! Note: I don’t buy the journals, but Myke and CPG Grey popularized the idea of creating yearly themes.

What is a yearly theme? Here’s a summary:

Instead of setting resolutions at the start of the year, you set an overall idea of how you would like to approach each year or season. This then becomes a guide for your personal and/or professional life throughout that period.

This is my seventh yearly theme. Looking back over the past six:

• 2025: The Year of Strength
• 2024: The Year of Language
• 2023: The Year of Mornings
• 2022: The Year of Daily Better
• 2021: The Year of Accountable Improvement
• 2020: The Year of Less

2025 Theme Retrospective

Unlike 2024, 2025 was a smashing success. I don’t love FitBod’s year-end report because it counts any workout I do as part of the aggregate number. I really don’t want to mix in my 1 mile walks to and from the gym in the total count. Still, I know that with very few exceptions (such as when I was backpacking in Patagonia or spending two weeks in Scotland) I did 3 strength training workouts every week. All guided by FitBod, using whatever equipment (or non-equipment) available to me. The bulk of these workouts were at random Planet Fitness locations across the country and our home outdoor gym at Keuka Lake. Three key contributors to this success:

1. FitBod giving me a workout I can do with the constraints in front of me. This eliminates a key resistance point (and excuse): what exercises should I do?
2. Julie as my accountability partner: I’m her Planet Fitness Black Card guest, and usually if she goes to the gym I go as well. In Napa this usually means walking the mile to the gym and back from our house, an added benefit as we have a nice warmup and time to chat about the coming day.
3. My pushup group as accountability partner: about a year ago my consuegro suggested we also report in on our workout status to our pushup accountability group chat. So in January I started sending updates like this: “90/150, workout 1/3”. This created a high level of motivation to finish that count. Sometimes (like Thanksgiving week) this meant doing workouts on Friday and Saturday to complete the trifecta.

2026 Theme

As I engaged with Claude Code via my Obsidian repository (so Claude has access to my journal entries, prior themes, etc.) it became clear that (1) accountability was the #1 factor in success, and (2) all of my themes to date were a simple manifestation of my growth mindset. This is good! Whatever it is that I’m doing, or interested in doing, I want to do well and find ways to improve.

Claude suggested “Year of Deliberate Practice”, and as I reflected on past themes I realized this was functionally identical to “Year of Accountable Improvement”. So, I landed at “More of the Same”. Honestly this might be my last yearly theme - I might just declare this my life theme.

Tactically I’ve decided to continue my deep focus on golf improvement by engaging more consistently with my coach. Claude added a reminder to Things for me to check in every two weeks with new video. My other area of focus right now is guitar, and after some searching online I found a teacher that is working very well one month in.