So after writing about my past life challenges, what are my challenges for 2026:
- Read 20 books. Last year I planned to read 26 books. Seemed pretty easy to read a book every two weeks, except sometimes I get distracted by other hobbies – I’m looking at you Xbox console 🙂 I only read 20 books last year. So I think it is achievable to set my goal to 20 books this year.
- Journaling. Keep journaling. More of an aspirational goal to journal every day, rather than a fixed goal. Also, keep adding to my list of journaling prompts and keep increasing my knowledge in relation to journaling.
- Blogging. Just one post a week. It’s going to be really interesting if I can do it long term.
- Steps. My wife does quite a smart thing, she competes with her last year’s step average, so this year I’m doing the same thing. My average steps per day for 2025 was 8,495 steps. My Fitbit updates my average steps for 2026 every day so it’s easy to see how I’m going.
- Health. Stay on top of any health related appointments – like dentist and doctor appointments. Mainly just for checkups.
- Household. We completed some renovations a couple of years ago but there is a few things we still need to do to the house, like a bit of painting. I need to organise this.
- New car. I’ve been looking at various cars for the last six months. I need to get motivated to buy a new car. Our current car is still fine really but it’s getting a bit old. I’ve set myself a deadline of the 30th of June to have a new car.
- Students. Talk to one to two students a day. I have had up to three students a day last year but I think that’s too much. A maximum of two students in one day may be my new rule
- Outside broadcasts. Once the weather cools down, do more outside broadcasts – talking to students with my tripod, tablet and headset.
- Libraries. I want to visit all the libraries in Melbourne. I like to read and I like to write. What would make more sense than this as a challenge. I’ve created a separate page to track this here.
- Volunteering. Possibly try another volunteer role, while keeping the existing English tutoring role. Maybe something like the Big Brother organisation – supporting a younger person. This one is still a bit of a thought bubble at the moment.
- Housework. Stay on top of the housework and do my share of the cooking. Probably my least favourite challenge 🙂
I was initially going to ride to all the ends of the train lines in Melbourne and all ends of the train lines in the state of Victoria – it did sound tiring though. I came up with the better idea of visiting all the libraries in Melbourne. Apparently, there are over fifty libraries in Melbourne. I could easily visit a couple in a day and they’re likely to be near train stations so I get a bit of a walk in – walking to them. I could visit a large number in a year even if I only visited one a week. It seems like an attainable goal.
I can sit in the library, do some reading, journaling or blogging – libraries are like an Introverts paradise. Then head home afterwards. It wouldn’t be a big day. The alternative of doing long country train trips, turns into very long days.
I think I will do some daily challenges too. But they will be a bit random. I would rather focus on longer term challengers in this post.
I do love a plan, but my plans are often pretty flexible. It will be interesting if I am aiming at the same challenges at the end of the year.
Journaling Question
And I’ll finish off by asking a journaling question. How do you plan to challenge yourself in 2026?
Fairfield library – A library of Melbourne I visited this week.
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