I know it’s maybe a touch early to start talking about New Year’s resolutions, and everyone is just moving into full-Christmas mode, but hear me out.
If we’re being honest, I have never been the person who could set a New Year’s resolution and actually stick with it for more than about one month. And if we’re being really honest, it was usually never even that long.
My resolutions usually looked like this: I’d decide I was going to work out five days a week, two hours a day, without reducing any of my workload, ever. Or I’d decide I was going to start a new business and somehow, overnight, learn how to market, budget, and do absolutely everything all at once. Or my personal favourite: I was going to get very rich without actually understanding anything about money, investing, or how it works.
Shocking to absolutely no one, these didn’t go well.
It took me a long time to figure out why this kept happening. A big part of that was reading a terrific book I recommend to everyone called ‘The Four Tendencies‘ by Gretchen Rubin (affiliate link). If you’re not a reader, you can also just take the free quiz here and skim over what applies to you.
According to that framework, I’m an Obliger with Rebel tendencies. What that means, in real life terms, is that I’m very good at keeping commitments to other people, but not so great at keeping commitments to myself, especially when life gets really busy and everything starts to fall off the rails. Eventually I hit a point where I feel frustrated and boxed in, and I want to reject the accountability structure altogether. And because I’m a recovering people-pleaser, the thing I usually end up rejecting is my own internal, self-imposed commitment.
Now add ADHD to that mix; with the constant need for new dopamine hits, new projects, new information, new everything… You can probably see where this is going: I’d set these big sparkly resolutions, get overwhelmed, drop them, feel like a failure, and then repeat the whole cycle again next January.
At some point, I just got tired. Not of wanting to grow or wanting to do better, but of the narrative I fed myself every time I *failed* at a resolution that was never realistic for my actual life in the first place.
This changed when I got really, really loose with my expectations. I started acknowledging the truth: sometimes I have a whole heap of commitments and things I need to do for my family and my business, and I simply do not have the capacity to also maintain a rigid, daily resolution. No amount of colour-coding a spreadsheet is going to magically create extra hours in the day.
So rather than treating resolutions like strict rules, I started treating them like year-long themes that pointed me in a specific direction. I zoomed out and started thinking about the bigger picture: the long-term growth of my business, and the life I want 15–20 years from now. Then I’d work backwards by asking myself where I’d like things to be in one year, in five years, and what I actually want my days to feel like. Then I started crafting my New Year’s resolutions around that, instead of around some January fantasy version of myself.
In 2022, my only real resolution was to become more educated about personal finance and investing. That’s it. There was no daily reading challenge, No “finish X books by Y date.” I knew that if I understood money better, it would naturally shape how I made decisions, how I spent, how I saved, how I planned. So I let that be my North Star.
Over that year, I did what I could, when I could. I listened to podcasts, I read books and blogs, I asked clients and friends what they knew, what they recommended, and what had worked for them. I downloaded spreadsheets and apps and poked around in them, BUT there were whole stretches of weeks where I did absolutely nothing with it. Then there were days where I would binge 12 hours of financial podcasts on a road trip (again: sorry to my family), but it was usually somewhere in between.
But here’s the key: I didn’t have a tidy checklist to “complete,” and I didn’t beat myself up when life got busy and I had to step away. The only thing that mattered was this: on December 31st I knew more than I had on January 1st. That was the win: progress.
In 2023, I chose a new theme: marketing. I already had a basic understanding, but I wanted to really dig deeper and figure out how it applied to my specific business and creative brain. So that year looked like a lot of YouTube videos, Apple podcasts, marketing webinars, grant workshops, and courses through the local chamber of commerce. And just like the year before, there were times when I didn’t touch anything marketing-related for weeks.The goal wasn’t to be the most disciplined student in the world; it was simply to know more about marketing by the end of the year than I did at the start. And again, that happened. Shocker, I know.
In 2024, I started refining that marketing work into more specific avenues and strategies tailored to my businesses. In 2025, I dove deeper into corporate investing and budgeting, as well as launching and growing HeyArtist. Right now, as I’m looking ahead to 2026, I’m setting my next theme… and once again, there’s no rigid schedule, no perfect timeline, no 30-day challenge in sight (though I do love a good 30-day de-clutter challenge).
Because the reality is: I’m a mom. I help take care of a home. I run two businesses. I coach kids’ sports. I need the odd night to binge Love is Blind… Life will get chaotic. That’s not me being a Debbie Downer, that’s just an accurate calendar read. If I know this, why would I keep creating resolutions that demand perfection every day? Why would I build a system that guarantees I’ll feel like I’ve “failed” by month two of the year?
Instead, what works for me is knowing what the end goal roughly looks like, and then deciding on one meaningful step I can take toward that each year. That’s it.
And if you’re someone who also struggles with big, rigid resolutions, especially if you’re juggling kids, a business, a creative career, ADHD, or all of the above, this approach might feel a lot more doable and I hope this perspective helps you.
Shameless self-plug: I’ll be releasing a free strategic goal-setting sheet in the New Year to help you map out your own version of this, especially if you’re a creative or entrepreneur who needs your goals to flex with your life.
If you want it when it’s ready, you can subscribe to the page, or just email me at erin@heyartist.ca and I’ll make sure you get a copy. Also, if you would like recommendations to any of the podcasts or YouTube channels I love and listen to religiously, just email me.
With love,
Erin
