I want to go into 2026 with more intentions, I have set myself a word of the year. 2026 is going to be the year to linger. When thinking about what I wanted for the new year, I decided I wanted to slow down, be more intentional with what I engage with, quiet my mind and disconnect from my phone more. My wife was trying to work out her word for the year, and she found linger for me. What I love about the word is the way it seems to cover all my intentions in a single word. Linger tells me to stay in the moment, to be present and not performative, to be quiet and grounded, but also, I can remind myself not to linger on my phone.
I have taken up journaling recently as a way to slow my thoughts down. I find that taking the time to write with a pen and paper to be freeing and while I realise this is just a small step in the never-ending journey of self-improvement; It really has been meaningful to me, and I hope I can stick to it. I have been doing a course on creative rebooting in the hope to develop better practices for activating my creativity and there is a piece of advice that has really stuck with me. “Reengage with your notebooks”; even a simple act of transcribing what I wrote a week ago into a document allows me to interact with my previous thoughts. This could lead to new ideas or projects, but also it allows me to have a conversation with previous thoughts while I centralise my data into one place.
What I really liked about this idea is not that it is a form of editing; it’s almost like translating; and if you’ve seen my handwriting, it does need to be translated into something readable. Also, I am engaging with previous thoughts and seeing if I agree or disagree now. I am taking the time to interact with myself and hopefully finding ideas to expand into something more. I am hoping this will help me understand my mind a little better and also be more creative.
I plan to engage more with the media I consume as well; I find I think about music more than I do any other form of media at the moment. I thought maybe it was because I listened to over 200 albums last year, but I have realised that it is the simple fact that I have been engaging with these albums on AOTY. With each album I wrote a few words of what I thought about what I heard and picked the tracks that stood out to me. It might only take me a few minutes but the fact that I am reflecting and trying to understand my thoughts as well as document my journey has been quite insightful. It is interesting to see what albums I rated highly but were not in my most played albums on last.fm.
I have seen a few journaling videos on YouTube recently and there is this phrase that keeps getting used: “journalling ecosystem”. The idea is that not all journals are the same, there could be a commonplace book, a media journal, a planner, and any type of journal. I saw one person that loved talking about their K-pop journal and I have no idea how much information you could write about Korean music, but I am not someone that is actively listening to it. The idea of a media journal is the one that interested me; why not do what I do with music and write my thoughts on films, shows, podcasts and anything else. It can help me engage with the media and maybe even write reviews. I know I neglected literature here when talking about media, I did that intentionally.
For my reading plans of 2026, I want to get back into the habit of writing reviews, I might not blog every book I read but I will write something somewhere about them all. I hope to get more out of what I am reading. The simple act of writing something about my favourite books of last year made me realise my feelings towards them a little better. Like when I wrote about Giovanni’s Room, I realised themes in the book that I did not pick up on while reading it. That act of reflection made me like the novel more.
I have not set myself a reading goal for a few years now, I always wanted to read without worrying about hitting the goal, but why am I scared of failing? Does it change anything? I am going to try for 50 books this year because I want to intentionally push myself more and disconnect from my phone as well. When I stopped setting a goal, I can see a decrease in reading. I was reading over 100 books a year and then it dropped to 83, 65, 56 and then last year only 46 books. I was disappointed with the amount of reading I did, I know it has been a busy time, but I want to see if the act of goal setting has any bearing on how much I read.
This is my plan for 2026; I hope this sparks some creativity and thoughtfulness in my life. I wrote the term ‘sparks some creativity’ and realise that is wrong, creativity requires practice, but I left that in as a reminder. I am really hoping to be less online and, on my phone, and more in the moment. I want to be more creative and slow my mind, I hope this plan works for me.
Good for you! I’m a fan of pen and paper myself and I have no doubt that the act of engaging hand and eye and brain together produces the best kind of thinking. (Neuro-physicists say the same, which makes me wonder what will happen to the combined brainpower of our species when everyone goes digital.)
I’ve been keeping reading journals since 1998. They are just cheap A4 lined hardbacks, because anything fancier takes away from their purpose, scrawling down my thoughts. Though I keep beautiful scrapbooks of my travels, my reading journals are not meant to be artefacts. I do use them as references, so I number them and include a simple index at the front of each one, and transcribe that index into an Excel file when the book is full, so that I can find a book when I want to. Now that I’ve got 50+ journals, that’s essential!
I look forward to hearing how you get one as you linger through 2026. Best wishes, Lisa
Thanks Lisa, I hope the trend of writing with pen and paper continues. I am not using anything fancy, I just picked up a unused promotional notebook and started writing. I wish I had better handwriting but at the moment getting thoughts down has been more important. I did think about fancy notebooks or fountain pens but I don’t think it’s needed for me. I think I might scratch out thoughts and then weeks later translate the needed notes into a word document or a blog post
wonderful! Good luck on these.
Here are some of my plans: https://wordsandpeace.com/2026/01/04/2026-reading-plans-and-challenges/
Good luck with your reading plans for 2026!