What Do You Really Want in 2026?

Seven tips to help you build a year that reflects what matters most

As the year draws to a close, I like to slow things down long enough to take stock of what really happened, what mattered, and what I want to consciously create for the year ahead. December has always held that energy for me. It’s a natural pause point, an invitation to reflect on what supported me, what stretched me, and what I need to adjust if I’m going to step into the next year with more intention rather than momentum alone.

For many of us running creative studios, it’s tempting to default to the things we feel we should be striving for: higher revenue, a bigger team, a new office, getting published, or winning awards. But none of that really means anything unless it ties back to the life you actually want to live. When you strip away the noise, the measures of success become deeply personal, sometimes confronting, but always clarifying.

This year was a powerful reminder of that truth for me. With both of my parents suffering from dementia and transitioning into aged care, the planning I did twelve months ago is the only reason I was able to navigate one of the hardest periods of my life, while still experiencing extraordinary growth, balance and purpose in my business.

Below are seven practical tips that shaped the way I approached my own planning this year. They’re simple, human, and deeply effective, and they may help guide your approach to 2026.

1. Get Clear on What You Really Want

Not what you think you should want, or what everyone around you is chasing, but the things that genuinely matter in the quiet moments of your life. Perhaps it’s spaciousness in your week, better boundaries, time to reconnect with creativity, a desire to work with fewer (but better) clients, or the freedom to take a proper holiday without guilt or chaos simmering underneath.

True clarity comes when you give yourself the space to ask: stripped of the noise, the expectations and the glossy benchmarks, what do I actually want?

Maybe you’ve been pushing hard for growth, when what you truly want is a practice that allows you to leave the studio at 4pm so you can pick up your kids, or enough breathing room to design more thoughtfully rather than racing from deadline to deadline. You may discover that what you want has less to do with “awards” and more to do with reclaiming the joy of your craft.

An important part of knowing what you want is understanding your non-negotiables. These are things in your life that you're not willing to sacrifice, that you know are a vital part of what contributes to your ongoing health and happiness.

For me, the answer this year looked nothing like the standard business checklist. What I wanted most was time. Time with my aging parents, time to help them transition into new care facilities, time to make them feel safe and supported, and time (in a deeply selfish way) to simply be with them while I still can.

What also became really clear was that my own health was a non-negotiable. When I failed to focus on my health, I was less able to be truly supportive, so I quickly established that I had to maintain my health (regular gym + healthy diet + consistent sleep) in order to be available physically and mentally for my family.

2. Understand the Emotional Drivers Behind Your Goals

When you identify why you want something, everything becomes clearer: your boundaries, your decisions, your priorities. Without this emotional anchor, even the most beautifully articulated goals sit on shaky ground.

Values turn those goals into something you’re willing to fight for.

Maybe, like me, one of your core values is community. Ever since I started my design business in 2000, people have always been the main driver for what I do. Setting a goal to support local businesses and promote them through your work would be completely aligned with this important value of community.

My desire to prioritise family this year wasn’t random. It comes from decades of being guided, shaped and supported by my parents. Being present for them now is an expression of gratitude and love. It’s also tied to deeper personal values around family and connection. When you know the emotional reasoning beneath a goal, it stops being optional. It becomes something that drives you.

3. Set Measurable Goals That Support the Life You Want

Once you’re clear on what matters and why, the next step is translating intentions into something measurable. This isn’t about being rigid. It’s about giving yourself markers and milestones so you can see whether your life and/or business are drifting or aligning.

It might mean deciding you won’t take on more than three large projects at a time or setting a minimum project value so you can create space for more meaningful work. It could be a financial target that supports hiring a documenter so you can reclaim two days a week  to spend with the family. Measurable doesn’t mean restrictive. It provides an important yardstick to see if you’re on track.

This year I knew I needed one full day each week dedicated solely to my parents. To make that possible, I had to create financial targets that supported a four-day work week without compromising the health of my business. That required strategic thinking, clarity around the revenue I needed to generate, ruthlessness around my expenses and a laser focus on my profitability. It was about structuring the business to allow me to show up in the parts of my life that mattered most.

4. Create a Strategic Plan: Goals Without a Plan Are Just Dreams

This is where the shift happens for most people. It’s one thing to articulate a goal. It’s another to reverse-engineer how you will make it real. A strategy isn’t corporate jargon. It’s simply clarity around who you are, what sets you apart, the problem you solve and who you solve it for. Most designers try to skip this step, but it’s the foundation of every thriving practice.

Maybe your plan involves repositioning your studio, updating your messaging so it actually reflects the work you want to attract, or refining your offer so your fees align with your value.

This is where strategy becomes essential, and where the work you put in upfront will pay dividends down the track. If knowing what you really want becomes your guiding start, your strategy is the roadmap for getting there.

AI can play a genuinely supportive role in the creation of your strategy. Used thoughtfully, it can help you brainstorm ideas, clarify your direction, explore different ways of positioning yourself, and take the heavy lifting out of writing, planning, documenting and researching. It doesn't do the thinking for you, but it can significantly reduce the time and mental load involved in getting clear and staying organised.

In my own planning this year, AI helped me streamline my strategy, shape content more quickly, and simplify research tasks that would normally take hours, freeing up precious time I needed in my personal life. It became a tool that supported my priorities, rather than distracting from them.

5. Build Accountability Into Your Year

Planning is easy. Execution is harder. And when life inevitably becomes messy or overwhelming, having people around you who care, challenge you gently and hold you to your commitments becomes vital. Accountability isn’t pressure. It’s support. It’s community. It’s being witnessed in your intentions and encouraged back onto the path when you falter.

Your accountability might come from peers who understand the industry, a coach who sees your blind spots, or a structured program where you’re guided through the process rather than navigating it in isolation. You don’t need to be “stronger”; you need to be supported.

My family became my accountability circle this year, though none of us signed up for it. The moments were raw, heavy and often heart-breaking. There were weeks when I simply didn’t have the emotional, physical or mental energy to show up. My siblings supported me when I most needed it, and I did the same for them. That collective “holding” of each other was what carried us through.

6. Review, Refine, Repeat

Remember: progress isn’t linear.

We love the idea of a clean trajectory: set a goal, make a plan, show up consistently, enjoy the results. But in real life, curveballs arrive, energy dips, clients delay, opportunities resurface, and timelines shift. The work is in returning to the plan again and again, refining it, adjusting it, and reminding yourself why you set it in the first place.

Checking in might involve monthly financial reviews, quarterly strategy resets or weekly time audits. The point isn’t perfection. It’s awareness. When you maintain awareness, you can course-correct before you drift too far from what matters.

My financial targets were clear and non-negotiable this year. I have a mortgage, bills and commitments like everyone else. Balancing that with my family responsibilities was challenging, but because I continued checking in, recalibrating, reminding myself of the big picture. I not only stayed on track, I exceeded my targets.

7. Do the Work (The Part No Tool Can Do For You)

AI can support your content creation. Systems can support your structure. Templates can make your work more consistent and efficient. But none of those tools can replace the essential human effort required to do the creative work, build actual relationships, show up for your clients or nurture your team.

If you want more strategic connections, you still need to reach out. If you want more aligned clients, you still need to refine your message and put your voice out into the world. If you want more meaningful work, you need to create the conditions for it.

Tools can support us, but they won’t make what we want happen. To succeed we need to show up. Show up for our clients, for our team, for our family.

There was lots of work that happened behind the scenes for Mum and Dad this past year. There was so much paperwork, and so many important elements of "life administration" that needed to be done. It would have been easy to have been swallowed up by delivering all of this external support. But the thing that mattered the most was being there, and spending time with them. Nothing is more important than that.

What if your plans for 2026 were shaped by what truly matters to you?

Planning for a new year isn’t always straightforward or comfortable. Sometimes the process is confronting, sometimes it’s clarifying, and sometimes it’s simply the reminder we need to realign our business with the life we want to live. Doing that work has made a huge difference to my year, and it’s something I love helping other business owners navigate.

This is the kind of support we build inside the 2026 Group Coaching Program: space to think clearly, to plan with intention, and to be held accountable in a way that feels constructive rather than overwhelming.

If any part of this article has sparked something for you, please get in touch. I’d love to talk through your goals for 2026 and help you make a plan to achieve what matter most to you.

Stay well, and believe in you (I do)!

Andrew