Home / Blog / Step The F*ck Up

STEP THE F*CK UP

New Year's Resolution Ideas That Survive Past January

By Joshua S. Brogley · September 3, 2026

Part of the series Month Twelve: 31 Days of Building What Outlasts You

The best New Year's resolution ideas are not goals, they are daily shapes. Anything on the usual lists, fitness, money, patience, reading, works if it is converted into one small action a day and fails if it stays an ambition. Below are resolution ideas across health, money, family and character, each already sized to the only shape that survives past January: daily, small, and provable by bedtime.

Health, sized to survive

Not get fit. Ten minutes of movement daily, floor version two, counted with an X on a calendar. Not sleep more. Phone in another room at a fixed time. Not eat better. One home-cooked meal more per week than now. Each is small enough to do on a terrible Tuesday, which is the entire test, because the year contains many terrible Tuesdays.

Money, family, character

Money: know your three numbers, then one automated transfer, however small, the day pay lands. The full sequence is in breaking the paycheck cycle. Family: ten minutes of floor time or the bedtime bookend, daily, phone elsewhere. Character: one promise kept to yourself per day, logged, because self-trust is built on receipts.

Pick one. Convert it. Write the miss rule.

One resolution, not a list. Convert it to its smallest daily action. Then decide before January how a missed day is handled: miss one, never two, and the floor version still counts. That rule is the difference between a gap and a collapse, and it is the machinery behind no zero days. The full method is in how to actually keep a resolution.

The best resolution is a book with 365 pages

A resolution needs a container: something that hands you the day's version of it every morning and keeps the score without mercy or drama. A one-page-a-day book is that container, one truth, one mission, two minutes, and January 1st is the natural Day 001. Which one to start with depends on which resolution above made you wince.

Step The F*ck Up

365 days of no-bullsh*t motivation. One page, one mission, two minutes. Miss never twice.

Buy it on Amazon See the book

What are good New Year's resolution ideas?

Ones already shaped as daily actions: ten minutes of movement, phone away at a set hour, one automated transfer on payday, ten minutes of floor time with the kids, one kept promise per day. The shape matters more than the topic.

What is the most common New Year's resolution?

Health-related goals, exercise, weight, eating, top most surveys, followed by money and time with family. They are also the most abandoned, usually because they are set as outcomes rather than daily actions.

written by the author, at the kitchen table, after work.