2026 and your goals. Let's try to set them for Q1.
Since I haven't been able to meet my work goals very well in the last few quarters, I now plan to approach them more systematically and not push myself too hard on work goals, as that ultimately led to problems that made my plan less sustainable.
So here is my structure and list:
Work goals:
👉 Edit min. 15 pre-recorded YouTube videos
👉 Remove inactive newsletter subscribers, which will be in the hundreds (this will be mentally difficult)
👉 Product launch on Product Hunt (this is a specific product, not a random product)
Personal goals:
👉 Stay consistent in exercising
👉 Learn 4 languages (+ read lessons from textbooks I ordered), ideally every day
👉 Eat less sweets
👉 Go to bed before midnight more often (and not at 2, like I did before)
What are your goals for the first quarter of 2026?
Replies
Triforce Todos
Love how you’re balancing work and personal goals. The focus on sustainability is so important 👏
minimalist phone: creating folders
@abod_rehman Abdul, not gonna lie. I am not doing great at balancing. Now, it is mostly work what I do :D
Hi! Your goal list is so clear, and the "sustainability" focus is awesome! Here are my 2026 Q1 goals:
Work: Secure 3 key client renewals, optimize contract templates, publish 2 industry insights
Personal: 3x weekly strength training, practice business English, meditate, read 2 books/month
Let's keep moving steadily—no burnout, just consistent progress! 💪
minimalist phone: creating folders
@vivianzheng In what industry are you operating in? (when you want to 3 client renewals)?
Love this format! Here are my Q1 2026 goals:
Work goals:
Launch Aitinery (my AI travel planner for Italy) on Product Hunt — this is the big one!
- Reach 500 organic users/month through SEO (just published 20 blog articles, fingers crossed)
- Ship the "Italy Specialized AI Engine" — a major upgrade to our multi-agent pipeline with real train schedules, regional cuisine data, and local hidden gems
Get first 10 paying subscribers
Personal goals:
Actually take a vacation using my own product (the irony of building a travel planner and never traveling is not lost on me)
- Read 5 books (currently at 0, so this is ambitious enough)
- Cook more Italian recipes at home instead of just recommending restaurants through the app
The "not pushing too hard" mindset resonates a lot. Last year I burned out trying to do everything at once. This year I'm focused on doing fewer things but doing them well. Good luck with your goals!
minimalist phone: creating folders
@giammbo Do you travel across Italy only? + do you plan to make the app also more international? :) Not only Italy.
@busmark_w_nika Great question! Short answer: Italy first, international later. But not because we don't want to go global — because we'd be terrible at it right now.
Here's my hot take on "go international early": most travel AI apps try to cover everywhere and end up being mediocre everywhere. They'll recommend the same TripAdvisor top-10 in every city. Cool, thanks, I could've Googled that.
Our bet is the opposite: go SO deep on Italy that no generic travel app can compete. We're talking real train schedules (not "take a train from Rome to Amalfi" — that train doesn't exist btw, but ChatGPT will happily recommend it), regional cuisine that changes every 50km, local festivals, hidden beaches that only locals know.
Once we nail that playbook — the methodology, the data pipeline, the agent architecture — THEN we replicate it country by country. Spain, Greece, Japan... places where the generic AI advice is particularly bad because the real magic is hyperlocal.
So to answer directly: yes, absolutely international is the plan. But I'd rather be the best travel AI for Italy than a mediocre one for everywhere. The "Italy first" approach is a feature, not a limitation.
And personally — I mostly travel in Italy too! There's genuinely so much to discover here that even Italians don't know about. Ask anyone from Milan about Basilicata and watch their blank stare 😄
minimalist phone: creating folders
@giammbo To be honest, I was in Italy just once, but feel that I am missing a lot :D on the other hand, so little time to visit every country in the world. :D it is a shame that I haven't had more time to discover your country's places :)
My professional goals would be do my first SaaS launch and scale it and for personal goals improve my training in the gym.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@martin_cervantes How often can we see you hitting the gym? :D
P.S.: What that SaaS will be about? :)
@busmark_w_nika I'm pretty discipline 😄 I go 5-6 times at week but I want make improvements in the way I train like adding more weight. The SaaS I'm building is called Data Extractio. I haven't launched here yet but you can check it if you want. It's tool that can help you to extract tables from PDFs in which you can define the tables and save them as templates so that you can reuse it for future if you have similar tables to process. Right now I'm refining the tool before the launch but it's funtional now.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@martin_cervantes oooo, I love disciplined people, you are my person :D Is your tool something like Rows?
@busmark_w_nika yes some features are similar my plan is to add more features in future like OCR
You literally admit the last few quarters were unsustainable, then rebuild the same overcommitment stack with better bullet points.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@rolodexter Yeah, that would be the solution too, but over time my priorities are changing, somehow landed more clients, had to delegate some work and I am growing in totally different parts than I set for myself initially.
love this thread 🙏 my q1 goals were kinda similar - more consistent with daily rituals and less doom scrolling. what actually helped me stick to it was finding apps that make the habit feel fun not forced. like i do wordplay (its a cryptic crossword app, 1 clue per day) every morning with coffee as a brain warmup, and i listen to astrologica for my daily horoscope podcast while getting ready lol. for the reading goal i use speakeasy to turn articles into audio so i can listen during commute instead of just saving them forever. biggest thing: keeping each habit under 5 mins so theres no excuse to skip 💪
minimalist phone: creating folders
@sup_nim are you good for now to maintain your goals? 2/3 is over :D
Tomosu
Love this thread! My Q1 goal is to genuinely help people reclaim their attention. I launched Tomosu — an iOS app that locks all apps by default and lets you unlock only what you need, intentionally. One of my personal goals: stop opening Instagram out of habit. The app literally asks you to shake your phone 20 times first 😄 Good luck everyone with your goals!
minimalist phone: creating folders
@nakajima_ryoma Will be there any new relaunch on PH? :)
Love this thread. My big Q1 goal is proving a hypothesis with https://aimyear.com — that people stick with goals longer when they're anchored to real milestones with dates, not daily streaks.
Personally, I'm testing my own system: 3 life areas, one clear target each, weekly check-ins on Sunday. No daily guilt tracking. If it works for me, it works for users.
Biggest challenge: the temptation to do more. "Systematically" (like you said) means saying no to 80% of what feels urgent.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@valentina_konuhova and how are you doing? Because it is only a few days left until the end of Q1 :D
@busmark_w_nika I feel like this year I'm really making steps toward achieving what's truly important to me.
And it's more about finding my personal "why" — the thing that drives my commitment.
You know how on the first day of the year (or whatever day we set big goals and want to change something in our lives) we commit to all these things, but sometimes they don't stand the test of time? A couple of weeks later we're sinking back into routine, and the only desire is to finish the workweek and get some easy rest.
For me, the thing that actually kept me on track was reviewing my day every single evening and planning the next one — remembering which areas I've made progress in and which ones lacked my attention. When I see how many days I've been working toward an aim, I become more confident that there will be an outcome. Maybe not the one I was thinking about at the start, but something that made me a better person.
And when I see that I haven't done anything yet for something I set as an important aim, I ask myself: is it really important to me? That's where, day by day, you start to find your real intrinsic motivation. If the answer is yes, I try to give it more attention — I try to plan my day with these things prioritized.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@valentina_konuhova Maybe you will deliver results faster under the time pressure, that is also a part of the strategy! :)
my q1 goals are all about shipping and getting real users on 3 ios apps i built last year:
1. launch speakeasy (speakeasy.studio.gold) on product hunt — it's an article-to-audio converter. goal: 500 free users, 50 paid conversions by end of q1. the product works, now it's about distribution
2. grow astrologica (astrologica.app) daily listeners — it's an ai horoscope podcast from your birth chart. goal: 1000 daily active listeners. retention is strong for people who try it, the challenge is getting them to try it
3. get wordplay (wordplay.studio.gold) to 100 daily players — it's a daily cryptic crossword clue with explanations. smallest audience but highest engagement per user
meta-goal: stop building features and start marketing. i spent all of 2025 building and maybe 5% of my time on distribution. flipping that ratio in q1
the personal goal underneath all of this: prove that a solo maker can run 3 "single-serving" apps sustainably. each one is small by design — the question is whether small + daily + habitual = viable 🎯
minimalist phone: creating folders
@sup_nim When is the launch day? 👀