So as 2026 has started, what are the new habits that folks have picked here? I will start with my own. I have started with journaling every night with minimum but important content to ensure it is easy to follow on daily basis.
My year 2025 was a year of accumulating knowledge.
This year, 2026, I want to make a habit of sharing knowledge, synthesizing new knowledge, and implementing real projects/products. Itās time to act!
Saying no.
Which often means having justification for saying no to my manager, but also means saying no to myself when I want to go down rabbit holes.
This has been on my mind also for a long time, but I still havenāt addressed it. But Iām glad you are prioritizing it.
Iāve a wee app that I use for building habits and I have finally settled on a few for testing:
- Daily Iāll do something testing related. It can be writing a blog, posting on here, doing a lesson or reading an article etc.
- Daily Iāll do at least one activity on tryhackme.
- At least once a week I will complete a module or short course.
- At least once a week Iāll do something to brush up my technical skills (maybe play with ZAP, Playwright or K6 etc).
- At least once a week Iāll read at least a chapter of a testing book.
- At least once a week Iāll do sketchnotes (optionally sharing)
- At least once a month Iāll write and share a blog post.
Once I start working Iāll decrease some of the frequencies.
I recently signed up for this website after knowing about it on Discord but havenāt started my journey yet.
Iām also doing it and already posted a couple of articles on Substack
Iām currently reading Elizabeth Hendrickson book on exploratory testing and it is awesome.
Iād definitely recommend it so far. Iāve ended up starting way too easy but itās the best of security learning platform that Iāve experienced so far.
Aye! Iām bad for jumping in and out of books, picking a topic to read then choosing a book. I maybe need a habit that involves finishing, not just reading topics of interest at that moment!
I am working on having goals at the start of the week and then reviewing them at the end. Sometimes i either forget to write the goals down or do the review, so hoping i can do both and stay accountable.
To try and post a reply on this site each week 
Sunday is a good day for goalsetting. I have a 5pm reminder and start with some calendar triage before I look at personal goals. āā¦Mostlyā
cut down on sugar and since we have flexible desk height at work, picking up habit of stand n work at least for 3hrs a day ā¦ i started journaling last year, but couldnāt do it everyday , this year more of it .. and Yes late but genuine wish u happy new year Ujj
I learned just this Tuesday to write 2026. Yeah, I know 2 weeks in and it has taken me that long to start writing out the year and getting it into my head, 5 is such a comfortable number Iām going to miss it.
Rabbits? Squirrels? New habits, well, I think itās called habit stacking. Doing all of the tasks that can be bunched together. For example Wake up, shower, ablutions and brush teeth all in one go and shave! Then downstairs and breakfast. I prefer to shave later and brush teeth after breakfast, and yes dentists will tell you you are not supposed to brush after acidic meals. But thatās a separate argument for a separate day. Discipline is Freedom comes to mind, itās very powerful. So yeah, stacking habits or grouping routines even if it does not make sense to.
Standing desks are ace. Good luck with the journaling, remember it is sometimes hard to be regular at a thing.
I have also started reviewing my weekly progress by myself. Last year, there were a couple of threads on the club, and on top of that, I was active in Twiq, so it was easy to track and share my progress at least in testing.
I have also quit soft drinks since November to cut down on sugar, and it feels good. Wishing you a happy new year and good luck on your sugar-reducing journey as well.
Agree.
These are my 2026 goals so far;
- I have decided to get at least 1 professional certification this year
- started public speaking from last year so will continue doing that and share my knowledge in the community
- focusing on skilling up as usual so will continue doing that like already enrolled in a diploma of cybersecurity which will end this year
- have decided to take my second masters on mental health as this will help me to understand human psychology better and give me better understanding of digital well being with tech here money is an issue of course so not sure will I be able to start this year, if not maybe within next year or two
For me it has been getting more intentional about how I capture work, not just doing it. I started writing short daily notes on what actually moved the needle versus what just felt busy, and it has been surprisingly eye opening.
On the work side, I also got into the habit of keeping testing and validation much more visible instead of scattered across chats and docs. Using something like Tuskr to centralize test cases and runs made it easier to review what changed week to week, which reduced a lot of mental overhead.
Outside of that, fewer notifications and more focused blocks of time. Nothing revolutionary, but consistency has helped more than any big productivity hack.
If you are planning for AI-related certifications, I would suggest avoiding costly certifications, because I recently noticed people are selling AI certifications for several thousand rupees when that stuff is easily available on Hugging Face, Udemy, YouTube, etc., for free or little cost.
This is one of the zones into which Iām stepping this year first time.
Explore tryhackme website, if not yet and also explore apisec university if you are interested in api security.
This is really cool. 
With all these, wish you all the best and hope you achieve all these.
I have been trying this on and off, it also helps at the time performance review, as one can easily review and remember what they did the whole year. I have not been regular with this, butI will try to.
Iām working on creating n8n test agents for testing related activities.
Inconsistency is the biggest consistency in my productivity, and just trying to give up that inconsistency.
I wish you achieve these goals.
Which app do you use to track habits?
Iāve been using TickTick for a while, it hadnāt occured to me that I could be using it for continuous learning stuff too. Thanks for the idea!
In response to the thread question, I will be picking up habits from a list that I havenāt created yet, but it will probably be similar to @oxygenaddictās 
One of the habits Iām trying to start this year is clearly voicing not just when I need help, but how others can help me. Iām foreseeing a very busy year, so Iām going to need the support of my team. They are willing to help, they just donāt seem to know what to do to help.