NAIL your 2026 Planning

Hello and welcome to Don't Stop Us Now AI Edition. I'm Claire Hatton and I'm Greta Thomas. AI has been described as the most transformative technology since the harnessing of electricity and we are here to keep you in the loop for what you need to know and do in order to stay relevant in this fast changing world. Each episode we bring you leading experts and together we explore how you can stay ahead of the curve and in the know for what skills will be valued in the future. How jobs may change and how industries will evolve. So why not subscribe to stay in the loop and without further ado, enjoy this week's episode. Hello and welcome to 2026 and to this week's episode. We really hope you've had a great chance to at least have a bit of a break and wind down and rest and recuperate. We certainly have but we're really looking forward to 2026 and what it's got to hold. Oh yes and you know when we were thinking and talking about what would be the most useful theme and topic for our first episode to kick off this new year. You and I decided that actually sharing the results of each of us working with a number of the different AI, our language models and how we've had a go at using them to help us plan and prioritize our year and our goals might be something that many of our listeners are doing right now and might be interested in hearing about. Exactly so we're going to share some of the things that we've tried and tested and which prompts and models we thought worked best to really give you a bit of new year inspiration and even a bit of new year structure as we all get to you know really I guess set our goals for this year and get to December and feel like we've really accomplished something meaningful. Yes yeah I know because it's I think it's quite a bit of anxiety. I know I often have it in January of a new year kind of morning to make sure or you know thinking to myself I not planned enough I don't have structured enough goals or are they ambitious enough I think it would be well worthwhile I know I already feel better. Yeah no I do too I do too I think I'm actually at this stage of January the most clear of probably ever been. It's great isn't it yeah no there's some really useful things that have emerged. Yeah so where did you start but yeah well I started I asked chat GBT Gemini and Claude which are the three main AI large language models that I use on a regular basis and I asked them to summarize my 2025 based on my interactions with them throughout the 2025 calendar year. Now obviously I got different answers from each because I tend to use the models for different things. What was very interesting was by firing away the most accurate and impressive answer I got was Claude. But it does make sense that's right because the qualification there of course is I probably used Claude for more meaningful things. I deliberately you know sometimes if it's a surfing question I'll keep that away from Claude and I might go to chat GBT so I just sort of share my my love around. I also until Gemini came out with its latest model I probably wasn't using it as much either but what was great it's remarkable even across the board but particularly with Claude how much it picked up and how much it synthesized my year and the very first line or two is something that is absolutely true and actually was a bit of a tagline for our podcast when we relaunched it to be focused just on AI which I don't think Claude knows. But it said you know Greta I described 2025 as the year you went all in on AI and I remember sort of when I first read that kind of sitting back and go yeah well that is true yeah well done Claude and then it sort of picked things and it talked about our business you know with you Clair the podcast and how that's evolved different client work and personal threads so I was you know reasonably impressed and for me yeah Claude came up with the best answer how about you did you try something similar looking back at 2025 yeah I did the first thing that I did actually was I went to chat GBT because I was curious because I'd read on LinkedIn particularly that chat GBT had done a year in review you know a bit like Facebook does or Spotify I actually I couldn't find it anyway when I went to chat GBT so all I did was I just wrote a prompt that said show me my year with chat GBT and it brought up this sort of really curated quite interesting I don't know what do you call it it's a sort of they're like visual images with a one phrase yeah sentence to give you some things but then also there was one they like little colorful cards or PowerPoint slides but portrait orientation one about the stats how many chats you had and yeah exactly and it was interesting because although like you I don't use chat GBT is my main large language model it was actually pretty accurate or be at a high level there are three big themes for 2025 were pretty much spot on um it gave me all my back you know it was it was kind of useful in a high level way a bit about my style my archetyped which I'm apparently a strategist which is 3.6% of all chat GBT users me too yeah but there you go let's not let's not dwell on these ridiculous so look it wasn't was it helpful it was okay you know the themes were good but it was fun so I then went to Claude and Gemini and just before you dive in yeah um for those who use chat GBT as their primary one definitely have a look it's really interesting and for me it was visible probably because I hadn't probably used chat GBT much since the beginning of the year yeah so I could find the kind of the buttoned press very easily okay I didn't have to write any special prompts okay well yeah I couldn't find it but anyway so yeah if you're a chat GBT user definitely look at that I think you'll probably find it even more useful than I found it I then went Claude and Gemini so I with Claude the prompt was I actually asked it I said um can you give me some insights about my 2025 year based on how I've used Claude through the year it also gave me some interesting insights slightly different but again I use Claude differently Gemini was interesting actually fairly useless because it told me it didn't have access to memory and so it couldn't give me a review which was odd because I think it worked for you yeah it did it didn't hesitate and it gave me a summary but you know the summary can only be based on what I've inputted throughout the year and so it didn't feel well-rounded but that's not necessarily a reflection of Gemini or also chat GBT data yeah I mean Gemini's often for this kind of perhaps you could call this a bit more frivolous it's always quite conservative yeah it doesn't want to give you things that yeah shouldn't have access to which I kind of value actually but um so yeah so so I guess the first thing was reflecting on 2025 so those processes were useful it kind of prompted thoughtfulness for myself and made me sort of think about things it was also Claude in particular and chat GBT was very sort of positive about my year and so it made me feel better about my year actually because you know for me 2025 was an okay year it wasn't an amazing year it wasn't a terrible year it was an okay year so I think being positive about it was useful as I'm going into setting my goals for 2026 yeah that makes sense so what did you do then for looking at 2026 goals in the process well I decided that I wanted to do my own human Greta work first so I spent time actually manually going through my calendar for 2025 and making notes it for each month about it was sort of not a structured process you know Tim Ferris has one structure to do this and others have others but I made a note of achievements that I'd sort of forgotten about where you know clearly where I was spending time or when major developments occurred and then I sort of synthesized that in some sort of reflection because I didn't want to start with AI of its own accord coming up with priorities for 26 I actually really wanted to think about it first so I inputted I decided to use Claude based on the 2025 summaries and I continued the same conversation could you do it in a project or in just in a chat no because when I asked it to summarize 25 I just dove in eagerly and didn't think about whether I'd want to make this a project or not so I just did it in a chat so to speak and then have kept that one chat going as I've done different interactions with it it's good because I mean Claude's got a better context window now so that you can have a longer conversation yeah running out of tokens yeah that's right so I wrote about an a4's page worth of context if you like four Claude saying these are the key areas this is you know things that were important to me that I want to keep doing his things you know as I wrote it was really useful a specific sometimes tactical sometimes strategic goals to surface naturally, which I really like because that sort of feels like they're very authentic, they're, you know, very organic and authentic to me, not any computer model, putting them on there, but then they weren't comprehensive or necessarily, you know, greatly articulated in, you know, the smart SNART goal kind of former, anything like that. So I did about a page. I also talked about, you know, but actually I'm going to do quite a bit of travel this year and I've also got, so it wasn't just about work, it was also about life and exercise sort of things. So with that page, I then asked Claude to give me, what did I say? I said, from this big brain dump and download, how would you summarize what I've said and what do you think would be valuable questions or next steps for me to consider? It did a really nice synthesis because it was a fairly unstructured, you know, brain dump, literally just writing from my head and fingers into Claude, not nothing pre-planned. And so it observed, you know, a key tension about sort of the ambitions I had in terms of what we want, you know, we both collectively and me, individually want to achieve workwise, but then with travel plans and other commitments. But also it synthesized my brain dump into seven priority areas that were really helpful. And then it practically also gave me, as I had requested, questions to think about in order to get sharper with the goals that had emerged and the like. And so then I did a little bit of back and for Claude in one instance, posed a great question about one particular work area that I was a bit fuzzy on suggesting, you know, getting clear on the why you want this to happen in the 2026 will really help you know, had it more specifically and what to more specifically pursue in this area. And that was really good. I also really love to comment that Claude made about my goals and priorities saying, you know, the issue with some of them in the brain dump were that not all of them were outcomes that I personally could control, some are outcomes that I hope for and that being mindful about which you have direct control over in which you don't was very helpful. So just even going through that process has lightened my load for thinking about 26 a little bit. So yeah, yeah, that sounds really great, you know, sounds like you're really using as a thought partner. And I haven't finished yet. So I need to go back. It gave me an exercise which I think is really valuable saying spend 15 minutes on each of those seven priority areas and say by 2020 December 2026, I will feel happy if dot dot dot for each of those. And yeah, and you know, I might even actually probe whether the seven areas are the right ones, you know, or whatever, but that's something that I'm going to, you know, do more of. And Tusta and you? Yeah, I went about it in a slightly different way. And you know, I think that your point around you doing the thinking before you get AI involved is a really good one. However, what I decided to do was I decided to work with Claude to come up with some instructions for a project or a gem because I could use those instructions for a gem or a GPT or a custom copilot to help me do the thinking. And actually even getting clear on the instructions was super helpful even for my goals. What I said to Claude was, I'm looking to work with a project to help me set my 2026 strategy and goals for both work and life. Could you please help me determine the instructions for the project by asking me questions? The final output will be a set of instructions for the project. So I was quite clear on what we were trying to do. It then asked me questions that really helped me map out the scope of what I wanted to do, kind of like my preferred approaches to goal setting, the process I wanted to follow, clarifications of, you know, well, what does personal work mean, etc. And I actually did spend a bit of time thinking about how goal setting had worked best for me in the past, which was really useful. It prompted me to do that, which I actually wouldn't have done. No, that's really useful. You know, my time at Google I used OKRs because that's what Google used. And that really tended to work for me because I'm actually very goal orientated, as you know. But I also wanted to integrate some things like what are my key motivations and how would I celebrate into the goal setting process? Because again, I know that that's important for me to actually I guess make the most progress and have the most impact. So that was really good. And the other thing that we talked about, me and Claude, was, you know, how I wanted to track them through the year. So not only was this project about setting the strategy in the goals for 2026, I also wanted it to then be able to come back and help me as the year goes on. Nice. Prompt me around pretty much every week, you know, how am I going on a monthly basis, have a bit more of a deeper thing. And then on a quarterly basis sort of plan for, for quarter, because that's a piece that I'm not brilliant at myself. And so having some structure in there, you know, is good. And so basically we ended up with some really clear instructions for the project. So yeah, that's great. Including the fact it's going to proactively prompt me. So then once I got that and I was happy with it, you know, I then set up both a project on Claude and a gem on Gemini using those instructions. And because I wanted to see how they were different. And how they'd be guarding me through the process or using the instructions, I said. And actually the outcome was that they were quite different. And again, I think, you know, it really depends on what your preference is, which, you know, if you have the ability to use multiple LLMs like we do, then I think, you know, basically choosing the one that works best for you. The thing I like about Claude is that actually coaches me much more than the process that Gemini takes me on. Gemini is a bit more directive. You know, it kind of gave me specifics that I then had to fill in. I kind of felt like I was doing a bit prescriptive on the actual goal. Yeah. Well, not on the actual goal itself, but on like, you know, so what are your three specific motivations? List them here. Whereas Claude was much more around it. Okay. Well, let's get into your motivations. What is it about this? I like that. I respond to that. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, it was interesting. Google, I find great because we're on Google workspace and we can integrate calendar and Gmail without any security concerns, because we're on an enterprise version. So again, I kind of think I'm probably ultimately end up in a gem. I will use Claude as well because I really find it helpful. So yeah, that's the process. I've still got more to do like you, but I really do feel like I'm in a good space and that I am so much more crisper than I've ever been and feel much more structured. So question, because you started straight with AI or be it asking it really to be a coach to help you finalize your goals or to come up with goals and they may not be finalized yet. Yeah. How or think it to you the human. Do you think those goals are versus perhaps being slightly primed or influenced by something the AI model has observed or said? Well, I know I feel like they're very authentic. Yeah. Because for me, because I set up a project and I didn't just have a chat. I've set up a lot of context and I've set up a lot of the process that I wanted it to run. And so it's just taken me through my thinking. Yeah. See it away, but yeah, the project created guardrails. Yes. To ensure that it didn't take over if you like your thinking for goals, but that it guided you and drew out of you your goals. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like a coach would do. Yeah. Which is so right. Yeah. I feel like it is very authentic. I also feel because I put those guardrails in place. It's not like prompting me with lots of fluff and I get really annoyed with it when it's sort of like ra ra ra and I guided it. It asked me how I would like it to be. Yeah. But I guided it specifically to be much more pragmatic. I also guided it to, you know, like I said to it look from I know from myself that I can overcomplicate things. Yeah. I always remember ambitious. I can be over ambitious. Achieveable. It's actually so I am out of this. You know, I need to help with this. So you know, super super helpful. Yes. So yeah. So that's what I did. That's great. Yeah. I think you did something else that's quite cool too, didn't you? Well, yeah. I wanted to just play around with different approaches and different ways of looking at 2026. So you might recall that when I put in my brain dump to Claude, it fed back to me. It sort of synthesized that brain dump with seven priority areas or themes. So I thought, well, it would be really interesting to see if I wanted to make a digital vision board for 2026. How would that go? Now, so I used nano-binana, the pro-version, which is, you know, if you do subscribe to Gemini. And so I fed just those seven priority areas, and I asked nano-binana to make a vision board for 2026 for me, and I happened to use the phrase, because I thought, well, I don't know quite what it'll show me, but I like, you know, cutting out magazine photos if I'm making a vision board. So I said, in a photo realistic way. Now, the output, it took me very literally, and there's a big photo of a pin-up cork board on a desk, quite cool. And then it took quite a lot of the words in my seven priority areas, and just sort of made it very, I found it a bit too literally, it just took in a way. But it, you know, made it look like a vision board. The one thing that generated that was really new, it kind of summarized the year with three words, and they were momentum, purpose, and then strength, which is, speaks more to my exercise goals. That's so interesting. My themes for the year are sort of similar. Right, interesting. Yeah. Strength for momentum. And was it on Gemini or on Cored? I would do Gemini both. Okay, and they both came up with that. Well, I think momentum with this nurse, with a eye, you know, everyone probably that works on AI, it's all about momentum because everything's changing so fast. But I found it a little bit literal, but you know, if you are someone who likes a simple visual, it's really clean, it's accurate to what I've fed it. I actually really like it. Yeah, there you go, you see. I actually asked it to do another one, saying, okay, don't be so literal. Maybe just think about, you know, how these seven areas are themes, just seeing what it would do, but it really didn't change it that much. But yeah, I think it's a really good exercise. And you know, as always, you get what you put in, and I had only given it a brief summary and said, make a vision board. So it did really well overall, if you consider it. Yeah. Then in the same conversation, yeah, that I had the vision board, I switched Nano Banana off. So you do that in the bottom left of the chat box. I asked Gemini, even though maybe the vision board wasn't perfect, I just thought, let's just try this. I asked Gemini to retro-spectively explain how I might spend this 2026 based on the stated priorities and that I'd uploaded the seven sort of areas. And the vision board that it had just created. So my question was, what would someone with these goals based on the words I'd already uploaded and the vision board it had created? What would they spend their year doing? Yeah. And what did it say? Oh, it was really cool. First off, I love the way it catrised new things that traits and themes from my year. So it started out by saying, based on your reflections and the vision board themes, someone with these goals isn't living a standard grind year. Instead, they are living a year defined by intentional shifts between high performance output and deep restoration. And then in other words, it's not an even year, right? There are times where I'm taking three or four weeks off. And so it said, here is what you would actually spend your year doing. And then it numbered it. And the first one was, for example, you're operating on a sprint and rest rhythm saying, I'm not working a 40-hour work week, week in and week out. Yeah. I thought those kind of observations were really interesting and helpful and very fresh. Like I hadn't thought about considering my year in that way. In streets. No. Yeah. And then, you know, it sort of talked about my training. Your physical schedule is non-negotiable and it has a very big influence on your calendar. Yeah. And that's true. And it talked about it, use the words, not me, intellectual expansion. You know, so as in continuing to learn more about AI and immerse myself in, it's emerging capabilities. You know, then I've got, oh my god, I'm reading it. Yeah. Yeah. It talked about, it used the phrase financial sniper mode. Well, because I need to make some more investments with my retirement money. They've got a bit too much in cash. Yeah. But I, you know, want to make sure it's a good time in the market. So that was how it cataclysm. Financial sniper. Yeah. I don't agree with that. The first one I liked is intentional shift between high performance, you know, if you like concentrated output and then kind of deep rest. Yeah. That was really good. And it's just a whole new way of thinking about my year. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the thing, isn't it? You know, using AI, really, it's not about doing the work for you. It's about being a thought partner with you and helping you see different ways of summarizing it, ways of being, ways, you know, I think it's very powerful. Yeah. No, Tony, one thing other thing it did at the end, it even told me how I might spend my days. I know that I would kind of do the exercise or surfing in the morning. Yeah. I do high level strategy in the mid day. Yeah. The one besieging it said is that I would travel extensively without a laptop. That doesn't suit you. No, I could not do that. But anyway, bearing in mind, if you like, I've only superficially fed Jim and I, I haven't given it the good quality inputs because I was just testing its abilities. Yeah. So very interesting. So basically the more context you give it, the better, the responses are going to be. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I did one thing sort of similar to you which is playing around, which was in terms of visualising things. Yeah. And I went to notebook LM. Right. Interesting. Yeah. So I got my goals. Yeah. And so this is goals as in an output from your work. Yes. An output from the work I've done with project and the gem. Yeah. I sort of got to the point where I've got six goals. Okay. Did you go all the way through with both before you jump into that, with both the project and the gem and how different were the goals? To be honest, I gave up a bit with Gemma because there was a lot more work. I will actually do it with a claw that I got to the end. Okay. Great. So then I had goals. I'd also asked the project, I wanted to get clear on the first three to five steps. Right. For each goal. For each goal. Yeah. So then I uploaded that to notebook LM, just copied and pasted it and clicked on mind map button. And it produced this really simple mind map that actually gives me my goals and my three tasks that I can then just print out. You know, it's not rocket science, but actually was kind of interesting. It would also be interesting to get it to do a podcast based on my goals. Or a presentation. Yeah. Yeah. You know, whatever. So, you know, that was kind of it was interesting fun and semi-useful. So there you go. Yeah. And I think, you know, the point about all of these things that we're sharing is as you can hear, we've done them as a not even 8020. It's probably 6040 initially because we want to find out which of these exercises is most valuable for us individually and what works for Claire is clearly already different to what works for me. And it'll be the same with you, but we're trying to just give you some small, small, small ideas and thought starters exactly. Yeah. Hopefully it's been really helpful. Yeah. And this more work I'm keen to do now. Yeah. I'm actually motivated. Me too. I'm really energized. Well, that's this episode done and dusted. We hope it's been super useful for you and that it just gives you, as Greta said, some thought starters to just use AI and play with it and have some fun and hopefully also help you get better and your business goals get better, your personal goals get better, etc. Exactly. And I certainly imagine now looking forward to decision refining the thinking and progressing and putting off sort of meat on the bones of my goals for 2026 working with AI and I think I'll sort of predominantly probably do that with Claude to start, but maybe I'll compare with Gemini too. We really recommend you give it a try. You know, this very little at stake. Exactly. So on that positive note, have a great week. Here's to an intentional, productive and fulfilling 2026 for all of us. We'll be back soon in two weeks, but in the meantime, stay safe, stay kind and chauvin out. (upbeat music)