New Year Bingo: A Kinder Way to Set 2027 Goals
Swap the giant resolution for a game. Here is a New Year bingo card of 16 small, kind goals for your body, your people, your money and your joy, with permission to skip any square you like.
TL;DR: Instead of one huge resolution, play bingo with 16 small goals across four rows: body, people, money and joy. Tick squares whenever you get to them, aim for one full row by March, and swap out anything that does not suit your life. Goals framed as something to do tend to last better than goals framed as something to stop.
It is the first of January. Somebody on your timeline has already been to the gym, your aunty has sent a prayer point about breakthrough, and you are lying down with cold jollof wondering if you should become a new person by Monday. You do not have to. This year, try playing a game instead.
New Year bingo takes the pressure out of goal setting. You get a card of small, kind things to do, in any order, at any speed. Nobody fails bingo in the second week of January. You just have some squares left.
How do you play New Year bingo?
Pick your squares, tick them off whenever you do them, and celebrate when you finish a row. The card below has four rows of four. Finish one row and treat yourself to something small. Finish the whole card and you are officially the main character of 2027.
The rules are short:
- Any square can be swapped for one that suits your life better.
- You can tick a square once and be done. Repeating it is a bonus.
- Squares that cost money can be done the cheap way, or skipped.
- Tell one friend you are playing. It makes the game more fun.
Why are small, positive goals easier to keep?
Goals about doing something tend to stick better than goals about stopping something. In a Swedish study that followed resolutions for a year, 58.9% of people with approach goals considered themselves successful, compared with 47.1% of people with avoidance goals. An approach goal sounds like "I will walk with my sister on Saturdays". An avoidance goal sounds like "I will stop being lazy".
The same study found that people who got some support did better than people who got none, and also better than those who got extended support. So a little encouragement seems to go a long way, which is a nice excuse to bring a friend into the game.
That is why every square below is something to do. If you want a different angle on planning your year, we have also looked at why resolutions keep failing and how to work with your cycle instead.
Your 2027 bingo card
Tick these as you go. Every square is small on purpose.
Row one: your body
- [ ] Go for one walk with no destination and no step target
- [ ] Book the appointment you have been postponing since last year
- [ ] Learn what your cervical screening options are, including self-sampling
- [ ] Go to bed early once, on purpose, with your phone in another room
Row two: your people
- [ ] Send a voice note to a friend you miss, even a rambling one
- [ ] Call an older relative and ask them to tell you a story from their twenties
- [ ] Say a clear, polite no to something you would have resented saying yes to
- [ ] Tell someone exactly what you admire about them
Row three: your money and your admin
- [ ] Cancel one subscription you forgot you were paying for
- [ ] Find out what is in your pension, ajo, esusu, chama or stokvel, and write it down
- [ ] Put your important documents in one safe place
- [ ] Send one invoice, reminder or follow-up that you have been avoiding
Row four: your joy
- [ ] Cook a dish your mother or grandmother makes, and allow it to come out differently
- [ ] Dance in your kitchen for the whole length of one song
- [ ] Finish a book, or give up on a book with no guilt at all
- [ ] Do one thing you were good at as a child, badly and happily
How to make the game work for your life
A card is only useful if it fits the life you have. A few ideas for tailoring yours:
Match it to your energy. Some weeks you will have room for a whole row and some weeks you will have room for lying down. Save the easy squares for tired days. If you track your cycle, you may start to notice which days suit the social squares and which suit the quiet ones. Asele can help you spot that pattern over a few months.
Make it shared. Put the card in your family or friends WhatsApp group and compare progress on the last Sunday of each month. Your cousin in Nairobi, your sister in Peckham and your best friend in Accra can all play the same card from different time zones. Bragging is encouraged.
Set a small prize. Your row prize should be something you would enjoy and can afford. Think suya on the way home, a new nail colour, an hour at a cafe alone, or a nap that nobody is allowed to interrupt.
Rewrite squares freely. If a square makes you feel worse, it has failed, and you have not. Caring for a parent, working two jobs, or having a new baby changes what kind looks like. "Sat down for ten minutes" is a perfectly good square.
What if I fall behind on my bingo card?
You cannot fall behind, because there are no dates on the card. Tick one square in February and three in August if that is how your year goes. If the card ends up in a drawer until June, take it out in June.
Pick your first square today
Choose the easiest square on the card and do it before tomorrow. Send the voice note, cancel the subscription, or dance in the kitchen while the rice warms up. A year of small kind things starts with one tick, and you get to decide what counts.
Happy New Year. May your 2027 be gentle, full of good food, and at least one full row.
Sources
- Oscarsson M, Carlbring P, Andersson G, Rozental A. A large-scale experiment on New Year's resolutions: approach-oriented goals are more successful than avoidance-oriented goals. PLOS ONE, 2020. journals.plos.org
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