I Let ChatGPT Rip Apart My 2026 Goals, in a Helpful Way

AI as a Goal-Setting Coach: How ChatGPT Helped Me Rethink My 2026 Priorities

The momentum of the new year has passed, and maybe you’ve already forgotten about your goals. I find it helps to review my goals weekly in a kind of ritual. Goals aren’t set in stone—they’re directional, and I update them as the year progresses.

I put all of mine in a Notion page, then review it every Sunday after my journaling session. But this year, I plan to take my system further with AI.

I’ve used AI before as a goal-setting coach, to describe my dream day and tell me something I didn’t know about myself—all with varying degrees of success. I like using AI most when I feed it my own content and ideas, rather than expecting it to “think” for me. That’s a slippery slope for society.

I decided to go with ChatGPT for this one, only because it probably knows the most about me.

As a reminder, don’t put any sensitive information into ChatGPT. OpenAI is rolling out ads soon to its chatbot, so your most intimate conversations will soon be followed up with a product offer. You could use Claude, as Anthropic just announced it’ll remain ad-free.

Either way, proceed with caution.

Get AI to Play Devil’s Advocate on Your Goals

I had all my goals for the new year on one page, so it was easy to copy and paste them into ChatGPT. For the first prompt, I wanted to set the scene and my expectations for the task.

Here’s what I wrote: “These are my 2026 goals. I want you to help me see my blind spots, so I can achieve as many of these as possible. If I only achieve my three biggest goals, I’ll define this as a successful year. Where might I fall short? What do I have to pay attention to throughout the year? Be pragmatic and not a people pleaser. Ask me questions before you make assumptions.”

ChatGPT said the biggest risk is overstacking identity-level goals in a year that will be physiologically and emotionally volatile.

It identified some assumptions I made, like:

• Planning as if pregnancy is predictable.
• Assuming my work capacity will stay steady all year.
• Having social goals that conflict with pregnancy.

It gave me a focus for each quarter, which felt right. I’ve got some big goals in the first half of the year, such as getting pregnant, visiting my family in Australia, and launching a new website and a digital product. I need to frontload the year with a lot in order to take a couple of months off in November or December for maternity leave if I get pregnant in Q1.

ChatGPT noted that I need to pay attention to my nervous system, watch for decision fatigue, and recognize the difference between maintenance and growth.

Making peace with 2026 being a season of maintenance is a powerful insight. The AI chatbot suggested reducing cognitive load by having the same workout days, same content format, same networking structure, and same travel rules.

It also asked follow-up questions, like:

• What goal would I be willing to soften if I do fall pregnant in Q1 or Q2 (suggesting weight loss, career visibility, or revenue growth as goals to let go of)?
• What “financially stable” means to me emotionally, what career outcome would make 2026 a win for me.
• How many hours per week can I realistically work without resentment.
• Which social commitments feel nourishing rather than performative to me.

Once I answered those questions, ChatGPT said it would be able to rerank my goals and give me a more realistic plan for the year.

I responded to this while also providing more context on what’s working so far, five weeks into the year.

Again, ChatGPT told me I’m underestimating the cash drag of pregnancy. That’s valid. It also highlighted that I have too many “soft yeses”—I have too many little things I’m still aiming for.

Here’s what it suggested:

It noted that career success this year should be defined by retention, not growth. It also noted that my weight and fitness goal should have a pregnancy clause and that my planned trip to Australia would be more disruptive than I think.

It kept coming back to the point that my plan for the year would be “death by a thousand quiet overextensions.”

I replied with my absolute nonnegotiables for a successful year.

It helped me see that debt payoff is more important than spending money on conferences and self-care. I need to be careful about timing my Australia trip if I’m front-loading client work for the two-month break.

It gave me some operating rules to protect my nonnegotiables:

• Cash buffer beats excitement this year.
• Front-load work months before. Work with each client.
• Completion is the outcome for my new website and product.
• Maintenance beats growth.

The Verdict on Using AI as a Goal-Setting Partner

I wouldn’t say ChatGPT revealed a huge problem with my goals, but it did help me rethink priorities and clarify what’s really important.

This will be a birth year, so stability is my success metric, not growth.

It also felt like I had permission to focus only on my seven nonnegotiables rather than my huge list of wants. I’ll take that as a win.

For fun, I opened Nano Banana to turn my nonnegotiables into a nice little image that I can put as my iPhone wallpaper.

I even used the design from my future baby shower AI event invitation.

Cute.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

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