Random New Year's Resolution Generator
Random New Year's resolution by category.
Built and maintained by Paul Clark, Redmoon Software · Last checked
Stuck on what to aim for next year? Draw one of 112 New Year's resolution ideas across five categories — health, career, relationships, finances, and personal growth — then reshape it into your own specific goal. Use it to break a January brainstorming stall, run a resolution swap at a New Year's Eve party, or set a monthly mini-goal. Turn on no-repeats and it remembers every draw so nothing comes up twice.
Choose. Pick a category, or leave it on Any for any resolution.
Click Get a resolution to see a result.
Options
Recent results
- No history yet.
How it works
- Choose. Pick a category, or leave it on Any for any resolution.
- Draw. Click "Get a resolution" for a random idea.
- Personalize. Turn the idea into your own specific, measurable version.
- Export. Copy the resolution or download it as CSV, and review past draws in the history list.
About the Random New Year's Resolution Generator
Small enough to actually do
Every resolution in the pool is deliberately modest — a fifteen-minute walk after dinner, one new recipe a month, back up your files. None of them is "get fit" or "be more organised", because resolutions phrased as identities have no first action and nothing to fail at until it is too late to correct.
That is the design principle behind the whole list. A resolution you could start tomorrow, and could tell whether you did, is worth more than an ambitious one you will have abandoned by February. Drawing one at random is a way of accepting a smaller goal than pride would have chosen.
Five categories, or all of them
Health, career, relationships, finances and personal. Choosing a category draws only from it; leaving it blank pools all five and labels each result with the category it came from.
A useful pattern is to draw once per category rather than five times from everything — that gives you one goal in each part of life rather than five health resolutions, which is what an unfiltered set of draws tends to produce.
No repeats, and what to do with the result
With No repeats on, the tool works through the pool without repeating and starts again only once it is exhausted. That makes it a way to read the whole list a few at a time rather than a way to get one answer.
The most useful thing you can do with a drawn resolution is make it more specific before you accept it. "Take a fifteen-minute walk after dinner" becomes real when it becomes "after dinner on weekdays, with the dog". The draw supplies the idea; the specificity is what makes it survive contact with February.
Frequently asked questions
How many resolutions are in the pool?
112 ideas split across five categories: 24 for health and 22 each for career, relationships, finances, and personal growth. Filtering to one category draws only from that list.
Is this meant to be taken seriously?
It's a prompt, not a plan. Ideas like "take a 15-minute walk after dinner" are deliberately small — swap in your own specific, measurable version of whatever resonates.
What happens when no-repeats runs out of ideas?
Once every resolution in your chosen category has appeared, the memory clears automatically and the pool starts over, so the button never stops working mid-session.
Can I export the resolutions I draw?
Yes. Each result can be copied as text or downloaded as a CSV that includes the resolution and its category, and the history block keeps recent draws on screen.
How is this different from the workout picker?
The workout picker builds a concrete exercise session for today; this tool draws broader goal ideas. Draw a health resolution here, then use the workout picker to act on it.
Related randomizers
Further reading
- You don't need January: running a mid-year resolution reset
By July, most January resolutions are a distant memory — and that's fine. Here's how a category-filtered random prompt makes a mid-year reset lower-stakes and easier to start than a New Year's list ever was.
- Why a random resolution prompt beats staring at a blank list on January 1st
Vague, oversized resolutions get abandoned by February. Here's how a random category-filtered prompt gives you a concrete starting point — and why trying it for a month beats committing to "forever" on day one.