How I used AI to review my year and plan 2026 as a solopreneur

If you’ve ever wondered how to use AI to review your year, this is the approach I used when I sat down to plan 2026.

A few days ago, I did what I always do: opened a new document, wrote “Plans for 2026” at the top, and started a rough list of goals, ideas and “this year I’ll finally…”

A few days ago, I sat down to plan 2026 in the same way I planned 2025.

New document.
“Plans for 2026” at the top.
A rough list of goals, ideas and “this year I’ll finally…”

After a few minutes, it hit me:

Why am I doing this from scratch again, when I’ve been using AI all year for my business?

Most of my ideas, client notes and half-formed plans are already living inside AI chats and documents. I just wasn’t using any of that to plan the new year.

So I stopped my list, opened my AI, and asked a different question:

“Can you show me what I actually did in my business this year?”

That was the moment everything shifted.

Realising I’d done more than I thought

Like most solopreneurs, my brain is very good at remembering what I didn’t do:

The offer I still haven’t launched
The email sequence I didn’t finish
The blog post that is still a draft somewhere

But when I asked AI to look back over the year with me, a different picture appeared.

It reminded me of:

Client projects I had completely forgotten about
Systems I quietly set up behind the scenes
Content I wrote and then moved on from
Ideas I tested once or twice without calling them “experiments”

In other words: I had done much more for my business than my brain was giving me credit for.

This is one of the underrated things AI can do for solopreneurs: it can hold up a mirror to your year and show you the full story, not just the messy bits you remember at 2 am.

Asking AI for a simple “year in review”

I didn’t do anything fancy or complicated.

I just wrote something like:

“Help me review my business in 2025. Based on our conversations and the projects we’ve discussed, list the main things I worked on this year. Include:
– client work
– new services or offers
– content I created (blogs, newsletters, social)
– systems and behind-the-scenes improvements
– ideas I planned but didn’t finish.”

From there, I asked a few follow-up questions:

Which projects or offers came up more than once?
What did I actually finish and ship?
What did I start, then pause?
What patterns do you see in what I enjoy doing for clients?

It was like scrolling my whole year in a few paragraphs.

And that made planning 2026 feel very different.
Instead of “What should I do next year?” the question became:

“What do I want to continue, refine, or finally bring to life?”

Don’t get distracted by pageviews alone.

Use tools like Google Analytics or built-in WordPress stats to track:

Which posts lead people to your email list
Which posts get clicks on “book a call” links
How long people stay on each post

Then, double down on what’s working, and repurpose those topics for LinkedIn, your newsletter, or Instagram.

Separating wins, experiments and unfinished ideas

Once I had the summary, I didn’t jump straight into goal setting.

First, I asked AI to help me sort everything into three simple groups:

Wins
Things that worked, brought in clients, felt good or moved me forward.
Experiments
Things I tried once or twice. Not quite a full launch, not a total failure either.
Unfinished ideas
Things that lived in notes, conversations and brainstorms but never turned into something real.

Seeing my year organised this way was so much kinder than a traditional “goals vs reality” comparison.

Wins showed me where the energy and results were.
Experiments reminded me I had been testing and learning, not just procrastinating.
Unfinished ideas became raw material for 2026, not a stick to beat myself with.

Moving from a list to a visual canvas

Up to this point, everything was still in a text document.

And I realised: if I keep it like this, I’m just going to create another long list that feels heavy.

So instead of writing every single 2026 goal on a page, I decided to design my plan inside a visual brainstorming canvas.

For me, that looked like:

Creating “bubbles” or sticky notes for each win, experiment and unfinished idea
Grouping them by theme (web design, content, AI, client systems, and so on)
Adding a separate area for “Not now / Parking lot”

Suddenly, my planning stopped feeling like homework and started feeling like design.

I could literally drag ideas around to different quarters, or move something to “Not for 2026” without drama. No deleting, no guilt. Just “this doesn’t belong to this season.”

Tools you can use for your own visual plan

You don’t need anything fancy to do this. A notebook and some post-its absolutely work.

But if you like digital tools and you want something you can use on both your phone and your laptop, here are a few options.

Cross-platform (desktop + phone)

Miro – online whiteboard you can use in the browser or via app. Great for sticky notes, clusters and simple flows.
Canva Whiteboards – if you already use Canva for design, their whiteboards are an easy way to build a visual map and export it as an image or PDF.
Notion – you can create simple boards and drag “cards” between areas like Q1, Q2, Ideas, Parking lot and so on.
Xmind – a classic mind mapping tool that works on desktop and mobile. Great if you like more structured “nodes” and branches.

iOS-only options

MindNode – a beautiful mind mapping app for Mac and iOS, perfect if you like clean, minimal visual maps.
Apple Freeform – built into newer versions of iOS, iPadOS and macOS. Great for quick sketches, sticky notes and loose ideas on an infinite canvas.

Pick one that feels light and simple. The tool is not the important part. The important part is giving your brain a way to see everything at once and move it around without rewriting your whole plan every time something changes.

Using AI as a thinking partner, not a boss

One important thing here: AI didn’t decide my goals for 2026.

It just helped me:

See what I actually did this year
Notice patterns I might have missed
Turn a chaotic brain dump into a few clear categories

The decisions were still mine.

I chose:

Which offers I want to focus on
Which experiments I want to repeat properly
Which unfinished ideas are still exciting (and which can stay unfinished)

AI’s job in this process was to organise, reflect and suggest.
My job was to choose, prioritise and commit.

That balance feels really healthy to me as a solopreneur.

A gentler way to plan your next year (step by step)

If you’re planning 2026 (or any new year) and you’ve been using AI at all this year, here’s a simplified version of what I did.

Ask AI for a year in review
Let it list what you actually did: projects, content, systems, ideas.
Sort it into three groups
Wins, experiments and unfinished ideas.
Move everything into a visual canvas
Use a mind map, whiteboard or digital board and drag things into:
- “Foundations to keep”
- “Focus for next year”
- “Not now”
Choose a small number of focuses
Especially for Q1. What are three things future you will be very grateful you started in January?
Ask AI for the first tiny steps
For each focus, ask: “What are the first 3–5 practical steps I can take to move this forward next month?”

That’s it. No 20-page planning document.
Just a clearer view of the year you already lived, and a plan that actually fits the business you already have.

DIY vs done-with-you: how I can help

You can absolutely do all of this on your own with your favourite AI tool and a whiteboard app.

If you’d like more support, I also offer personalised planning sessions where we:

Review your year together using AI (so you don’t have to dig through everything alone)
Map out your wins, experiments and unfinished ideas
Design a realistic, visual plan for the first quarter of 2026
Set up a simple AI workflow you can reuse during the year (for content, offers or systems)

If that sounds helpful, you can get in touch here and we’ll see if it’s a good fit for where your business is right now.

What this changed for me

Sitting down to “plan 2026” in the same way I planned 2025 reminded me how easy it is to default to old habits. Open a blank page. Make a long list. Feel behind.

Using AI to look back first changed the tone completely.

It stopped being “What should I be doing next year?” and became:

“Given everything I’ve already built and learned,
what feels right to continue, deepen or finally bring to life?”

If AI has been your quiet co-pilot this year, this is a beautiful way to let it help you design the next season of your business too.