Visual Planning for 2026

New year, new plans. Finalist is here to help you put them together.

The latest update has a new Yearly Planner that literally lets you paint-in your year's plans, a new way to get a head start on 2026.

From Vague to Visual

Traditional planning asks you to write goals in a list. But I find it easier to think of my year as a canvas. Some weeks are for focused work. Others are for rest, travel, or hitting major milestones.

Color Your Year lets you add color and focus to any day, week, or month with a Highlighter (think of it as your intention brush):

• Focus sprints when you need deep work
• Vacation days and school holidays to protect your rest
• Milestone markers for launches, events, or celebrations
• Days off scattered throughout for balance

Tap a day to color it. Tap a week number to paint the entire week. Tap a day name (Monday, Tuesday...) to highlight that day across the whole month. It's fast, visual, and intuitive, like marking up a paper planner, but for your entire year.

Planning That Moves With You

The highlights are more than just pretty patterns, they're integrated into your daily workflow:

• See them on your Daily view as each day arrives
• See your Week Browser light up with nested colors of upcoming days
• Planner's other modes, Weekly and Monthly, will get more colorful too

And of course highlights optionally sync to any of your calendars. Add a highlight, and it appears in your calendar app instantly. Remove it, and it's gone. Delete the highlight itself, and it's completely removed from the calendar. Your plan stays in sync across all your tools. Or you can choose to keep each Highlight just in Finalist, and not sync it to any calendar.

Design the Year You Want to Live

Planning ahead shouldn't feel like filling out a form. It should feel creative. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Not using Finalist yet? Now would be a great time, just ahead of 2026. The app that helps you focus on today can also plan your next year.