In partnership with

Hey creator friends 💜

This is the 40th issue of Limitless Creator and the last one for this year!! 🎉

If you knew me before this year, you'd know why 40 weeks of writing this newsletter is kind of a HUUUGE deal for me.

For the past 7 years I’ve been a SERIAL QUITTER.

I told myself I'd start a newsletter. Quit. Told myself I'd post consistently on social media. Quit. Told myself I'd create digital products, build an online income, actually follow through on something. Quit, quit, quit.

But at the beginning of this year, I told myself I'd post on TikTok every day for 30 days. Just 30 days, just TikTok, that's it.

That 30 days turned into 9 months, 45,000+ followers across platforms, a newsletter, brand deals, digital products and some really cool opportunities.

This is the longest I've ever stuck with anything and it’s WORKED!! So I want to make damn sure I keep this energy going into 2026.

This past week I’ve been looking at goal-setting frameworks, psychology research, productivity systems, all of it.

And I found there are 9 things you need to get clear on if you actually want to have your best year ever.

And of course, we’re going to leverage AI to make this process even more powerful and effective.

So that’s what we’re diving into in this issue.

TL;DR - today’s lineup:

1. One Serious Deep Dive 💡: The 9 things you need to get clear on for your best year ever (and the AI prompt that walks you through all of them)

2. Copy-Paste Prompt 🤖: A bonus "Year in Review" prompt to close out 2025 properly before you plan 2026

3. Piping  Hot  AI  Tea 🫖: 2025 round-up! We cover some of the biggest AI stories, news and releases that shaped this year!

💌 Your say genuinely shapes this newsletter: there’s a one‑click feedback poll at the very end. I genuinely check for feedback like a maniac after I send this out because I really want to know what you honestly think. So thank you!

Before we dive in:

A big 2026 starts now

Most people treat this stretch of the year as dead time. But builders like you know it’s actually prime time. And with beehiiv powering your content, world domination is truly in sight.

On beehiiv, you can launch your website in minutes with the AI Web Builder, publish a professional newsletter with ease, and even tap into huge earnings with the beehiiv Ad Network. It’s everything you need to create, grow, and monetize in one place.

In fact, we’re so hyped about what you’ll create, we’re giving you 30% off your first three months with code BIG30. So forget about taking a break. It’s time for a break-through.

Start building for 30% off today.

The Science-Backed ChatGPT Prompt for Planning Your Best Year Ever

I’ve been down a research rabbit hole during my Christmas break and I’ve found out that the reason most goal-setting fails isn't lack of motivation or willpower.

It's that we skip the hard stuff.

We write "lose weight, save money, be happier" and call it planning.

But we never dig into who we need to become to achieve those goals, why we've failed before, or what we'll do when we inevitably want to quit.

So here are the 9 things you need to get clear on (and the science behind each one):

1. Identity - Get clear on who you're becoming (not just what you're achieving)

The science: Research from the University of Bath found that habits linked to identity are significantly more likely to stick. James Clear popularised this as "identity-based habits", and a meta-analysis in Frontiers in Psychology confirmed that when behaviours align with how we see ourselves, we're far more likely to maintain them long-term.

2. Vision - You need to know what your dream life actually looks like in vivid detail

The science: Brain imaging studies show that vividly imagining an experience activates many of the same neural networks as actually experiencing it. A study in Neuropsychologia found that mental imagery activates the same brain areas involved in actual movement. Athletes who visualise have shown up to 35% improvement in muscle performance through mental practice alone.

3. Non-negotiables - Make a list of the daily/weekly actions that make everything else easier

The science: These are what researchers call "keystone habits." Studies show that core behaviours like regular exercise create ripple effects across multiple life areas - boosting discipline, confidence and energy levels simultaneously.

4. Goals - Know clearly the 3 big targets that would change everything

The science: Locke and Latham's Goal-Setting Theory (backed by over 1,000 studies) shows that specific, challenging goals lead to higher performance than vague or easy goals. But the key is connecting them to why they matter emotionally.

5. Projects - Figure out how those goals break down into quarterly chunks

The science: Research on "implementation intentions" by psychologist Peter Gollwitzer (94 studies, 8,000+ participants) found that specifying when, where, and how you'll act on goals increases success rates by 2-3x. Breaking annual goals into quarterly projects creates these natural implementation checkpoints.

6. Habits - Create systems that support your goals automatically

The science: The University College London found habits take an average of 66 days to form (not 21, as the myth suggests!). But the key finding is that consistency matters more than intensity. Missing one day doesn't reset your progress - what matters is getting back on track.

7. Energy - Know what drains you vs. fuels you (and design your schedule around it)

The science: Willpower is a limited resource (the "ego depletion" effect). Research shows that designing your environment to make good choices easy and bad choices hard is more effective than relying on motivation. This is why the prompt I’m sharing with you below asks about energy drains - so you can eliminate them, not fight them.

8. Anti-overwhelm plan - Have a fall-back plan for what to do when you inevitably lose momentum

The science: This is the big one. Dr. Kristin Neff's research on self-compassion shows that people who respond to setbacks with self-compassion (rather than self-criticism) bounce back significantly faster and are more likely to try again. Her studies found self-compassion is positively associated with "mastery goals" and negatively associated with fear of failure.

9. Quick wins - Plan a 12-week sprint so you see results fast and spark motivation to keep going (this is what worked really well for me this year)

The science: The "goal proximity effect" shows that shorter-term goals lead to better performance than distant ones. A 12-week sprint creates urgency and allows for faster feedback loops, which research shows dramatically increases motivation and follow-through.

Most planning frameworks only cover #4 (goals) and maybe #5 (projects) if you're lucky.

But without the identity work (#1), you'll keep defaulting to your old patterns. Without the anti-overwhelm plan (#8), you'll quit the moment things get hard - just like I’ve done the past 7 years.

The prompt I'm sharing below walks you through all 9 areas, one question at a time, so you can't skip the uncomfortable parts…

How To Use The Dream Year Prompt

Step 1: Open ChatGPT (or Claude - this works brilliantly on both)

Step 2: Paste the prompt below

Step 3: Actually engage, take time to think, scribble notes and ideas, don't rush this. It needs to be a deep conversation with yourself (facilitated by AI).

Pro tip: Do this when you have 2-3 hours of uninterrupted time. Put your phone in another room. Maybe pour yourself a drink or a cup of tea. Light a candle if you like that sort of thing! This is your annual strategy session and you are a business - treat yourself like one.

I want to design my dream year and make the next 12 months the most successful I've ever had.

Act like a world-class life strategist, business coach, and productivity expert in one. Your job is to guide me through this process step by step, asking questions one at a time so I don't get overwhelmed.

IMPORTANT: After EACH question, wait for my response before continuing. Do NOT move to the next section until I've answered.

Guide me through these 10 sections:

**1. Identity and Future Self**
Ask me specific questions (one at a time) to uncover:
- Who I want to become in 12 months
- What version of myself I'm ready to shed (old beliefs, habits, identity)
- How I want to feel day-to-day
- What matters most to me

**2. The Dream Life Vision**
Guide me to visualize my dream life in the next 12 months across these areas (ask about each one):
- Income and financial security
- Work and career
- Lifestyle and daily experience
- Freedom and flexibility
- Health and energy
- Relationships
- Personal growth
- Environment (where I live/work)
- Confidence and identity

Then help me distill this into 3 powerful sentences that capture my vision.

**3. The Non-Negotiables**
Help me identify 3-5 daily or weekly non-negotiables—the actions that, if done consistently, would naturally lead me toward this vision.

**4. The Big 12-Month Goals**
Take me through a goal-setting flow where you ask about:
- The 3 goals that would change everything
- Why each one matters to me personally
- The emotional driver behind each goal
- The hidden resistance or fear attached to each one
- How I'll know I've truly succeeded (specific metrics or feelings)

Then summarize all three clearly.

**5. Turning Goals into Projects**
Break each 12-month goal into 3 quarterly projects.
Ask me questions to help define what each project looks like.
Then turn each project into a simple 3-5 step action plan.

**6. Habit Design**
Help me design the habits, routines, and weekly rhythms that support my goals.
Make them realistic—ask me about my current schedule and energy patterns first.
Focus on habit stacking and making new behaviors easy to start.

**7. Time and Energy Audit**
Ask me:
- Where I currently waste time
- What drains my energy
- What gives me energy
Then help me design a "success environment" for the year (what to eliminate, add, or change).

**8. Anti-Overwhelm Plan**
Ask me:
- What usually derails me when I'm making progress
- What I do when I lose momentum
- How I self-sabotage
- How I want to handle setbacks this year
Then create a personalized "comeback plan" for when things go sideways.

**9. 12-Week Sprint**
Condense everything above into an intense 12-week sprint plan.
The goal is fast results and momentum—not waiting a full year to see progress.
Include specific milestones for weeks 1, 4, 8, and 12.

**10. Final Blueprint**
At the end, create a clean one-page summary I can reference all year:
- Identity statement (who I'm becoming)
- Vision summary (3 sentences)
- Non-negotiables (3-5 daily/weekly actions)
- 12-month goals (top 3)
- Quarterly projects (broken down)
- Key habits and weekly rhythm
- Anti-overwhelm plan (what to do when stuck)
- 12-week sprint milestones
- First 3 actions to take TODAY

Start now by welcoming me to this session and asking me the first question about my identity and future self.

Want to learn more about my AI-powered content creation secrets, systems and hacks?

I’m working a done-for-you content ideation, creation, management and publishing system to help you leverage AI to 12x your content creation (without losing your authenticity in the process).

It’s called the AI Content Multiplier and the waitlist is now open - join now and I’ll send you a 30% off early bird discount as soon as it launches (which is soon).

The "Year in Review" Prompt (Do This BEFORE Planning 2026)

Before you design your dream year, you need to properly close out the current one.

Most people skip this step - so here's a prompt to help you extract the lessons from 2025 before you head into 2026:

Help me reflect on my year with honest, thoughtful questions.

Ask me about these areas one at a time (wait for my response before continuing):

1. WINS: What am I most proud of accomplishing this year? What surprised me about what I achieved?

2. FAILURES: Where did I fall short of my own expectations? What didn't work, and why?

3. LESSONS: What's the biggest thing I learned about myself this year—something I didn't know 12 months ago?

4. RELATIONSHIPS: Which relationships grew stronger? Which ones need attention? Did I let any drift that I regret?

5. ENERGY: What activities gave me energy this year? What drained me? How should this inform next year?

6. REGRETS: What do I wish I had started sooner? What do I wish I had said no to?

7. GRATITUDE: What am I genuinely grateful for that I might be taking for granted?

8. UNFINISHED BUSINESS: What's something I started but didn't finish that still matters to me?

After I answer all questions, give me a summary of my year's themes and 3 specific things I should carry forward into next year.

1. The Sora 2 Launch: Video Creation Died and Was Reborn

OpenAI dropped Sora 2 in September, and it was the moment text-to-video went from "cute gimmick" to "existential threat." The quality was jaw-dropping, the videos were up to 60 seconds long, and it was followed by the launch of the Sora app - OpenAI's own TikTok competitor. Suddenly, the barrier to entry for high-quality video production evaporated, forcing every single video creator to re-evaluate their entire business model.

Read more →

2. The "AI Slop" Backlash: When Quality Became the New Premium

2025 was the year the internet got flooded with low-effort, AI-generated content - or "AI slop". It got so bad that Merriam-Webster chose "slop" as its Word of the Year. Consumers and creators started pushing back, demanding "human-made" content. Brands like iHeartMedia and even Disney animators started using "made by humans" as a marketing advantage, proving that human creativity is now the premium, scarce resource.

Read more →

3. Disney Sells Out: Mickey Mouse Licensed to Sora

In a deal that shocked Hollywood, Disney signed a $1 billion agreement with OpenAI to license over 200 of its most iconic characters - Mickey Mouse, Star Wars, Pixar - to be used in Sora. While Disney called it a "turning point," its own animators were furious, calling the deal "soulless" and "exploitative." This story defined the year's biggest battle: the war between IP owners and generative AI models, and the heartbreaking realization that even the most beloved characters are now just text prompts.

Read more →

4. The Great AI Browser War: Atlas vs. Comet

The way we use the internet changed forever with the launch of ChatGPT Atlas and the rise of Perplexity Comet. These aren’t just search engines; they’re AI agents that browse the web for you, summarise information, and execute tasks. This shift created a massive new privacy debate, forcing users (like you and me!) to choose between ultimate convenience and data security. The browser war is now the AI war, and it's happening every time you open a tab.

Read more →

5. The AI Ethics Crisis: When Deepfakes Got Dangerous

2025 was the year AI's ethical failures became impossible to ignore. We saw high-profile cases of AI-generated deepfakes being used to terrorise strangers (like the TikTok prankster arrested 4 times), and the tragic news of multiple lawsuits where chatbots were accused of encouraging suicide. This forced a global conversation about safety, content moderation, and the real-world, sometimes deadly, consequences of letting AI run unchecked.

Read more →

6. NVIDIA's $5 Trillion Moment: The Real Winner of the AI Gold Rush

While everyone was talking about ChatGPT, Anthropic, Meta and Google, the company that quietly became the most valuable in the world was NVIDIA. Their market cap briefly hit $5 trillion in 2025, fueled by the insatiable demand for their AI chips (GPUs). This is the classic "picks and shovels" story: you don't make money selling gold, you make money selling the tools to dig for it. NVIDIA's record-breaking earnings proved that the AI boom is not a bubble-it's a fundamental, multi-trillion-dollar shift in global infrastructure.

Read more →

7. TikTok's AI Takeover: Automating the Creator Workflow

TikTok didn't just sit back and watch OpenAI and Google innovate. In 2025, they rolled out powerful new AI tools directly integrated into the creator workflow, like AI Outline (which drafts video scripts and talking points from a single idea) and Smart Split (which automatically cuts long videos into viral-ready short clips). This proved that the future of content creation isn't just about generating new things, but about automating the tedious, time-consuming parts of the process.

Read more →

8. The $100 Million Copyright Settlement: Creators Get Paid

The biggest legal story of 2025 was the massive copyright battle over training data. While many lawsuits are still pending, the year was defined by Anthropic's decision to pay the largest known copyright settlement in history (rumored to be over $100 million) to authors and artists whose work was used to train their models. This was a huge win for creators, setting a clear precedent: AI companies cannot simply steal your work and profit from it without consequence. It gave every creator leverage in the new AI economy.

Read more →

9. The Agent Revolution: AI That Works While You Sleep

2025 was the year AI went from being a chatbot to an autonomous agent. Models like Claude 4.5 and specialised tools like Auto-GPT became capable of executing multi-step, complex tasks without constant human input - like building a website from a single prompt, or autonomously managing a social media calendar. This shift means that creators can now delegate entire projects, not just single tasks, fundamentally changing the definition of "solopreneur."

Read more →

That’s it for this year! Thanks you so so so much for subscribing, reading and sharing your feedback through my poll and the many lovely comments I receive!

I can’t wait to continue landing in your inbox in 2026 and continuing this journey together!

So one last time for the year, if you enjoyed today's newsletter AND got to the end of it, I’d love a quick click on the poll below to let me know what you think 💜.

See you next YEAR,

Jess xx