Whether its our careers, health or relationships, we often set the bar too high and end up feeling disappointed when it doesn’t work out. Try this new way of thinking … and you may just see some real results

Every January, millions of us sit down and write our goals for the year. By March, most of them have been abandoned. So we set new ones in spring, and when September rolls around, we do it again. New season, fresh start, same cycle – and plenty of beating ourselves up along the way. I lived this cycle for years. When I was working at Google as a digital health executive, I was a champion goal-setter with quarterly OKRs (objectives and key results) and a running list of personal goals I would review every week. On paper, it worked. I was successful by most external measures. But I had this persistent feeling that I was running just to stay in the same place, like the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass.

After retraining as a neuroscientist and studying how the brain learns, I started to understand why. Goals work brilliantly under very specific conditions. You want to buy a car that fits three kids and costs under £25,000? Set a goal, do the research, buy the car. The destination is known and the path is clear.

The animated sequel sets up a tug-of-war between physical and digital play for children but is still eager not to be an anti-tech screed

For more than 30 years, Pixar’s signature Toy Story series has been entertaining children while giving voice to their parents’ anxieties. This is especially pronounced in the film’s sequels, as the living toys who dedicate their lives to the happiness of their owner/child experience all different sorts of potential and parent-paralleled obsolescence, from physical wear-and-tear and a child reaching young adulthood to the toy equivalent of empty-nesting (still hanging around the playroom but no longer anyone’s favourite). It’s only natural – maybe even a little belated – that Toy Story 5 would address the encroachment of technology, which continues to make its way to children earlier and earlier. So many years after the tech breakthroughs that allowed Toy Story to become the first computer-animated feature, and Pixar to become a household name in family entertainment, has the formerly Steve Jobs-owned company turned against the kind of innovation that built its success?

This is what happens when a fledgling talent ages a little, and begins serving food with cool, clear, adult direction

The Golden Tooth, on Green Lanes in north London, sounds as if it could be a pirate’s watering hole in Penzance, filled with wooden-legged rascal seafarers. It is, however, a pub and restaurant 10 minutes from Canonbury station, serving Hereford wing-rib with smoked bone marrow bordelaise, hogget chops with hot mint and grilled radicchio, and lardy cake with Baron Bigod and mountain tea syrup.

This is the second official project from chef Matthew Scott and wine merchant Charlie Carr, the duo behind Papi in London Fields, which, though now defunct, is forever memorable. Papi was scrappy, slightly chaotic, archly cool, yet never pompous, and was famed for Scott’s penchant for going off at random tangents and Carr’s earnest adherence to old-fashioned hospitality. Scott is, very quietly, one of the most interesting cooks around right now, although he wouldn’t appreciate the attention: Papi’s social media was a glorious paean to visible discomfort as he sold his restaurant’s wares on Instagram, and his hangdog expression and weak enthusiasm were oddly joyous. In Scott’s earlier Hot 4 U pop-up era, he was known for the likes of garum Pom-Bears, foie gras mini Magnums and Nesquik daiquiris. Papi, with its iced rhubarb oysters and devilled cheese schnitzels, was a bit more reserved.

Andy Burnham is closing in on Downing Street after a big win in the Makerfield byelection. John Harris and John Domokos take a deep dive into a place where people's lives back up Burnham's insistence that we're living in an economy and society that need radical change – but they also find an infectious spirit of optimism

Despite an increase in antisemitism and anti-Jewish feeling in the UK, adult conversions are on the rise

For Elizabeth Arif-Fear, there was no single moment when she realised she wanted to be Jewish. “It was just a journey over time,” she says.

The 37-year-old interfaith activist was born Christian, then converted to Islam and was Muslim for 14 years, before realising that that faith was also not the right fit. Eventually, she found the answer she had been searching for in Judaism. “I feel I’ve finally found God without all the extras,” she says. “Without Jesus, without Muhammad.”

This documentary about the journalist’s Alzheimer’s soon takes a turn, as he hears of an unreported mining disaster and goes on the hunt for truth. It’s a dignified tale of a courageous, compassionate man

Jon Snow: A Last Big Story is a valediction that forbids mourning. The hour-long documentary follows the 78-year-old investigative journalist and former Channel 4 news anchor in the wake of his diagnosis with Alzheimer’s disease. During the course of one of his visits with his wife, Dr Precious Lunga, to family in Zambia, he gets wind of a story about a nearby environmental catastrophe involving a Chinese mining company that has gone virtually unreported. And so the documentary opens outwards and we see the man in his element as well as in the grip of what 850,000 Alzheimer’s sufferers in the UK alone, to say nothing of their carers, families and other loved ones, know to be an unforgiving, relentlessly worsening condition.

Early on, Snow asks with interest and no disquiet what the people with cameras around him are doing. “We’re making a film about your career,” his interviewer, Laura, explains. “And who you are now.” “Lumme!” says Snow, the son of a bishop. “How nice!” As they travel in a car together a little later, he leans forward and says politely: “I’ve forgotten your name already … ?” “Laura,” she tells him. “Lovely,” he says, sitting back. “I’m Jon.”

Even voters for far-right and Eurosceptic parties back closer relations, polling says

Two-thirds of EU citizens would back Britain rejoining the bloc, while most UK voters say Brexit has been bad for the issues they care about and want closer ties, including levels of integration – such as free movement – long seen as toxic, a survey has found.

Ten years after the Brexit referendum, the polling by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a thinktank, found 66% of respondents across 15 countries felt UK membership was a very good, good or “neither a good nor a bad” idea.

Some Labour MPs still want former mayor to face ‘scrutiny’ of ideas through contested leadership race

Allies of Andy Burnham are increasingly confident of a coronation-style transfer of power after the number of MPs backing him for the Labour leadership surged following his byelection victory.

Burnham and his team are understood to have spent the last few days enlisting the support of MPs and ministers, as he prepares to challenge Keir Starmer in the coming weeks.

Buckingham Palace says move is intended to increase ‘clarity and accessibility’ of monarchy’s finances

King Charles will become the first head of state to reveal their personal tax bill in what the palace said was an attempt to enhance the transparency of royal finances.

Charles, 77, will publish his financial details as part of the royal household increasing the “clarity and accessibility” of the monarchy’s finances by producing a new report on the subject.

Unclear if threat has been carried out or if move will jeopardise talks with US scheduled for Sunday

Iran has said it is closing the strait of Hormuz after waves of Israeli strikes in Lebanon in a move that threatens to derail the fragile interim peace deal with the US, signed just days ago.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned ships not to approach the strategic waterway, which before the war carried a fifth of global oil and liquid gas supplies, citing what it called Israeli crimes in Lebanon and a US violation of commitments to establish a ceasefire there.