Is it true that New Year's resolutions don't work?

[devilyoudont]

I think often New Years resolutions don't work because it's not enough to resolve to do something, you have to have a mindset that your lifestyle needs to be adjusted to meet your goals. And, as you say, this means developing a system of habits to realize the resolution.

I think that another reason people fail is they set unreasonable goals, and then are unwilling to adjust them. Then they are overly self critical and lock themselves into a vicious cycle of failure which reverses whatever gains they made. Using a non-language related goal, let's say someone weighs 300 pounds and resolves to lose 150 pounds. It's a totally unreasonable goal, and this person only loses 25 pounds. Rather than seeing a victory, they then put themselves down and abandon what gave them the 25 lb weight loss, and regain the weight. An even more likely scenario: they abandon the resolution in February because they've only lost 4lbs.

I personally find the New Year to be a good time to think about what my goals are, what seems to be holding me back from what I want to do, and what I did previously that seemed to be effective or ineffective. But one could do this at any time, doing it at new years is an arbitrary cultural thing. I also tend to recommit myself despite whatever setbacks have occurred on the first day of every new week. So even tho I'm not doing great on my resolutions, I am making some progress on them regardless of setbacks

[golyplot]

I've successfully kept New Years resolutions (and non New Years resolutions) in the past. I think the secret is to be realistic and only make resolutions that you can actually keep. Bonus secret: You don't have to wait until New Years. If you think there's something you should be doing, you might as well start today!

[StringerBell]

I've never been a believer in new year's resolutions, with the exception of a few years where I resolved things like "remember to send friends/family physical birthday cards in the mail". I immediately wrote everyone's birthday on the calendar, and wrote a note a week ahead of time on the calendar to remind myself to put the card in the mail, then stocked up on cards so I wouldn't have the excuse of not having a card. So that year's resolution was very successful, because I took the time to make sure things were in place to make it happen.

When I want to reach a goal, I focus on the steps I need to take to reach the goal instead of the goal, itself. Other people might say, "I want to learn x language". I say, "I will spend x hours per day (or week) studying/using/listening to x language and I'll see where I get at the end of the year".

Those steps I have control over and once I get into a routine of doing them, they become self-reinforcing. But just focusing on the endgame like "get in shape" or "eat healthier" or "learn x" seem to be the kind of vague thing many people vow to accomplish but without putting much thought into what they need to do every day to reach that goal.

The other problem is that I think people tend to choose goals that they know they "should" do, but in reality don't actually want enough to make the changes to get there. "Eating healthier" is great, but not too many people actually want to give up eating cheap and easy junk, even though they know they should. When we don't really want to do something, we are incredibly successful at not doing it.

[Skynet]

They work if something of value is at stake. When there's nothing to lose, then there's no risk-reward trade-off for you to bother yourself. This is why open-ended, ambiguous goals generally do not work. Nebulous goals like "Learn French" are bound to fail because they do not have the necessary incremental achievements needed to get to the final goal. Instead of wishing to "Learn French" on New Year's, you can set specific targets such as "A2 by 30 June" and " B2 by 31 December." In my personal experience, the biggest motivator for sticking to resolutions has been the exchange of monetary value. The day that I thought of postponing my DELF B2 is the day that I forced myself to pay for the exam, leaving me no choice but to make sure that I achieved the goal of passing. Money, or the risk of squandering it on an opportunity whose result is in one's own hands, is a superlative motivator.

[rdearman]

This came up in my newsfeed not long after reading this thread.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/your ... -overrated

[tarvos]

They don't work which is why I don't make them and everything is going great!

[Jean-Luc]

You can try again elsewhere if it doesn't work...
https://www.abc-amega.com/Articles/Busi ... -the-world

[Deinonysus]

I think that new years resolutions are about as effective as resolutions that you make at any time throughout the year. Maybe a bit less effective, because usually you will make a resolution in immediate response to a specific event or realization, not just because it's a particular holiday.

If your goal is to drastically change something about your behavior or personality, with no incremental plan or support structure, you're going to have a bad time.

I've been doing well with two out of my three resolutions because they were just to keep up what I was already doing, or had done before, with reasonable expectations of progress.

My third resolution was to give in to Wanderlust less, but let's be honest, life's too short to not give in to Wanderlust. Would my life really be any better if I hadn't spent a week learning half of the Inuktitut syllabary? It was a dumb resolution and I had low expectations of keeping it.