It can be fun to make New Year’s resolutions, but hard for most of us to keep them. Gyms, for example, get crowded in early January, but come February the determination of many begins to peter out. Will those who have taken on a new diet succeed in sticking to it through the end of this year? The chances of success can be small. Why then do we make resolutions, why usually in the first few days of the year, and what can we do to improve our chances of keeping them?
Ian Ballard, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, shares his thoughts on New Year’s resolutions in the Q&A below. Ballard is affiliated with the cognitive and cognitive neuroscience areas of the Department of Psychology and the UCR Neuroscience Graduate Program. His lab studies the mechanisms of goal-directed behavior using tools from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and computer science.
Q: Why do we make resolutions around New Year’s?
New Year’s Day is a significant temporal landmark — a boundary we use to distinguish between our past and future selves. Temporal landmarks make it easier to distance ourselves from past behaviors or failures, giving us a sense of a fresh start. Also, it is easier to envision our future selves achieving our goals, which helps us to become motivated to pursue a challenging resolution.
Q: Why do we often break them? Why is it so hard for many of us to keep them?
The factors that made it hard to achieve our goals last year are still there. Limits on time and unrealistic goal setting can make it difficult to follow through on resolutions. Also, sustaining motivation requires effort, which is harder when we’re tired, stressed, or dealing with negative emotions.
Q: What advice do you have to help us keep our resolutions?
Developing new habits or routines can be a great way to pursue our resolutions. Because habits are less reliant on effortful cognitive processing, they are more resilient than motivation. For example, it takes a lot of effort for someone new to running to go on a run, but for an experienced runner, that decision feels effortless.
Developing new habits requires setting realistic goals (see below) and sticking to a routine. Immediate rewards help us form habits, but many goals take a long time to pay off. So, try to pick activities that are already intrinsically pleasant to you or create rewards for yourself for engaging in a challenging behavior. For example, save episodes of your favorite television show or podcast as a reward for going to the gym.
Q: How can we create resolutions that have a good chance of being kept?
Make goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound (SMART). For example, if your resolution is to use your phone less often, you could transform that into a SMART goal by committing to place your phone in a closed drawer for the first hour after you wake up on weekdays for all of January. At the end of January, reflect on what worked well and what did not before setting a new goal.
It can also be helpful to make the outcome of achieving your resolution as specific and concrete as possible. Write down both your goal and the benefits it will bring to make the long-term reward salient.
Q: What’s the best way to proceed when you’ve broken your resolutions?
Setbacks can cause negative emotions that diminish our motivation, making abandoning our resolutions more likely. Write down a plan for responding to challenges and inevitable slip-ups using “If-Then” statements. For example, you could write: “If I end up using my phone in the morning, then the next day I will put my phone away for only 15 minutes to help get myself back on track.” These plans can help make your response to challenges more automatic, which can help you stick to your resolutions.
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