Why New Year Resolutions Don't Work! How to Fix it.

Jan 01, 2024

Be it a New Year or a New Age (Birthday), we are all busy dropping and picking up habits which pile up to become our character — and finally, over time, people can now say, ‘that is his or her behaviour’.

This partly answers why many New Year’s Resolutions are not kept until the end of the year. Some elements of lack of discipline could also be argued to be an attribute.

Although I do not believe in New Year’s resolutions because I don’t think they are feasible, I apologise for that. But let me explain why.

Why New Year’s Resolutions fail

✍🏾. Uncertainty seems to be the only certainty.

We, humans, can only see as far as now. So, if the only thing that I know about the future is that I am still determining it, why should I have stiff resolutions? And this connects to the second point —

✍🏾. Principle of Hedonistic, AKA Pleasure and Pain principle.

Advocates of this principle suggest that psychologically, all human actions are motivated by the desire to enjoy pleasure or prevent pain - And, ethically, it means the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined by whether it creates happiness or unhappiness.

Our New Year’s resolutions are equally respectful of these. So, drawing on my first point, the uncertainty factor, how can we know all the pleasures and rightnesses we should set and stick to as our resolutions or all the pains and wrongnesses to sway from, in advance, all year round?

For instance, imagine that the year is 2020, and part of your New Year’s resolution is to visit and spend more time with friends. But then Covid_19 pandemic happened — would you stick to your resolution, which might still be a pleasure but ethically wrong in this scenario?

While the answer may vary depending on an individual’s hedonistic pursuit, many, I guess, would answer ‘no’ to this question in public.

I could go on to expand on the reasons why New Year’s resolutions are not feasible, but this post is not about this. Rather, it is about setting intentional goals at any time of the year and how to stick to them by adopting a ‘not-to-do list’.

How to Set Intentional Goals

There are many aspects of our lives that we can set goals for. Sometimes, we do not even know where and how to begin or that we even need a goal to cover this or that end.

This is why I am careful of boldly giving steps to anyone on how to set goals and why you should be concerned about following any, too.

However, I believe that to set intentional goals, you simply need two approaches:

1 - Ask better questions

Starting from within, ask yourself the hard, the challenging, and the easy better questions to figure out the problems, find opportunities and set your goals.

2 - Set goals that aren’t chores

I have long been a protagonist of the idea of ‘staying in motion’. If you don’t know what your goal is or have one but don’t know how to achieve it, just keep asking yourself better questions and stay in motion. Take a class. Try something new. Meet a friend. Attend new events.

But how about how to stick to your goals?

Again, I have two simple methods that help me stick to my goals — rather than having a list about how to stick to my goals as long as or longer than the goals I want to accomplish themselves. I make simple steps using the below.

1 - Work on things that make an impact.

This helps me accomplish the maximum amount of my goals without making chores out of them — just by thinking about new ways and approaches to achieve them.

Suppose my goal is to grow career-wise instead of making a long list of things to do like I have seen, for example, attending a networking event monthly, reading career development books every day, etc... In that case, I will simply set a goal of showing up impressively at my current workplace for 3 to 6 months and, going forward, requesting a promotion.

I can also research the kind of jobs I want and how to get them and immediately start applying.

You see, that is just how to work on things that make an impact. And this is also what separates intentional goals from a New Year’s resolutions list.

2 - Make a ‘say no’ list Or 'Not-to-Do' list

As smartly said by Esi Eggleston Bracey, the president of Unilever U.S. and CEO of personal care at Unilever North America -

‘When you say “yes” to too many things, you take energy and time away from other priorities. The goal is to say “no” to a few things each week and add more energy to things that matter the most.’

This brings me to my title reference — ‘not-to-do list’.

So instead of a list that reads like a list of chores for a robot, below:

I will sleep for 8 hours every day
I will wake up at 6:00 AM every day
I will eat healthy every day
I will go to the gym every day
I will read ten pages every day, etc.,

You can have a ‘not-to-do list’ for humans that reads like the below and connects to number one:

I will not have my phone in my hands or beside me when I lie down at night to sleep at so so time
I will not check my social media account the first two hours of waking up every morning
I will not hang out with friends on weekdays
I will not entertain an invitation that is impromptu, except when necessary, etc.,

Final Tip and Closing Thoughts

Let’s get up and keep going,

Onward and upward in 2024!

Let me know if you will try the tips I outlined here or if you have a strategy for setting and sticking to goals which you would want to share in the comment section.

I am wishing you a very wonderful New Year 2024!

Many thanks for reading my perspective and giving feedback.

My fervent wish is for everyone’s personal growth and the success of all young professionals who put their hearts and souls into finding their purpose in life.