A Guide to New Year's Resolutions
IT HAS BECOME HIP to avoid making New Year's resolutions. Perhaps people consider it cliched; perhaps they think nothing ever changes and improvement is not possible. Perhaps they consider change too difficult. Whatever the reason, I consider forgoing them defeatist. It is always possible to improve as long as you see improvement as an adventure and not a goal.
New Year’s Day does not necessarily have to be the starting point for self-improvement, but it’s a better day than most. What else do you have to do in January, anyway? The joke is that the gym is full in January and empty in February. Maybe so, but just because everyone else is trying to get in shape right now doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. It is a worthwhile goal. Who cares what other people think? Really, when it comes to improvement, why do you care what you think?
There is a saying that I have heard in many different contexts, from personal finance, to fitness, to learning. It goes something like this: The best time to start a life project is five years ago. The second best time is today.
I've read too many self-improvement books. More than my pride would allow me to admit. Most self-improvement books are similar, and if you’ve read one, you’ve read them all. So I’ve read many dozens, which means the same points have been hammered into me again and again. Here's what I've learned, in brief.
Don't have goals. Establish habits instead. Habits, once they take hold, can be expanded on. Goals, once accomplished, do not always lead to more goals. Often, once we achieve a goal, we abandon it. How many people save $1000 only to spend it? Or lose 10 pounds only to gain it back? It’s better to establish a habit that lasts a lifetime than climb one mountain or finish one race.
Positive habits are easier to acquire than bad habits are to drop. Try countering bad habits with good ones. For instance, rather than trying to stop overeating, eat a salad a day. Even if you don't lose weight, you are still eating a salad a day. That's a win.
Substitute bad habits with good ones. That can work sometimes. Eat grapes instead of candy (worked for me). Read a book rather than doomscrolling on the smartphone. When you pick up your phone, learn a language rather than watching videos.
Simple habits are easier to acquire than complex ones. Pick simpler targets and you will make better progress. Learning to play the piano — hard. Learning to read music — easier.
Often a complex habit can be broken up into smaller, simpler ones.
Set a minimum for a new habit. It can be ridiculously low, like reading one sentence a day in a book or standing on a treadmill for ten seconds. The point is to acquire the habit, not to make great progress. Once the habit is established, you can build on it. I once tried a habit of picking up the guitar every day. Not playing it, just picking it up. Eventually it led to more practice time, but not at first.
The easier you make a habit, the faster you will acquire it. If you want to learn guitar, put your instrument within easy reach of your favorite chair. If you want to work out more, pick a gym that is a block from your house instead of one ten minutes away. If you want to run in the morning, keep your shoes next to the bed so they are the first thing you see when you get up.
When you fall off the wagon, start again at the beginning. Go back to re-establishing the habit. Once the habit is established, then build on it. If you have a goal of doing a hundred pushups a day and then quit at 20, go back to doing one a day until the habit is re-established. It is getting in the habit that is the goal. Worry about ultimate goals only after you have stuck to your schedule for a long time.
Often people fail to make improvements because they make the initial habit too hard. Running a mile a day might be too hard. Try walking half a mile a day. If you increase too soon, you may get discouraged. Go slow. Most change requires patience most of all.
No one is looking. You can start over as many times as you want.
Don't announce your goals to the world. That only sets up the uncomfortable situation where someone asks, "So how is the French going?" in a month.
Identify with the project instead of thinking in terms of goals. Think, I am a runner, or I am an athlete, or I am a reader, or I am a healthy eater, or I am a musician rather than I want to run a marathon or I want to read 50 books a year. The first way you can begin changing immediately. The second way you put yourself in a binary position: Success or failure.
Don’t think of a setback as failure. Think of it as an opportunity to learn what you did wrong, and how you might do better.
Good habits require good triggers. A trigger, or a cue, is an event that sets off a habit. When you get up to go to bed, you brush your teeth. When you look at your watch and see that it is noon, you want to eat. Choose a trigger for your new habit. You can say, as soon as I get home I will do pushups. Or, right after I finish showering I will read for ten minutes. Or, as soon as I get up I will update my todo list. When you associate events that happen daily with new habits, it encourages you to do them more reliably.
A bad effort is better than no effort. If you work out for 10 minutes and quit, that is better than skipping it altogether.
You don’t have to feel good about doing something to do it. Ignore your feelings! Just do it anyway, even if you don’t feel like it. You can feel proud of yourself later when you realize you didn’t break the chain.
And speaking of chains, a little notebook or app where you check off your progress is very helpful. When you see that you have done something 5 weeks in a row, it is harder to give up on the streak. Don’t break the chain!
Habit forming is a fascinating process. Watching your growth and recording setbacks (and the reasons why) is a way to develop self-knowledge. I have found that even with projects I have failed to complete, I learned something useful about my limitations and strengths that was useful in another context. A New Year’s resolution isn’t just about achieving a list of goals. It is about learning how to learn. It is about knowing yourself better. Failing is not a terrible thing if no one knows about it (you don’t have to advertise the resolutions that flopped) and you learned.
