New Year Resolutions? You’ll have forgotten them within a couple of weeks

Here is how to make those resolutions stick

Here we are, at the start of 2021 and within days the resolutions people have made will be ditched. Research shows that most New Year Resolutions never make it beyond 14th January.

However, people make New Year Resolutions because they want to change. They want to lose weight, give up smoking or do something like learn how to use LinkedIn better. But those resolutions are generalised wishes, made in the emotional intensity of celebrating one year and looking forward to the next one, surrounded by your loved ones. A few days later, you are back at work, knee-deep in email and harassed by bosses and their deadlines. You don’t have the chance to think of resolutions anymore — work gets in the way.

But that’s a shame. After all, you thought about your wishes for the coming year and what you wanted to change, so there is some sound reasoning behind your desires for 2021 — especially after the past 12 months. The trouble is, practicalities and work prevent you from realising your dreams for the year.

So, how can you ensure that your resolutions succeed? How do you make resolutions stick?

The first thing is to realise that most resolutions are just weak expressions of some desire. They are rarely detailed and specific. Now, don’t go thinking I want us all to start having “SMART” goals for the year. You know what that means — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely. However, SMART goals are not all that they are cracked up to be.

There is plenty of psychological research which shows that SMART goals are, frankly, useless.

The reason is that we underestimate what we can accomplish, we overestimate the time it will take, and we have little real idea of what we can achieve or how to measure it. In other words, SMART goals tend to be things which we could do with our hands tied up and our eyes shut. They are just weak. My friend David Hyner spends a great deal of his time convincing people to set massive, huge, seemingly unrealistic goals. He is right; the research shows that individuals who do this tend to be more successful than those who set everyday “SMART” goals.

However, I’m not going to try to convince you to change your resolutions into massive, huge goals. After all, if your resolution is to give up smoking, that’s a pretty huge goal for an addict. Similarly, for obese people to lose 25% of their weight, that is humungous in goal terms for them.

Instead, the way to ensure that resolutions get to stick is to focus on small things. Things that really are so tiny and easily achievable they seem stupid.

Let’s imagine you want to write more blog posts. A simple resolution that says “in 2021 I will do more blogging” will be forgotten before we get to February. You could try a “SMART” resolution, such as “I want to write three blog posts each week”. But that’s easy, and you could do it — you just won’t because it is too SMART. Alternatively, you could set up a massive resolution such as “by the end of 2021, I want to be the world’s number one blogger, recognised around the world as THE top blogger”. That might seem scary, but if that’s what you wanted and it was always the focus of what you did, then fine. But what if your only reason for wanting to blog more is simply to be able to add a little more content to your website? That’s not a big goal, so you are unlikely to succeed.

My suggestion is different. Focus on some of the little aspects of the resolution “blog more in 2021”. To do that, for instance, you need more blog ideas. You also need more images for your blogs. And it would help if you had more time to write.

So, here’s how to do that. Turn your resolution into small things that can quickly become habits. For example, one resolution could be “every day at 9:00 am I will write down one idea for a blog post”. After a couple of weeks, you’ll have 14 ideas, but you will also have set up a daily habit. You only brush your teeth each morning because your Mum and Dad helped you create a habit. You didn’t start this year with a resolution “I must brush my teeth more often”. Nor did you say “I must walk the dog every day”. You do these things because they are habitual.

Most resolutions fail because they do not become habits — and they do not turn into habits because they are either too vague, too “SMART”, or too massive to make that possible. Whereas, if you create a habit-forming resolution, such as writing down a blog idea every day at the same time, things begin to change, which is exactly what you wanted. Imagine someone who wants to lose weight — the real issue is eating choices. So if their resolution is “every day, I’ll take a banana to work and eat it at 10.15 am” that will become a habit, and the seeds are sown for healthier eating — resulting in weight loss.

Focusing on the small, seemingly inconsequential things that can become habits is the real power behind resolutions that stick.

For example, if you want to understand online lead generation better or use email marketing to more effect, those are great resolutions for the Internet age. But if you break those ideas down into fragments that can become habits, you will achieve the change you desire. To start the process of understanding lead generation, you could say that you will read the blog of a lead generation expert every evening at 7:00 pm. Or if you wanted to do email marketing better, you could create the habit of assessing your email analytics every morning at 9.15 am. Daily habits work better than anything else — you always brush your teeth, and I suspect you always end the day with a going to bed routine. Those daily habits are tough to break — so creating habits is how your resolutions will get to work for the longer-term.

Have a New Year Resolution, by all means, but instead of being vague, grand, or SMART, break it down into several small daily habits, and it will work.