Why New Years Resolutions Fail & How To Succeed

Most New Year's resolutions fail. So in this video, I want to talk about the science of why they fail and how to avoid that so your New Year's resolutions actually succeed. I want to tell you about three of my New Year's resolutions for 2020.

The first one is to stop going to news websites. I find I kill a ton of time by doing that. Now, don't get me wrong, I do think it's important to know what's going on in the world, but I just don't think following the day-to-day developments of the news cycle is the way to do that. So instead, I am going to get one newspaper delivered to my house every week, and that is how I am gonna stay informed.

Research has shown it is more effective to make resolutions at New Year’s than at any other time of the year. In fact, one study found that people who made resolutions on January 1st were 10 times as likely to stick with them six months later than people who made their resolutions at other times of the year. And January 1st, 2020, is the first day of a new decade, so it may be even better.

Side note: Those of you who want to argue that the first day of the decade is actually January 1st, 2021, while you may technically be correct because there was no year 0, we went straight from 1 BC to 1 AD. For all intents and purposes psychologically, this January 1st is the first day of the 2020s, and that is what matters. So the technicalities, I think, are unimportant. And this argument should be put to bed. The 2020s start on Jan 1.

But now the bad news: even a resolution made at New Year's will most likely fail, which is why gyms are packed in January, but they start to clear out by March. Research has found that only around 8% of people can stick with their resolutions through the end of the year. So why is this? And how do we avoid that trap?

I think it all starts with a misconception. Oh no, oh no, oh no, oooooh no. Foooget. sigh Well, this was going part of the video where I ran on the treadmill, but the treadmill's just broken. So I think the misconception is that people think that in order to make big changes in their lives, they have to make some sort of really big effort.

I mean, let’s say your goal was to run a marathon. You might plan on running ten kilometers three times a week. That seems kind of proportionate to the end goal, and you might be excited and really motivated to do it for the first few weeks, but at some point, that motivation is gonna lag, and running 10k is gonna seem too hard. So, you're gonna sort of fall back into old habits. The misconception is thinking you need to go big, and so being overambitious with your goals and then not being able to commit and stick to them.

I'm gonna fix this. The truth is you're much better off if you pick small targets that you can hit consistently. That's the idea behind James Clear's book "Atomic Habits," which is this idea that if you can get just 1% better every day at something, it will take a minimum amount of effort. But over time, the effects will compound just like compound interest.

James Clear proposes the two-minute rule: "Pick something that you can do in just two minutes." So if you want to run a marathon, start by, say, running two minutes a day. That is something that you can't say you don't have time for. And once that habit sticks, well then you can try to extend it into something more ambitious.

The next problem with resolutions is they are too often vague. The most common resolutions that people make are to lose weight, exercise more, and to eat better. The problem is those things are so nondescript that it's hard to know if you're making progress and very easy to regress into your old habits. So the science around this says you need to be specific AND write down your goals.

People who write down their goals are 40% more likely to achieve them. That is pretty significant just by taking that step of putting pen to paper. And I'm thinking here in this video you should put your New Year's resolutions in the comments because at least that is taking a step towards committing yourself to a goal for the year.

My second New Year's resolution for 2020 is to write in a daily planner every day of this year. In fact, I can be more specific than that. Um, I will write one word in this book each day. Now, I know one word might seem unhelpfully ridiculously little to write in this book, but I want to commit to this idea of starting small with the idea that if I get in the habit of making the time to at least write down one word on each one of these pages, well then maybe some days I will write more than one word, and that will be helpful in terms of planning my day a little bit.

Hopefully, I will be more productive than I would have been otherwise. It’s really important to track your progress in an obvious and visual way, and I'm going to use the Everyday Calendar by Simone Giertz. Oddly satisfying. Where there's a button for every day of the year, and you can push it, and the light turns on, and that is really satisfying. So I think this will encourage me to write down a word early in the day so that I can go and turn on the light for that day.

What's great about this is it's a very visual way to track my progress and have it in an obvious place where I can look at it all the time. I'll put it in the back of shot for some of my videos in 2020 so you guys can see how I’m progressing towards this goal.

The third major problem with New Year's resolutions is that people seem to think it's about having more willpower or motivation, being able to resist temptation better. But willpower is a finite resource, and it can be depleted. There are gonna be some bad days, and that is when you're gonna relapse. So relying on willpower is not an effective strategy.

Research has shown that people who have better self-control actually just have to exercise it less. The way they're able to do that is by structuring their environments so they don't have to exercise their willpower. I find that in my kitchen, it's always like the treats and snacks which are left out on the counter, but the veggies which are like tucked away in the vegetable crisper drawer.

I get it because, you know, that’s where the veggies are meant to go to keep them crisp, but the problem is if I don't see them, if they're not in my line of sight, I will just end up eating what's on the counter and not going digging for veggies. So we need a way of changing our environments so that we make better choices, which brings me to my third and final New Year's resolution for 2020: I am deleting social media apps off of my phone.

I'm getting rid of Instagram and Twitter. You are watching the exact moment that I do that. The reason for this is I find I just kill way too much time going into these apps, and research shows that any tiny distraction that you have during your day takes you something like 20, 25 minutes to get back into your work. So, I'm losing a lot of time to just procrastinating with these apps.

I'm getting rid of them off my phone so I don't have to use my willpower to not click them mindlessly as I normally would. I've actually downloaded an app that will block news sites and block my social media while I'm working because that way I don't have to restrain myself. The systems that I put in place will restrain me for me.

I know a lot of this sounds a little bit CGP Grey, but I think he’s onto something. You don't need to follow the day-to-day movements of the news cycle, and you do not need to be scrolling social media all the time, particularly when you're trying to get useful work done.

So that’s how I feel I want to optimize my 2020 by locking down all my potential distractions, not needing any willpower, and I've got some small, specific, written down, targeted with tracking plans for 2020. So I’d love to know what you're planning for 2020 for your New Year's resolutions. What are your plans for the next decade?

Hey! This episode of Veritasium is supported by viewers like you on Patreon and by Audible. You know what's an excellent habit? Listening to one audiobook every month. And as an Audible member, that's easy. Because each month you get one credit good for any audiobook regardless of price from Audible's huge selection.

Now, a couple of the audiobooks I have on my phone are "Atomic Habits" by James Clear, and "Deep Work" by Cal Newport. I was re-listening to these books recently when I was taking my kids out for nap drives. In fact, it was on one of these drives that I came up with my New Year’s resolutions for 2020 and hence this episode.

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And the book that I am listening to next is called "Behave -- the Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst" by Robert M. Sapolsky. It explains why we make the decisions we do in all sorts of situations, from our most altruistic to our most selfish or vengeful.

You can join me and start listening with a 30-day trial and your first audiobook plus two Audible originals free when you go to audible.com/Veritasium or text Veritasium, that’s v-e-r-i-t-a-s-i-u-m, to 500 500. So I want to thank Audible for supporting me, and I want to thank you for watching.