Resolutions are for Suckers

The idea of making New Year’s resolutions has always baffled me. It seems that if a person didn’t have the fortitude to make changes before New Year’s Day, they probably wouldn’t after as well. Of course, I’m sure that many people make and keep New Year’s resolutions. However, my experience suggests that far more people make and subsequently break their resolutions. Accordingly, I propose that making New Year’s resolutions is ineffective and an activity that should be discouraged.

Surprisingly, there is research suggesting that publicly stating goals can actually contribute to a lack of follow through. In this Newsweek article New York University psychologist Peter Gollowitzer found that people who publicly state their goals are actually less likely to achieve them. Though (as the article points out) this flies in the face of conventional wisdom, it makes sense: once a goal has been stated people feel like they’ve made progress, even though they haven’t. That feeling of progress then supplants actual progress and people stop working toward their goal.

Obviously not everyone publicly states their New Year’s resolutions, but publicity does seem to be a common part of the equation. I know some families get together and make resolutions together. In Sunday school I’ve been encouraged on multiple occasions to write down my New Year’s goals and share them either with the class or with someone close to me. I’d even argue that many people who make private resolutions share them with God or their particular deity, which act makes them public inasmuch as the goal-maker feels that the resolution has been shared. And of course, that feeling is one of the primary reasons that resolutions fail.

New Year’s resolutions are also ineffective because New Year’s Day is really just an arbitrary point in time. The multitude of other calendars that are either currently in use or have been used in the past (Julian, Chinese, etc.) suggests that New Year’s Day could just as easily have been any day of the year. By extension, if goal making is going to happen, it could also take place on any day of the year. Why not have Valentine’s Day resolutions? Or May Day goals? My point here is that the logic behind making resolutions specifically on New Year’s Day quickly falls apart.

Ultimately, I don’t know many people who have made significant life changes on New Year’s Day. I’m sure there are some out there, but in any case it’s better to simply see a problem and address it immediately, regardless of when in the year it is. In reality, New Year’s resolutions seem to serve as a kind of crutch and procrastination strategy: if someone’s goal is to lose weight, for example, they can recognize the need to be healthier in October but still act like a glutton for three months. Unfortunately, however, when the New Year rolls around their procrastination is only going to make things more difficult and the fact that it’s suddenly a different year isn’t likely to offset that added difficulty.

As I mentioned above, the best strategy for making changes is to simply make them without all the hoopla of New Year’s resolutions. If you want to read more, pick up a book. If you want to exercise more, go running. Get out and do things, don’t waste time writing them down or fantasizing about accomplishment. New Year’s resolutions are for suckers because they rarely lead to anything.