How to increase your chances of keeping New Year's resolutions.

Surprisingly, research shows that New Year's Resolutions often work. But not all are equally set up for success.

January 1st is an arbitrary date to choose as the start of the New Year, isn’t it? School starts in the early fall. Life itself seems to renew in the spring. So, changing the calendar from one year to the next in early winter never made sense to me.

Well, we’re stuck with it. And people do use the opportunity for self improvement. New Year’s resolutions are why gyms are most crowded in early January. New Year’s resolutions are why the period in which we collectively lose the most weight is January-February.

Do New Year’s resolutions work? Actually, yes!

Research suggests that a significant number of people achieve their resolution goals. (Unsurprisingly, resolutions tend to be focused on health and weight.)

However, not all New Year’s resolutions are equally destined to succeed. For example, I often achieve my New Year’s resolutions by choosing one that is so easy to achieve, that failure would be almost laughable. One year, I resolved to throw out all of my old gym socks and replace them with packages of new ones (all the same brand, by the way; therefore whenever I lost one sock, I’ve only lost half a pair).

Understandably, most people’s goals are loftier than my typical resolutions. Research suggests that there are two characteristics associated with higher success rates among the most common resolutions.

1. Action-oriented (or “approach-oriented”) goals are more often successful than avoidance-oriented ones. In other words, “exercise more often” or “eat more apples” are resolutions that more likely to be achieved than “watch less TV” or “eat less dessert” are. Some of this is because action-oriented goals are set into motion by a choices that are made ahead of time. Joining a gym doesn’t mean you’ll go 5 days per week. But simply joining the gym stands to increase your gym attending frequency from 0 to a non-zero number. In that way, going to the gym at all would be marked as a win. Similarly, buying apples at the store does not mean you’ll eat them all. However, doing so increases the chances of apple eating in the next week or so, and by a large amount. Meanwhile, quantifying how much TV one watches, or how often they eat dessert is far more challenging.

   In fairness, some of the differences in apparent success might reflect recall bias. It’s easy to remember that you went to the gym a few times. It’s easy to forget that you ate cake at that office retirement party. However, it seems that doing new stuff is more likely to succeed than avoiding stuff you like but that you know is bad for you.

2. Don’t go-it-alone. It turns out that reminders and check-ins are associated with higher rates of New Year’s resolution success. There are two reasons for this, I think. First (and most obviously) is accountability. Humans are remarkably driven by external validation (i.e., impressing or not disappointing others). The second reason is probably partially wrapped up in choosing action-oriented goals. Many action-oriented goals are not solo endeavors. People see what we do, especially if we are conspicuous about it. It’s harder for people to see everything we don’t do. If your resolutions are to eat more apples and to eat fewer sweets, someone you live with is likely to observe and validate the former (especially if you point it out), but may not be certain about the latter (that cake at your co-worker’s retirement party).

I have two resolutions for 2023. By applying the lessons above, I hope to increase my chances of success. Both are action-oriented. And since I am telling you all, I’m hoping I’ll feel accountable to you. (If I don’t update you on my progress in a month or two, feel free to remind me!)

My first resolution is the more immediately achievable one: clean the inside of my car before the end of January. The second (loftier) one is, whenever possible, to get to know my patients a little bit better—spending more time talking about their lives, and not just the exact reason they are in the ER. My hope is that this will make me a better physician, and make this newsletter a richer reflection of what my clinical work is like.

Thanks for reading and Happy New Year!