Did you make any New Year’s resolutions this year?
With the beginning of 2019 quickly fading into memory, how many of your New Year’s resolutions did you keep? Two or three? One? None?
We tend to feel that each year brings with it an opportunity to restart, to begin fresh, learn new things, pursue new passions, and throw away bad habits. We look at the calendar as a kind of checkpoint: “this year I’m going to do X” or “this year I’m going to give up Y”, as if somehow we’ll begin thinking differently on the 1st of January.
But is it ever really the case? Why do we wait for the calendar to tick over before making a change? And why is it that most of the time we don’t stick to our resolutions? The answer, surprisingly, is actually quite simple.
What’s happening and why we do it
Our brains are wired to feel good about committing to positive changes. It gives us a sense of accomplishment before we even start doing anything differently. When we tell someone about a positive change we intend to make, our brains already reward us as though we’ve reached the goal.
It’s a social norm to make new year’s resolutions and that’s when most of these commitments to positive change begin to occur in our personal lives. But it’s also happening in our workplaces. We might analyse a situation, determine what needs to be done to improve it, but then get stuck on the actual execution. There are countless examples of consultants being hired to analyse businesses and make recommendations on needed changes only for organisations to simply drop the ball when it comes to implementing them.
Another reason we tend to delay execution is because sometimes we really aren’t very motivated to make the change at all. We might know we need to, but change is hard. It’s difficult to get started and with big changes it can feel overwhelming.
What’s the impact?
When we say we’re going to do something and we tell people about it, we’re making a commitment. We create an expectation in the other person that we will follow through and hold true to our word. When we fail to do that, we actually risk diminishing our own reputation and can reduce our motivation for making the change at all.
We use dates such as the beginning of a new year as an excuse to delay the hard choice to get started. It’s never easy to make long lasting change. Often, committing to doing something at a later date is much easier than committing to doing it today, right now.
After committing to a change, we often continue to make decisions that actively work against our goals. In behavioural economics the concept is called dynamic inconsistency and it explains the phenomenon where our preferences as decision makers change over time. People tend to value immediate rewards over future rewards. It’s difficult for us to see the long term view and make decisions today that will have a positive impact on our future selves. It’s also one of the many reasons why smokers find it so difficult to quit. The satisfaction of smoking that one cigarette today outweighs the potential negative consequence of developing lung cancer in another forty years. It’s simply too far away to think about now.
Another common stumbling block is that we try to commit to far too many things. When we have too many things on our plate, we tend to lose focus and motivation. The start point seems blurry and non-specific. When a goal seems too large to achieve, we tend to delay starting it or worse; give up altogether.
What you can do about it
Limit distractions and develop focus. Don’t pick ten things to change, pick one or two. Be specific and define actions that can be performed to achieve those changes. I discuss this briefly in my article Make time for the things that matter.
Use positive incentives. If you exercise regularly and achieve the goals you set, reward yourself! If you’re eating healthy all week, allow yourself a cheat day. Don’t punish yourself if you fall off track. You don’t need to run twice the distance tomorrow because you missed out on a run today.
Manage your environment. Surround yourself with things that will positively influence your decisions and reduce emotional reactions. Avoid the temptation to fall back into old habits. For example if you’re trying to reduce snacking, put treats away in a cupboard instead of leaving them out on the counter.
Just get started. Don’t wait. Commit to small actions today and build up from there. Set easy goals in the beginning and start to achieve them. Rather than say you want to lose twenty kilograms in the next year (a long term result), commit to exercising once or twice per week (a short term action). Get specific, make it achievable, and gradually build momentum. Just take the first step.
So what are you waiting for?
Start today! Don’t worry about getting it exactly right the first time, and don’t worry about falling off track. Get back up and keep moving forward. Soon enough you will look back and wonder how you ever delayed starting in the first place.
