Most People Give Up Their New Year's Resolutions This Week. Here's How to Keep Yours

I just learned about National Quitter’s Day. This is a very uncelebrated observance every January— between January 12th and January 23rd—depending on which calendar czar you talk to, when people start quitting those bold resolutions they made on January 1st and revert to their old habits. ?

Researchers at the University of Scranton found that 92% of people give up on their?New Year's goals?before achieving them, nearly half cashing in their chips by the end of January.

Whether your goal is to give up gluten, go cold turkey on sugar, lose 20 pounds, or write a book, this is generally the time of the month when your dreams freeze and die.

Why?

Blame the Fateful Five

1. We realize our goals were harder than we thought.
2. We start getting busy with other stuff.
3. We don’t see results and think it’s not worth the effort.
4. We begin to fear that we’re going to fail.
5. We set out goals too high.

There’s probably a 6th and 7th reason, but that doesn’t work as well as an alliterative catchphrase.

Okay, so we know we will likely abandon our resolutions like an outdated iPhone 8+ and either bump it to next year’s to-do list or get to it when we have more time. Either decision will cause you to feel crappy about yourself.

I know this because I’ve been there.

Last year, I resolved to lose 25 pounds, and I gained 7. I also promised myself I would write a novel. To my credit, I did write 15,234 words of something resembling a bunch of sentences strung together, but I gave up on the book idea when it didn’t excite me anymore.

Oh, and I vowed to contribute more to this very Substack newsletter you are reading now. How did that work out in 2023? Not great, I’m afraid. Not great at all.

What will you do this year?

So here we are again. It’s the end of January. The warm, eggnog-induced optimism is beginning to wane. The quiet confidence I felt jotting my goals down in the Notes app doesn’t feel so confident or quiet. It’s been replaced by an anxious chatter in our heads telling us,

“Not now. It’s not the right time. You need to do this instead.”

But here’s the thing. This year, I’m going to take a stand against that voice. This year, I’m going to tell that nagger inside my head, whom I will call Sid, because it makes it more relatable to anthropomorphize it, that I’m not buying his B.S.

Because Sid has never helped me a day in my life. Sid is a procrastinator disguised as a giver of practical advice. He’s a timewaster pretending to be a time-saver.

Let’s make a pact

This year, we’re going to try to hold to at least one of our resolutions. We are going to see it through. We’re going to push past all the obstacles that get in our way of finishing what we started. It’s not going to be easy. No, it’s probably going to be very unpleasant at times. But if we come out where we wanted to be on the other side, it may just be a life changer.

How do we do this? I’ve got a few ideas I want to float by you. I call these the Finish-What-You-Started Five (which could be seven and eight, but again, alliteration).

The Finish-What-You-Started Five

1.???? Remind yourself why you made the resolution in the first place. Every time you think about giving up on your goal (and there will be many times), try to remember what got you there. The original resolution came from a pure place, a good place, a noble place, but then life and self-doubt got in the way and confused everything. Try to return to the good place when it was clear what you wanted and why. I’ll go first. I want to give up on so much sugar. The reason? I have developed a belly this year (“this year?” I hear my kids saying.). It doesn’t make me feel healthy. My doctor has told me it’s not healthy.

2.???? Start low, go slow. The same advice I give people about taking cannabis edibles can be applied to resolutions. If you take a high dose right off the bat, you’re likely going to be so out-of-your-mind high and freaked out that you’ll never want to do it again. It’s like telling yourself you’ll write a 60,000-word novel when all you have is a blinking cursor on a computer screen. Too intimidating. Better to give yourself small, daily goals. I found a great site called 750words.com that just requires you to contribute 750 words a pop, and then it splashes the screen with confetti when you hit your mark.

3.???? Celebrate small wins. As long as you’re not giving up on your goals, you’re still on the path to achieving them. Celebrating the smallest of victories will keep you motivated and remind you that progress is being made, no matter how small. Look, change is hard AF. I mean, do you know how hard it is to get your brain to want to change. Our brains are programmed to be lazy. They want to save energy. Change goes against your basic biology, so it’s no surprise it’s so much work. Here’s a very meta example. I’m going to celebrate this story, even if you hate it. Because it’s a small part of my larger goal to make Small Talk more regular and more valuable.

4.???? Don’t wallow in self-doubt. If you think that all the so-called successful people you admire so much don’t deal with self-doubt and worry ALL THE TIME, then I have a 90-pound housecat I want to sell you. I have no idea what that expression means, but it seemed appropriate here. My point is that I have interviewed hundreds of successful and famous people—on my podcast and in my job as a journalist—and every single one of them struggles with self-doubt. If they didn’t, they’d be insufferable. Self-doubt makes us human. But it’s the people who don’t quit in the face of self-doubt who succeed.

5.???? Keep going when others stop. ?As I noted at the top of this story, ninety-two percent of people don’t finish their New Year’s resolutions. So the fact that you’ve made it this far is nice work. What separates them from you is that you won’t be a statistic this time. You’re not going to be like everybody else. You’re going to resolve to finish what you started.

As the great sage Peter Gabriel once sang (for those under 35, he is a really good singer from the 80s).

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