Why your New Years resolution will fail

We're already six days into the new year and millions of people have already abandoned their New Years resolutions. According to a study from Columbia University, only 25% of people stay committed to their resolution after 30 days and only 10% accomplish their goals.

Experts say that the primary reason resolutions fail is because people don't turn their goals into habits. Achieving a new goal requires you to change your behavior and changing behavior is hard. There is a ton of great literature on habit formation that unpacks why changing behavior is hard, but I have a more simplified take:

Changing behavior is hard because it requires you to trade-off something else that's important to you. Often that's a trade-off with your time.

Do you want to start exercising? That takes time. What are you willing to sacrifice to get in shape? Do you want to learn something new? That also takes time. What won't you do so you can that instead? Want to to spend more time with you loved ones? You better think about what you're going to have to give up to get the time to do that.

The good news is that when you boil achieving a goal down to time management, it becomes achievable. You simply need to add your goal to your calendar and determine what needs to move or drop to support it. It's a prioritization exercise; classic product management.

Last year I set two goals. I wanted to exercise everyday and I wanted to spend as much time as I could with my toddler. These goals have intrinsic tension. I didn't want to exercise during time that I could be present with my kiddo. Something had to give. Since my kid woke up around 6:30a everyday, I decided to set my alarm for 5a so I could exercise before wake-up. I traded off sleep. But, mornings with my toddler wasn't enough to satisfy my second goal. I wanted to spend evenings with my family as well. So I blocked two hours on my calendar at the end of everyday. If I had more work to do I would do it later in the evening after family time. In that case, I traded off the time I'd otherwise spend relaxing.

This worked. I accomplished my goals and ended the year feeling great personally and professionally.

Don't settle for failure this year. Schedule time on your calendar for your goal and make the hard trade-offs needed to support it. You'll be off and running in no time.

What's my goal for 2025? I'm going to start and finish the Udacity Introduction to Programming Nanodegree. What will the time tradeoff be? I will block 30 minutes at the end of every workday to work through the course. Opening up that time will require me to find ways to be more efficient through the rest of day, but I'm ready to make that commitment and get started.