Follow our tips below to help reach your New Year’s resolutions this year.

It’s a brand-new year, and you have a fresh list of New Year’s resolutions… or maybe there are a few recycled from last year’s list that you didn’t quite get to. Maybe last year, you tried for the first few days or weeks of the new year, and life got in the way. Your old routine crept back in, and those new habits you hoped to establish, or goals you wanted to accomplish felt daunting and unattainable. If this sounds like you, you’re not alone! Studies show that over 80% of people end up quitting their intended New Year’s resolutions before the end of January. The New Year presents an opportunity for many to “reinvent” themselves. This concept takes form through resolutions, often focusing on losing weight, exercising more, eating healthier, and saving money. At first, a new start can be exciting and motivating. However, psychologists have found that this feeling of motivation isn’t sustainable in the long term and causes many people to take on more than they can handle, resulting in prematurely giving up on their goals.

Less is More

Choosing one to three goals versus a whole list of tasks you wish to accomplish in the new year can also prevent you from burnout. Try limiting your New Year’s resolutions to just a few (1-3) so you’re giving them enough focus and energy. Psychologist Barry Schwartz coined the phrase “Paradox by Choice.” In his TED talk and throughout his published research, he outlines how having many options can often result in feeling overwhelmed, leading to procrastination and further delaying your progress in accomplishing your goals. Therefore, if you choose one to three goals for the new year that are practical and within your means of achieving them, you are that much more likely not to quit.

Reasonable Resolutions Stick

You have a higher chance of maintaining realistic resolutions throughout the year. Katy Milkman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, advises resolution makers to ensure their goals are “broken down into bite-sized, approachable, daily, or weekly actions.” Breaking down your resolutions can make them more realistic to accomplish. An example of this could be if your goal is to exercise seven days a week and you don’t currently work out at all, to lower your goal to three to four days a week for a minimum of twenty minutes per day. This goal is more attainable because it is reasonable given your exercise history and sets more specific timeframe guidelines. The same could be said about a person’s goal of wanting to complete a full marathon. If you don’t typically run long distances at all, training for a marathon can feel incredibly intimidating. While it’s not impossible to train for a full marathon from a beginner running level, it is more reasonable to set your sights on completing a 5k or 10k race. Gradually working your way up to longer distance races can help prepare you for and get you that much closer to your goal of one day completing a marathon. Making your goals challenging yet achievable allows you to feel accomplished without getting overwhelmed and eventually forcing you to quit before you’ve finished them.

Celebrate the Small Wins, Not Just the End Result

This tip goes hand in hand with the above tip about highly motivated people starting the new year and quickly burning out. Planning out a reward system throughout achieving your resolution can boost motivation. Karl E. Weick, psychologist and retired professor from Cornell University, states, “Deliberate cultivation of a strategy of small wins infuses situations with comprehensible and specific meaning (commitment), reinforces the perception that people can exert some influence over what happens to them (control), and produces changes of manageable size that serve as incentives to expand the repertory of skills (challenge).” Simply put, breaking your resolutions down into smaller pieces and celebrating each victory as you go can allow you to maintain stamina and successfully reach your ultimate goal.

Key Takeaways

• Only select one to three resolutions so you can give them more of your energy and time.
• Make those goals reasonable yet challenging.
• Set a plan for achieving your goals that prioritizes smaller victories along the way that you can feel good about reaching.

If you’ve made it this far, you should already be proud of yourself for learning more. By following the advice above, you should be better equipped to achieve your resolutions year after year. Keep trying; you’ve got this!