How To Hack Yourself

How NOT To Make New Year’s Resolutions

Most people’s resolutions fail… here’s how you can do better

Cassie Kozyrkov
4 min readDec 28, 2023

--

Happy 2024! Whether you’re picking up a last minute resolution or figuring out an action plan for some ambitious goals you set yourself, this article might help you avoid shooting yourself in the foot before you even get started. Most resolutions fail, so let’s make yours the exception. Here are 10 mistakes to avoid as you craft your self-improvement program.

Image by the author.

Mistake #1: Following bad advice

Here are two sources of advice to be especially careful with, since they usually sound like your best bet but they don’t always give you good advice:
🥼Science
✨Role models

I go into more detail here.

Mistake #2: Setting unwise goals

The sooner you realize that the goal you’ve committed to on paper is a means to a more important end, the easier it is to design a wise approach to getting what you really want. Yes, when designing goals, you start by understanding that there are different hierarchies of goal and designing your approach accordingly. Start by learning the difference between outcome goals, process…

--

--

Cassie Kozyrkov

Chief Decision Scientist, Google. ❤️ Stats, ML/AI, data, puns, art, theatre, decision science. All views are my own. twitter.com/quaesita