How To Hack Yourself

Your New Year’s Resolutions Will Fail

Willpower is not the solution! Here’s how to do better…

If crafting successful New Year’s resolutions were easy, billion-dollar industries peddling a perfect you would evaporate in a puff of smoke. But false promises are the reality, and so is this: you’re likely to fail.

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The good news is that every time you fail, you have a shot at doing better next time… as long as you learn something from your experience. Don’t throw the learning opportunity away by doing either of these things:

1. Taking your failure personally and giving up.
2. Resolving to fix it with willpower. (It doesn’t work.)

As Albert Einstein probably never said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” I’ve always thought this to be a better description of statistical sampling than of insanity, but it works here too: unless your intent is to learn something from a larger sample size, don’t attempt the exact same resolution twice.

To succeed in the long run, try to focus more on your learning rate than your winning rate.

If (when!) you encounter a wobble, don’t try to solve it with willpower. Instead, learn from the mistake so you can redesign your approach to make success even a tiny bit more likely next time. Redesigning your approach realistically to nudge the chance of success is usually the best way forward, no matter the type of resolution.

Create a failure action plan

If your New Year’s resolution doesn’t come with a plan for what you’ll do if you slip up, that’s a massive red flag.

Contingency planning is key. Build in a plan for adapting your approach if you fall short of your target.

For example, if you resolved to run 5 more miles every week, do you have a contingency plan for how you’ll get back on track if you slip up? What happens if you miss a week because you got sick? Do you give up? Is the whole flimsy thing ruined? I hope not.