The Psychology of New Year resolutions + how to make them stick

Setting New Year resolutions is a fun way to begin the year. Making resolutions is so popular as psychologically, we all seek self-improvement. Naturally, we want to maximize the positive and minimize the negative. But as you can imagine, the follow through is less than perfect… Around 60 per cent of people make resolutions at the start of the year, but only around 10 per cent actually manage to keep their promises all year round.

Have your New Year resolutions survived so far? It can be particularly difficult, especially the career or business-focused resolutions because much of the business world really only gets back to full strength in February. So let’s explore the New Year resolution a bit further and see how you can ‘stick to it!’

Why January?

It makes sense that people want to reach their potential and expand their horizons, but why is January the appropriate time to begin these endeavours?

Obviously the New Year is strongly associated with a “fresh start” because it signifies new beginnings. What happened last year becomes old news and we become determined to make the best of the year ahead.

For many people, December is a time of indulgence and expenditure. As a result, people often enter into the New Year feeling guilty that they behaved so excessively. People whose resolutions fall in the categories of health, diet, fitness or finance tend to have high expectations that they will make up for their luxurious Christmas. For others, it is a time of uncertainty. Many plans are yet to be confirmed so anything is possible! Mix this with some extra time available to tackle resolutions and you have many people wide-eyed to try new things.

 

Time to Revisit that Resolution!

There are many factors that will influence whether you will stick to your resolution. Psychologists acknowledge that human behaviours are not easily predicted. Individual differences separate every single person on various dimensions. Age is influential in explaining who is more likely to set resolutions in the first place, with older adults less likely to set resolutions than the younger generations. Factors such as self-efficacy, organisation and perseverance however, are more important in terms of whether they will actually stick to resolutions.

 Get S.M.A.R.T.

The S.M.A.R.T approach to goal setting is widely used in the business world to encourage employees to reach their targets. S.M.A.R.T is an acronym that describes 5 qualities goals (or resolutions) should possess:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistic
• Time-sensitive

This approach, if implemented correctly, can be invaluable in terms of achieving your New Year resolutions and give you the boost to achieve even more!  But don’t forget, this is only possible when you stick to it. Make notes, write in your calendar when you’d like to achieve goals by, and set a job application target of how many applications you need to make each day!