This is the last thing you'll ever need to read about New Year's resolutions
Enough is enough!

What does the research say about resolutions?
Richard Wiseman, author of the excellent 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute, compiled research on resolutions. What were the main takeaways?
- Just pick one resolution. More than that is too hard.
- Break the goal into steps. Have a plan.
- Reward yourself for progress.
- Realize you may screw up. Keep at it.
How do you easily start good habits?
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
It's called "Minimum Viable Effort":
3 Steps to New Habits from Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford
The first step is crucial — keep it tiny. Do not be ambitious yet. That leads to failure. Consistency is what you're shooting for here so make the hurdle as low as possible.
What's the easiest way to make good habits stick? Surround yourself with supportive friends:
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Via Charles Duhigg's excellent book The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business:
In a 1994 Harvard study that examined people who had radically changed their lives, for instance, researchers found that some people had remade their habits after a personal tragedy, such as a divorce or a life-threatening illness… Just as frequently, however, there was no tragedy that preceded people's transformations. Rather, they changed because they were embedded in social groups that made change easier… When people join groups where change seems possible, the potential for that change to occur becomes more real. [The Power of Habit]
Keep in mind it takes an average of 66 days to establish a new good habit.
From Oliver Burkeman's Help! How to be slightly happier and get a bit more done:
…a new study by the University of College London Psychologist Phillipa Lally and her colleagues helps confirm. On average, her subjects, who were trying to learn new habits such as eating fruit daily or going jogging, took a depressing 66 days before reporting that the behavior had become unchangingly automatic. [Help! How to be slightly happier and get a bit more done]
How do you break bad habits?
- The secret to breaking bad habits is to replace them with another habit.
- You can resist bad habits by avoiding the triggers that make you want to do them. Context is key.
- Here's a quick explanation of how triggers and replacing habits works, by Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit.
Any other tips?
Write your resolution down:
Writing about goals makes you happier and makes you more likely to follow through with them.
Do NOT fantasize about achieving your resolution:
That's like eating dessert first and it saps motivation. Thinking about what you have to do to prepare for a challenge was more likely to lead to success than imagining the victory.
Use checklists:
Atul Gawande, author of The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, tells the story of how much of a difference checklists made in a hospital ICU:
The proportion of patients who didn't receive the recommended care dropped from 70 percent to four percent; the occurrence of pneumonias fell by a quarter; and 21 fewer patients died than in the previous year. The researchers found that simply having the doctors and nurses in the I.C.U. make their own checklists for what they thought should be done each day improved the consistency of care to the point that, within a few weeks, the average length of patient stay in intensive care dropped by half.
Join 135K+ readers. Get a free weekly update via email here.
More from Barking Up The Wrong Tree...
-
Welfare reform: are more cuts the answer?
Talking Point Disability benefits are at risk of cuts as the government hunts for funding
By Sorcha Bradley, The Week UK Published
-
Spherex: Nasa's cutting-edge telescope searching for the origins of life
The Explainer New mission to unlock the secrets of the universe with most comprehensive map of the cosmos yet
By Elizabeth Carr-Ellis, The Week UK Published
-
Dog-friendly days out in the UK
The Week Recommends Fun activities for you and your furry friend to enjoy together
By Irenie Forshaw, The Week UK Published