7 tips to help keep New Year’s resolutions, from a University of Chicago expert on motivation
As 2024 approaches, roughly a third of American adults plan to make New Year’s resolutions, according to a recent public poll conducted by YouGov, an international online research group.
Yet these goals can be notoriously difficult to maintain in the long run: Of survey respondents who reported making resolutions, only 36% of them reported believing it’s very likely they’ll stick to them through 2024.
One Chicago expert on motivation says changing how resolutions — and subsequent follow-through — are framed can help promote long-term success.
“Framing can be very powerful,” said Ayelet Fishbach, professor of behavioral science and marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, in an interview with the Tribune. “A principle of social psychology is you either change the situation or you change the way you frame the situation. So here we are trying to change our own behavior: Either we change the situation or we change the framing.”
Fishbach, author of the book “Get It Done: Surprising Lessons From the Science of Motivation,” offered seven tips to help keep New Year’s resolutions for the long haul. Much of her advice centers on staying motivated to achieve long-term goals.
“Motivation is knowledge,” she said in a TEDx Talk posted on YouTube in late December. “You learn how to be motivated.”
1. Find immediate rewards. A 2016 study on New Year’s resolutions co-conducted by Fishbach found that immediate rewards were strongly associated with maintaining resolutions in the long run, even if a delayed reward was the true underlying motivation for the goal.
Participants in the study “found engagement rewarding, as opposed to achievement,” she said.
“My No. 1 tip would be to make (resolutions) intrinsically motivating,” Fishbach said. “That means setting New Year’s resolutions that we are excited about doing” and not just goals that “you’re excited to complete.”
That sense of excitement, curiosity and fun will become an immediate reward and help motivate adherence, she added.
For example, many resolutions revolve around improving health or losing weight. When planning to exercise, focus on how to make the activity or workout interesting, fun or exciting, she suggested.
“The mistake is planning to run when you hate running,” Fishbach said. “What is the thing that is going to really click with you? Maybe it’s playing tennis. Maybe it’s playing basketball.”
She warned that the activity might not seem fun or exciting on the first or second occasion because new habits can require adjustment. There might be times when a resolution feels like hard work, but there should be immediate gratification woven into the change, she said.
“It’s the journey that’s to be rewarding,” she added.
2. Avoid “avoidance” resolutions. Resolving to do something new is generally easier than breaking an old habit. Fishbach advised forming “approach-oriented” resolutions — goals to do an activity — rather than “avoidance-oriented” resolutions — pledges to quit or stop an ingrained behavior.
A Swedish study on New Year’s resolutions published in 2020 found that participants “with approach-oriented goals were significantly more successful than those with avoidance-oriented goals.”
“Many resolutions are framed in a negative way: Not drinking. Not smoking. Not eating unhealthy food. Not using social media,” Fishbach said. “To begin with, they seem like a chore. They are negative.”
She said another problem with avoidance resolutions is that monitoring progress tends to promote greater focus on the behavior that’s supposed to be eliminated, making it harder to avoid; there’s a lot of research that shows trying to suppress thoughts only promotes more focus on the subject, she added.
This is known as ironic process theory or the “white bear” problem, which was developed by a Harvard psychologist in the 1980s, invoking a quote from Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky: Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute.
Avoidance resolutions can also be difficult to keep because of a principle called psychological reactance, which suggests that when people are told not to do something and their freedoms are restricted, they often react by wanting to do it even more.
“When you tell someone not to do something, they want to do it in spite,” she said. “You see that avoidance goals are really, really hard.”
Rather than forming a resolution based on eliminating a behavior, Fishbach recommended shifting focus to a a positive activity as a replacement.
Some examples include replacing an alcoholic drink after work with a delicious smoothie or cup of hot tea; rather than resolving to avoid social media before falling asleep, instead commit to using a new meditation app before bed, Fishbach suggested.
“As much as you can, instead of quitting some foods, think about introducing other foods,” she said. “In terms of quitting a habit, think about introducing a new habit that will replace it. … I can reverse basically anything you present to me as avoidance and think about what would be the thing to approach, instead.”
3. Give advice. Sharing advice with others tends to help people stick to their resolutions, Fishbach said.
In one experiment Fishbach co-conducted, middle school students who offered advice spent more time on their homework over the next month compared with students who received advice; the phenomenon occurred in other areas, where folks who gave advice to others became more motivated to control their tempers, save money and lose weight, according to her research.
“When someone gives advice, that forces them to learn from their struggle,” she said. “When we invite people to give advice, that forces them to look back and think, ‘what did I learn from my struggles?’ And create a better plan to follow through in the future.”
4. Break down the resolution into a series of short-term goals. Motivation tends to be high when people start something new, Fishbach said, and then starts to peak again close to the end or deadline, when the goal becomes more imminent.
The difficulty tends to be in the middle of a task or project, when motivation often lags and people are more likely to slack off, based on her research.
“Middles are a big problem for all goals,” she said. “And for an annual goal — such as a New Year’s resolution — even more so.”
In research on Hanukkah celebrants, Fishbach and another researcher, now a Northwestern University professor, found participants were more likely to light menorah candles on the first and last nights of the eight-day holiday, but were more inclined to skip doing so on the middle nights. In another experiment by the pair, subjects were asked to cut a series of shapes out of paper; the experiment showed participants were more likely to adhere to higher standards on the first and last shapes, with poorer performance in the middle.
“They literally cut corners in the middle,” Fishbach said.
To help keep motivation high when following through on New Year’s resolutions, she advised incorporating weekly or monthly goals, essentially creating more beginnings and endings.
5. Social support is key. Think about who else is helping achieve the goal and how loved ones can be supportive of the objective.
For example, if a New Year’s resolution involves eating healthier but family members and loved ones who share meals aren’t taking part, it can be harder to achieve the goal, Fishbach said.
“If you’re eating together as a family and other people are not on board, and the meal isn’t healthy, you cannot do it by yourself,” she said.
Negative or unsupportive people can sabotage a goal; in contrast, social support can add elements of accountability and inspiration to help maintain resolutions, she said.
“The way others help with goals is either by doing it with you — it’s teamwork, and many of our important goals are teamwork, like a meal we chose as a group, and for many of us financial goals are family goals,” she said. “Other times it’s completing your individual goals in the presence of others.”
She also recommended following people online who are pursuing similar goals and objectives.
6. Quantify goals. Set targets in terms of numbers and timespans, which can make it easier to monitor progress and pull you toward the goal.
Instead of generally pledging to exercise more in 2024, craft a more specific objective, like committing to exercise four times every week, Fishbach suggested.
“We’re also highly motivated to meet these goals: By your third workout, you will be very motivated to do the fourth workout and meet the goal,” she said. “Numbers tend to help us motivate our progress and help us stay accountable.”
She pointed to the popular exercise of walking 10,000 steps a day, which came from a Japanese marketing ploy rather than health science; but the concept caught on, largely because the target was quantifiable, Fishbach said.
“I think the one example everyone can relate to is the step count,” she said. “People are very motivated to get in the last 100 steps around the house, because it feels nice to close the circle.”
She cautioned that sometimes using numbers to quantify goals can create problems: People can find shortcuts or get overly discouraged when they don’t meet the numerical objective.
“As long as you have a healthy relationship with your number and understand that it’s just a strategy, then it helps,” she said.
7. Rethink failure and discomfort. Fishbach recalled a recent conversation with a woman who said she failed in her goal of not smoking because, after 20 years of cessation, she had started again.
“She felt like she failed,” Fishbach said. “I would think most people would view that as a huge success. She experienced a setback.”
Slip-ups and setbacks are normal, she added. While failure can be discouraging, she recommended trying not to take failing personally; instead, try and view these moments as a great learning tool, spurring success in the future.
Becoming more comfortable with discomfort can also help achieve New Year’s resolutions, she added. While goals should ideally involve activities that are fun and exciting, they might not feel that way at first; it’s often helpful to realize that experiencing discomfort, at least temporarily, can be a sign of growth, she said.
Research by Fishbach and a Cornell University professor found that discomfort can be motivating instead of an obstacle. In an experiment involving improv students at the Second City Training Center in Chicago, they found participants who were asked to seek discomfort and “lean into awkwardness” took more risks and held focus for a longer duration, indicating they made more progress.
“We didn’t study this intervention in the context of New Year’s resolutions, but it’s very applicable, given many of these resolutions don’t feel right (or enjoyable) initially,” she said. “When you change a habit, you should expect to feel uncomfortable initially, and setting a goal to feel discomfort might get you through the first few times. It changes the meaning of discomfort such that you see it as a signal that the new habit is working.”
