Why You Should Half-Ass Your New Year’s Resolutions

Less than 10% of us stick to our resolutions. Is it because they’re too hard?

Your New Year’s resolution will last less than four months. And you won’t likely accomplish your goal. Other than that, Happy New Year!

Okay, that’s not me, Thor, saying you won’t do those things. That statistic comes from a CBS News article on New Year’s resolutions.

The Sobering Stats on Resolutions

They cited a 2023 poll in Forbes Health that said most people give up their resolutions after less than four months.

“According to the survey, just under 1 in 10 people (8%) said their resolutions lasted a month, 21.9% reported two months, 22.2% reported three months, and 13.1% said their resolutions lasted four months. Only 1% said they lasted for 11 or 12 months.”

Further, Forbes says, less than 10% of those poll respondents actually achieved whatever goal they said mattered to them.

So when I say you won’t likely accomplish your goal, I’m saying you may, possibly, fall into the 90% of people who don’t succeed with resolutions.

Why Do Resolutions Fail?

Then what’s the problem? Are our goals too difficult? Do we make things too difficult on ourselves?

As it happens, I’m currently reading an excellent book, Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. The book is a 28-day collection of essays on the topic of embracing your limitations and how to make time for what matters to you.

Rethinking Motivation and Discipline

The Burkeman essay I read today included this relevant idea:

“Consider the basic model of human nature implicit in [getting motivated] ... the idea that worthwhile actions are things you have to ‘motivate yourself’ in order to do. It’s one that assumes you’ll need to gin yourself up, to fill yourself with the necessary supply of energy and self-discipline, if you’re to avoid sliding back to your default setting of lassitude and time-wasting.”

Applying this to the concept of New Year’s resolutions, maybe we have it all wrong. Maybe we’re thinking of resolutions as something we have to discipline ourselves to achieve.

The Internal Struggle: Who Do You Think You Are?

Burkeman continues:

“By defining meaningful tasks as those that always require exertion, and you as the kind of person who needs pushing and prodding to do them, it turns daily life into an ongoing internal battle between the kind of person you’d like to be -- energetic, productive -- and the kind of person you privately fear yourself to be at the core: prone to backsliding at the first opportunity.”

So we “force” ourselves to take on resolutions that require hard work and discipline. We do this because, let’s face it, we’re the kind of person who will just half-ass things given the chance.

The Case for Economical Effort

Tomorrow, I’ll have some more thoughts on disciplined resolutions, and their potential opposite, but let me close today with another quote from Burkeman’s book. Why? Because it was fun and made me laugh.

In this same chapter, he quotes a Washington Post article by the advice columnist Carolyn Hax. Now, she’s a fairly accomplished person, yet she recalls a time when her mom chastised herself for doing something ‘half-assed’. Here’s Hax now, quoted in Burkeman:

“I still think there is very little that’s worth applying my entire ass. I’m not interested in burning myself (out) by whole-assing stuff that will be fine if I half- or quarter-ass it. Being able to achieve maximum economy of ass is an important adult skill.”

A Resolution Revolution?

Here, here. When it comes to resolutions, maybe we need to be more economical, ass-wise.

More on HOW tomorrow…