7 Foolproof Ways to Doom Your Resolutions

It’s that time again when close to half of us will be seduced by the promise of a better, much improved self and make a list of resolutions. Human beings have greeted a new year with high hopes for close to two thousand years, ever since the ancient Romans moved its start to January from March. That put the god Janus in charge—he of two faces, one looking back and the other forward—who presided over all doorways and transitions and was thought capable of granting both absolution for past trespasses and success in new endeavors.

It will surprise no one that, human nature being what it is, many of these resolutions will end up abandoned or forgotten in weeks or months; research by John Norcross, who’s been studying resolution-making and keeping since the 1980s, reveals that a mere 8% of resolution makers actually succeed. While 75% who make them hang in for the first week, only 64% are still standing at the end of a month, and 46% at the end of six months. But maybe these statistics only testify to what we already suspected anyway: Change is difficult.

So is the tradition of resolving to change on January 1^st just hokey? Recent research suggests maybe not. Hengchen Dai, Katherine Milkman, and Jason Riis hypothesized that pegging the desire to change to a specific time of year—a special landmark of some sort —would actually increase motivation. January1st is a landmark, as is a birthday or some other date of significance. They posited that the temporal landmark was important because it creates a “before” and an “after,” or what they called a “distinct mental accounting period,” which is set apart from the daily grind. In addition, temporal landmarks help us think of our imperfect and in-need-of-improvement selves as part of the past and this motivates us to work on the new self in the present and future. Finally, temporal landmarks make us look at the big picture and focus on high-level, goal-relevant information. Their research strategy was hip and young; they looked at Google searches for diet and correlated them to dates; examined commitments to the gym in a university setting; and looked at stickK.com. a website where you literally put your money where your mouth is in terms of commitment. (I’ll admit I’d never heard of the site.)

What they found was “the fresh start effect” which helps “nudge” people into action. So if you’re not ready to take on January 1^st, take heart. You can start on some other date—the beginning of a new week or season, your birthday or a holiday—and get the same effect.

So what do to? To resolve or not? Is it worth it, given the high rate of failure? You can simply not make resolutions, after all, but what if you do? How best to make those resolutions come true?

Luckily, research on goal setting and motivation reveals all so I thought I’d save everyone a lot of time and heartache by cutting to the chase and offering up this handy list of what to do if the utter failure of every resolution is what you unconsciously intend. Alternatively, by doing the very opposite, you can use this very same enumeration to make sure that your resolve is strengthened and delivers.

Consider it my slightly snarky New Year’s gift to you, based in part on the research I did for Mastering The Art of Quitting.

1. Be unrealistic

Yes, immediately forget about the old you and simply focus on the new one; develop amnesia about everything you know about yourself and how you handle challenges. Set your goals without any consideration for your talents or ability, and keep muttering to yourself that all you need is grit. Absolutely ignore the reams of research that show that success depends, in part, on matching your ability to the goal you’ve set, and load up on those Internet memes with soft-focus flowers that remind you that you can do anything you set your mind to. Forget that research shows that we all tend to overstate our abilities (it’s called the above-average effect) and that additionally, as Dan Lovallo and Daniel Kahneman have noted, we’re overly optimistic about outcomes as well as our talents. Moreover, while we’re quick to take credit for successes and forward movement, we attribute bad outcomes to external factors we have no control over.

So, all in all, there’s absolutely no reason to inculcate realism.

Also, be sure to set a timetable that bears no relationship to what you hope to achieve; of course, you can lose twenty pounds in one week and get firmer abs too. Really.

2. Build in some conflict

Set conflicting goals for yourself and ignore the research by Robert Emmons and Laura King which shows categorically that conflicting goals make it very likely you will do little to achieve any of them and, as an added bonus, ruminate and worry more. If feeling stuck and lowering your sense of well-being is what you’re after, here’s your ticket! After all, you can travel more and save more at the same time, can’t you? Go ahead: focus on pleasing that work-obsessed boss and snagging a job promotion while resolving to spend more quality time with the people you love. After all, isn’t multi-tasking one of the mantras of the digital age? Continue to believe that, evidence to the contrary. Really.

3. Forget that willpower is a limited resource

Simply defy what Roy Baumeister and others have found and think of yourself as Superman, Wonder Woman, or an android; set goals for yourself that require you to resist one impulse at the very same time you need your mental and emotional energy to achieve something else! For example, try dieting and quitting smoking at once or, in the alternative, go on a really restrictive diet that leaves you starving and work on repairing your marriage in tandem. Type the following motto—Research doesn’t apply to me—and tape it up in prominent places.

4. Dream as big as you can

Go ahead and let what Gabriele Oettingen has called indulging take over your thinking as you consider your resolutions. Settle in on your couch or at your desk and just focus on in on that newly svelte or rosy self, that pink-tinged future, adding details every time you visit in your mind. See yourself on the red carpet, receiving the Nobel Prize, your name and your novel on the bestseller list, or whatever else you need to float your future boat—oops! I meant yacht. Whatever you do, avoid mental contrasting at all costs. You see, mental contrasting has you imagine both the future and the various obstacles that might stand in the way of achieving your goals and that, in turn, gets you strategizing. An approach like this might actually yield success so, above all, ixnay on mental contrasting and stick with indulging.

5. Think positive 24/7

Yes, put on that cheerleader outfit and never take it off and, in addition, ignore or deny any negative thoughts or feelings you might have about the progress you’re making on achieving your goals. In fact, make it your business to go blind to all varieties of negative feedback or, alternatively, over-react wildly and become completely undone at even the hint of negativity. Ignore all the research done on action and state orientations which shows that the people who are more skilled at managing negative emotions are more task-oriented, and do better achieving goals under stress; they are deemed “action-oriented.” They tend not to take cues from the environment and are more in touch with what really motivates them. They can adapt their strategies. But, please, don’t turn into one of those people. Don’t go there. Just think positive—you can do anything, after all! And don’t forget to load up on those memes mentioned in tip #1.

6. Don’t make a plan

First of all, start off by not even writing those resolutions down; that’s so 20^th-century. Second, make a concerted effort not to plan your strategy for achieving your goal in any way; avoid all thoughts directed at planning, Whatever you do, don’t take notes or write anything down so that your brain can really start nagging you about your resolutions and keep you up half the night; with luck, you can feel absolutely lousy about yourself a mere two or three weeks into the new year.

By not doing any of these things, you ignore the work of E.J. Masicampo and Roy Baumeister who found that simply coming up with a plan, even one that wasn’t acted upon, reduced intrusive thoughts about things left undone. Additionally, you won’t end up reaping the benefits of writing down and expanding on your goals which, as a study undertaken at McGill and Toronto Universities showed, yielded both improved performance as well as better evaluation of strategies for goal achievement.

Just keep thinking that planning is for dummies because that will stop you from adopting the various mindsets the research done by Peter Gollwitzer has shown to be key to achieving your goals. There’s the predecisional stage when you think both about the desirability of the goal and its feasibility. You then move to the preactional stage during which you plan when, how, and how long to act. All that planning then moves you into the actional stage during which you respond to opportunities and redouble your efforts at achieving the goal. Finally, there’s the postactional stage when you re-evaluate all your efforts and look at whether the goal is still both desirable and feasible.

All that thinking and evaluating really gives you control of your efforts but you don’t want that, do you? Nah. Who needs a plan, after all?

7. Don’t commit to change

Keep your options open and make sure you don’t tell anyone about the goals you’re setting for yourself. Doing it half-heartedly and totally without support positively increases your chances of failing, along with absolute adherence to the preceding points. Pinky swears are for sissies and it’s way better to be the free-floating seeds of the dandelion, isn’t it? If you don’t commit to begin with, there’s nothing lost and nothing gained, right? And no chance of disappointing yourself.

I think that does it. Happy New Year everyone!

Copyright© Peg Streep 2014

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http://www.statisticbrain.com/new-years-resolution-statistics/

Dai, Hengchen and Milkman, Katherine L. and Riis, Jason,” The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior” (December 24, 2013). The Wharton School Research Paper No. 51. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2204126 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2204126

Kruger, Justin,” Lake Wobegon Be Gone! The ‘Below-Average’ Effect and the Egocentric Nature of Comparative Ability Judgments,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1999), 17, no.2, 222-232.

Lovallo, Dan and Daniel Kahneman, “Delusions of Success: How Optimism Undermines Executives’ Decisions,” Harvard Business Review (July 2003), 56-63.

Baumeister, Roy, Ellen Bratslavsky, Mark Muraven, and Diane M. Tice, “Ego Depletion: Is the Active Self a Limited Resource?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1998), 74, no.4, 1253-1276.

Baumeister, Roy and John Tierney, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. New York: Penguin Books, 2011.

Oettingen, Gabriele and Doris Mayer,” The Motivating Function of Thinking about the Future: Expectations versus Fantasies,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2002), 73, no. 5, 1198-1212.

Emmons Robert and Laura King, “Conflict Among Personal Strivings: Immediate and Long-Term Implications for Psychological and Physical Well-Being,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, (1988), 54, no.6, 1040-1048.

Baumann, Nicola and Julius Kuhl,”Intuition, Affect, and Personality: Unconscious Coherence Judgments and Self-Regulation of Negative Affect,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2002), 83, no.5, 1212-1225.

Masicampo, E.J. and Roy F. Baumeister, “Consider It Done! Plan Making Can Eliminate the Effects of Unfulfilled Goals,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2011), 101, no. 5, 667-683.

Morisano, Dominque et al. “Setting, Elaborating, and Reflecting on Personal Goals Improves Academic Performance,” Journal of Applied Psychology (2010), 85. No.2, 255-264.

Gollwitzer, Peter,”Action Phases and Mindsets,” in Handbook of Motivation and Cognition, edited by E. Tory Higgins and Richard Sorrentino (New York: Guilford Press, 1990), 53-92.