Why Your New Year’s Resolutions Need ‘Hints,’ According to Science
Thanks to the fact that I teach spin classes , I have a front row seat to a very reliable annual phenomenon: my classes are crowded the first few weeks of the year as people make New Year’s resolutions, but by mid-February I’m back to teaching normal-sized groups of people. who are grateful that the “January joiners” have left. However, I’m always sad to see new faces go because I think it’s possible to set a New Year’s resolution and stick to it, even if it’s not the norm.
There are plenty of self-improvement goals you can set for the new year, both in and out of the gym, but no matter what you set out to do, it’s important to have an implementation strategy that will ensure you actually achieve that goal. made. One way to better prepare yourself for success is to add “hints” to your solutions. Here’s why it works and how to do it.
How to Link Your New Year’s Resolutions to Signals
The more specific your goals are, the better they will turn out. This is true for almost everything. If you wake up on a Saturday morning and want to organize your living space, you’ll have more success identifying the room you want to clean than trying to just “clean the house,” you know? When it comes to New Year’s resolutions, this specificity is important because you’re planning for 12 months of change and you’ll need some sort of road map. Instead of saying you’ve decided to “eat healthier,” you should identify what’s missing from your diet and then drill down into it: “I want to eat 10 more grams of protein every day,” for example.
This is where the tips will be really valuable. Research shows that adding a cue—literally a set of actions—to your goals can help you achieve them better. We rely on automatic processes to carry out routine activities in our daily lives, such as how we simply automatically turn on the coffee pot when we wake up or grab our keys when walking out the door. In such cases, waking up and walking out the door is actually a signal that signals to our brain that it is time to complete the second half of the process. Building decisions around signals will also help them become second nature. Here are some examples:
-
If your New Year’s resolution is to save a certain amount of money by December, phrase it something like this: “When I spend X dollars, I will transfer Y dollars into savings.”
-
If you want to be more productive at work, try turning the Pomodoro technique into a resolution: “When I work for 25 minutes, I take a five-minute break.”
-
“When I sit down at my desk, I answer all the new emails.”
-
“When my meetings are over, I will spend five minutes meditating.”
-
“When work is finished, I’ll put on my sneakers and go straight to the gym.”
-
“When the news ends at 6:00, I’ll call my mom.”
Why Prompts Work for Achieving New Year’s Resolutions
There are several reasons why tying your decisions to existing signals will help you stick to them. First, you create these automatic processes in your brain, essentially forcing your subconscious mind to act whenever your trigger occurs. Yes, it will take a few weeks of conscious effort, but you will already consciously know when to act on your new habit, and that’s half the battle.
Working this way also leaves less room for error. If you don’t have a clear schedule and prompts, you can easily forget to complete a new task or even actively avoid it. Adding reminders to your calendar can also help, as a push notification can further emphasize that it’s time to get started, and a visual reminder that you need to do something can prevent you from double-booking. If your cue to go to the gym is at 5, it will take you a few weeks to get into the habit of declining an invitation to go out for drinks after work, so block it out on your calendar every day after work. work will keep you on your toes.
Stick to your cues, but give yourself some space in the first few weeks. You may find that the time you set does not fit with your existing schedule. You simply can’t achieve a goal if you can’t make it work. Research shows that if you follow the hint method, it will take on average about two months to form a habit, so use this time to note what works, what doesn’t, and what can be changed. For example, if you have a goal to be more connected to friends and family, you might combine the call home signal with the time you spend doing the dishes every evening, only to find that in the evening you are too tired or go somewhere else. something to eat. too often for it to stick. Switching the signal to call home when you get into the car and get ready for work in the morning may work better. Just make sure you stick with it once you figure out the best time.