#149 - Why Your New Year's Resolutions Don't Work And...

...How to Build Any Habit

A recent study at Hertfordshire University found that 88% of the sample group were unsuccessful with New Year's Resolutions. 

Why is this? And why is it so hard to change ourselves?

Are we too lazy? Or unmotivated? Or do we just not have the willpower?

A: Yes
A: Yes
A: Yes and no

1. Willpower is a limited resource

Recent neuroscience and willpower research have revealed that willpower is actually a limited resource ie the amount you have at a given time on a given day will vary depending on what you have been dealing with.

2. Willpower is reduced when we are faced with a difficult task or a task we perceive as difficult

3. Our brains have a bias for efficiency
To create a new habit is to literally rewire our brains and our brains are resistant to big changes. They would much prefer firing familiar beaten track of neural pathways even if they are not particularly supportive habits. 

These points explain why almost 9 out of 10 resolutions in the aforementioned study failed. 

Generally speaking people try to do too much too soon.

For example, perhaps you join a gym and commit to training 3 times per week and eating more healthily (2 habits). Initially your willpower gets you through but this is depleted by these new demands and then maybe one day you have a particularly rough day at work or an argument with your partner. Just the thought of training for an hour weakens your already depleted willpower further (perceived difficulty) and you swap tonight's session for tv and cake (failing with both habits). Before you know it you have missed a few sessions and given up the belief you can maintain your new habits. Eventually all you have left is a feeling of failure, and perhaps your gym membership. 

Each time we fail to do what we say we will do, whether that is keeping our word to others or ourselves it weakens us. It erodes our trust in ourselves and our self-esteem. 

But we can reverse this process so that we are consistently successful in taking action every day towards our goals.

The solution is to chunk new habits down. 

Last year I experimented with this by applying it to exercise and reading around a specific subject. I committed to 2 min chunks daily and was very successful because I often did more than 2 minutes but the minimum of 2 minutes was always achievable so nothing stopped me from getting started each day. Within a few weeks I could see the difference in my physique and it was at that point that I extended the minimum, not knowing that in doing so I was increasing the perceived difficulty of the task and reducing my willpower. Soon after this I broke the chain of actions I'd been building and stopped. 

I came back to studying habits recently and after reading several books I began building some new habits. I have learned that a very small daily quota is actually the key to making sure you consistent in taking action and when it comes to building habits consistency is key. 

Once you have picked the daily habit you want to build the next step is to begin and track it. I have read several books on this subject and synthesised ideas from them but have found 1 Minute Habits by Ragib Ahmed the most useful and efficient. 

If you would like to look into this subject further I would recommend the following books:

1 Minute Habit by Ragib Ahmed

Superman Habit by Habit by Tynan
1% Principle by Tom O'Neill