New Year's Resolutions: Ideas Worth Making and How to Keep Them
Every year about now the question goes around the table: so, what's yours? Any answer sounds fine when you give it. The test is a wet Tuesday in February, when it has to happen with nobody watching. The ten below are written to survive it, and after them come the four things that carry any resolution that far.
A resolution worth making is one you would be glad to have kept in June, phrased as something you do rather than something you stop, and small enough to happen on a bad day. Pick one, or two at most. Then give it a fixed slot in the week, a floor version for the days with nothing in them, a rule for the day you miss, and someone who asks how it is going.
What are good New Year's resolutions?
Ones that say what you do, when, and how small it is allowed to be. Ten worth making, written to survive:
- Walk for twenty minutes after lunch on workdays. Attached to a meal, so it needs no decision, and ten minutes still counts.
- Lights out at eleven on weeknights, phone charging in another room. Sleep is the resolution under most of the others; the second half makes the first half happen.
- Cook one new dish every Sunday. "Eat healthier" has no day it happens on. A recipe does, and by June you have twenty you did not have.
- Move a fixed amount into savings on payday, automatically. Set it up once in January and the resolution keeps itself.
- Call one friend on Sunday evenings. A call, not a text. Friends are lost by drifting, not by fighting, and fifty calls is a different year.
- Read ten pages before sleep. A book a month falls out of it, and ten pages fits inside the worst evening.
- Say no to one thing a week you would have said yes to out of guilt. Not "set boundaries": one no a week is something you can count.
- Keep one evening a week empty. No plans, and no screen for the first hour. What you end up doing with it will tell you something.
- Three lines about the day before bed, written or said out loud. What happened and what you made of it. By March it is a record you can read back.
- Fifteen minutes of the language, or the instrument, before coffee. "Learn Spanish" is a wish. Before coffee is a time.
How do you keep a New Year's resolution past February?
Making one at all is the biggest single step. In John Norcross's six-month comparison of 159 resolvers with 123 people who wanted the same changes but made no resolution, 46 percent of the resolvers were still keeping theirs against 4 percent of the others. After that, four things, two of them from the largest study of resolutions, a thousand people in Sweden followed for a year.
Phrase it as something you start, not something you stop. A year on, 58.9 percent of the Swedish participants with a resolution to do something said they had kept it; for resolutions to stop or avoid something, 47.1 percent. "No more takeout" gives you nothing to do on a Tuesday. "Cook one new dish on Sunday" does, and the takeout takes care of itself.
Give it a slot and a floor. The same time and trigger every week, so it is not a decision, and the smallest version that still counts, so it survives the evening with no energy in it. Ten minutes instead of twenty counts as done. How to be consistent when motivation runs out is the long version.
Decide now what a missed day means. It means the floor version tomorrow, and nothing else. In Norcross's two-year study of resolvers, about half of the people still succeeding at the end had slipped at least once, fourteen times on average. The resolution does not end on the miss. It ends on the story about the miss, so write the rule down in January while you still like the plan.
Get asked how it is going, monthly at least. The Swedish study's quiet result: the group that did best was not the one given the full program, with SMART goals, interim targets and coaching emails. It was the group asked to name one supporter and answer a short monthly follow-up: 62 percent, against 56 with no help and 52 with the full program. Being asked did more than being coached.
The person asking can be a friend with a resolution of their own; that arrangement has its own post. It can also be Cave. In January you tell Flamy, the small flame you chat with, the resolution and its floor version. It keeps that in a memory you can open and read, organized by topic, so in March it is still there in your words rather than a tracker's. Go quiet for a while and it can send a short check-in; bring the thing up again and it can say this came up in January and ask how it is going. Bring a bad week instead and it takes that first. By June the record shows what you actually did, Sunday by Sunday, and you can tell for yourself whether this is one you are glad you kept.
FAQ
What is the most common New Year's resolution?
Health. In Pew Research's 2024 survey, 79 percent of Americans who made a resolution had one about health, exercise or diet, ahead of money (61 percent), relationships (57), hobbies (55) and work (49). The Swedish study found the same: a third about physical health, a fifth about weight.
Do New Year's resolutions actually work?
Better than not making one. Six months in, 46 percent of the resolvers in Norcross's study were still keeping theirs, against 4 percent of comparable people who had made no resolution. In the Swedish year-long study, 55 percent said they had kept theirs the next December. The drop-off is early: by the third week of January 2024, 13 percent of Americans with a resolution had already dropped all of theirs.
Is there an app that helps you keep New Year's resolutions?
Habit trackers count streaks, which reset on the day you most need encouragement. Cave keeps the resolution in your own words instead: you tell Flamy what you are doing and what the floor version is, it holds that in a memory you can open and read, it can check in when you go quiet, and after a slip it is still where you left it, so you pick it up rather than start over. Your chats are never used to train AI models.