Holiday Mini-sode: 3 Ways to Make Your New Year's Resolution Stick

My name is Kristen Berman and I'm a behavioral scientist and host of the podcast the Science of Change. And as a behavioral scientist, I study lots of things. But one of the things I study is called the intention action gap. And this is the gap between when we make an intention to do something and our actual likelihood of doing doing it. And the biggest point of failure here is coming up, it is called New Year's and it is your New Year's resolution. You have an intention, but come February, it's likely that you may not be taking the action. And so here are three ways you can avoid your procrastination or your failures on January 2nd. If you do these three things on January 1st. Okay, here we go. So one is to make a one time decision. What does that mean? Well, it means that if you have a goal like walking more, you could just try to walk more. That's very possible. You could, you know, get a gym membership or you could just think about how you get outside more and walk more. Or you could make a one time decision. A one time decision would look like getting a dog. You wake up one morning, you get that dog, and for maybe 10 to 15 years, hopefully more, you will be walking every day for 10 to 20 minutes, maybe twice a day with that dog. That's a one time decision that will lock you into that New Year's resolution to walk more. If you are trying to eat better, you could think about improving your cooking skills or going grocery shopping more. That's all possible. But if you make a one time decision, you could also lock yourself into better eating habits. You could sign up for a meal delivery service. Signing up for a month of a meal delivery service will pretty much guarantee that at least two to three days a week, maybe every day, you are eating healthy meals because they're being delivered to your door. That's a one time decision that will lock you into your goal. And finally, another idea. If you want to exercise more, what could you do? You could buy a peloton. So if you listen to our episode with David Packles, he suggested that once you buy that peloton, sunk costs, you are pretty likely to start using it. There are very few people who don't use it. Another one time decision that will lock you into future behavior. Okay, so that's the first one, one time decisions. The second one is called implementation intentions. This is super important. It turns out that we're actually just not that creative. If you have a goal to exercise or read more or meditate, these are all amazing goals. But we're not actually when we make the goal, playing out how you would do it, when would you meditate? You're probably already very busy. When would you fit it into your schedule? In the morning, in the evening? How long are you going to do it? How are you going to tell your kids so they don't come and bother you? Implementation intentions are really about playing out how you would do something. So when you get up in the morning, you are going to go to another quiet room and sit for 15 minutes. That is an implementation intention. Very important for successful implementation of goals. Okay, and the third one, and this is critical, tell someone. It is really hard to accomplish hard things by yourself. In fact, we hardly ever do it. Imagine in the work world you have a big project coming up and it's due in two months. Are you the only person who knows about this project? Of course not. You've told your colleagues, you've told your manager, you talk about it. There are deadlines, there are meetings. When you're trying to accomplish something in a professional setting, a lot of other people know, so why should it be that different in a personal setting? In the personal setting, can you also tell somebody else you're goal? And not only that, tell them to ask you about it? If you know they're going to ask you about it once a week, it's more likely that you'll actually try to accomplish it. So get other people involved in your goals. Okay, so there are three ways that you can improve the likelihood that you will close that intention action gap. The first is this one time decision. Get a dog. The second is implementation intentions. Make it much more tactical how you will actually execute on your goal. And the third one is to tell somebody and tell them to ask you about it. Oh, and by the way, one resolution you could make is to listen to the Science of Change podcast. My name is Kristen and I'm the host. And if you enjoyed these tips on how to make and improve your New Year's resolution, I am confident that you will love the upcoming episodes of the Science of Change. And if you were really paying attention, you would obviously know that the best way to follow through with that New Year's resolution is to make a one time decision to like or follow us on any of the podcast platforms that you listen to. So make that resolution, get the one time decision to like or follow us, and I'll see you next year.