What happens to the decisions we make at the beginning of the year?
Every beginning brings new hope for change
“I will not smoke again”, “I will not give up my diet to reach my desired weight”, and “I will study two hours a day”. At the beginning of every year, millions of people write a list of resolutions for themselves and resolve to build a better life for themselves in the coming year. But statistics show that very few of these decisions go anywhere. Why do we make our resolutions for the first of the year, month, or week? And why don’t we act on them?
In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian learns that the girl he loves is dead after Dorian touches her chest; Apparently, he commits suicide. Dorian insists that he intended to marry her after all, but his decision was not implemented. According to Oscar Wilde, decisions are complex and unpredictable. Lord Henry, Dorian’s patron, when he hears his excuses and excuses, says,
“Good decisions are unsuccessful attempts to tamper with scientific laws. Their source is pure selfishness. Their result is nothing but fruitlessness.”
Lord Henry is partly right. Psychologist John Norcross, in a study of New Year’s Resolutions in the 1980s, found that
more than 50 percent of Americans had made New Year’s resolutions. After six months, only 40% of them had stuck to their decision.
When Norcross followed up on the case two years later, this number had dropped to 19 percent. Even half of those who succeeded — 14 in total — had some shortcomings. Yet, we keep telling ourselves we’ll get by by losing weight, saving, and going to the gym.
Time management seems to play an important role in determining our success. In May 2012, Katie Milkman, a behavioral economist at the University of Pennsylvania, was invited to the PaiLab Summit. PayLab is an annual gathering of social science researchers hosted by Google, whose purpose is to discuss ways to increase the company’s productivity. There, Milkman engaged in a conversation about “flips”; Small environmental interventions that can change people’s behavior. “During the conversation, someone asked when flips are most effective,” Milkman recounted. Milkman’s research has not focused on this particular aspect of flips, but he said, “I felt deeply that flips are more effective at turning points — times that symbolize new beginnings.”
After returning to Philadelphia, Milkman formed a group with two of his colleagues, Jason Reiss and Hongchen Dai, to see if there was any merit to the idea of transient milestones. In a series of studies to be published in the Journal of Management Sciences, Milkman, Reiss, and Dai found that new beginnings motivate us to change our behavior. The beginning of the week, month, or year leads to the formation of what psychologist Richard Tiller calls a “mental boundary.” The researchers imagine that with these new beginnings, we are awakened by a sense of optimism and, according to Milkman, the promise of “another self.” To test this theory, Milkman’s group examined daily Google searches for the word “diet” over the past nine years. They found that searches followed a predictable cycle:
they peaked at the beginning of each week, month, or year, and then gradually tapered off. The biggest increase in searches for this word — 82% higher than the initial number — was recorded right after the New Year.
Then Milkman and his colleagues, by calculating the number of registrations in sports clubs, monitored the attendance of nearly 12 thousand students in the clubs for a year and a half to check their behavior. According to their findings, registration in clubs increased in January and decreased in the following months. This statistic showed minor jumps at the beginning of each week, month, and half year.
Finally, the researchers examined the pledges that were recorded on the Stake website. On this website, you can set a goal and, according to the contract, specify the consequences of violating it, from social punishments to monetary fines (for example, if you do not lose four kilos, you agree to donate fifty dollars to a political party from you hate it). After monitoring 43,000 people over two and a half years, the research group found that the highest number of contracts — 145% more than the average — were concluded at the beginning of the new year. Throughout the year, each week and each month had their minor ups and downs; The beginning of each week was equal to a 63% increase in contracts.
“Every week is a new opportunity and people, whether they know it or not, take advantage of it,” Reiss says.
This sense of recognition even affects the stock market. In a phenomenon called the “January effect”, the market boom in January is always higher than normal. New evidence suggests that part of the explanation for this phenomenon lies in naïve optimism: in January, we see the future brighter and are willing to bid higher for a stock that is not stable (which later returns to its true value).
Consequently, optimism is not always constructive. If we are too positive, we are guaranteed to fail. Many people fail to follow through on their resolutions because they are unrealistic about their abilities, underestimate the energy and time it would take to stay on track, or overestimate the impact this change would have on their lives.
“We underestimate the ups and downs of self-control and motivation,” Reiss said. “When we are in good spirits, we completely forget how much we avoid sports.”
Psychologists Janet Pallivi and Peter Herman call this the “False Hope Syndrome,” that is, having unrealistic expectations about our ability to change and, as a result, failing to fulfill our ambitious dreams.
Naturally, if you have more realistic goals, you are more likely to succeed. In a study on the role of people’s expectations in exercise, psychologist Fiona Jones and her colleagues found that people with more reasonable expectations were more likely to be able to complete a twelve-week exercise program. And once we’ve set goals, we’re more likely to be successful in achieving them if we make a coherent plan. The “implementation intention” theory, a term coined by Peter Golwitzer, emphasizes that if we evaluate the possibilities in advance and devise an immediate and logical response to each of them, we have a better chance of pursuing our goals (for example, if the mood of the club I didn’t have it, before going out, I drink some coffee or eat an apple).
“We tend to ignore unplanned goals more easily than planned ones,” Milkman said.
Personal experiences show that commitment to a firm wife can also be a way forward. Obama said in September,
“I haven’t touched a cigarette in almost six years because of my wife’s fear.”
But there is always a problem. Milkman’s colleague Hongchen Dai tried to use the group’s findings to quit his nail-biting habit. “Once, it worked for three months, which was a long time for me,” she said. The skin around his nails had a good shape and appearance. “But once I bit my nail, I couldn’t help myself,” she continued. Dai said that in moments when she is distracted from his goal, she thinks about the concept of new beginnings. “If we help people see the countless opportunities before them, they can overcome their handicaps.” Like the case of his nails? “Maybe I’ll try my luck again in the new year.”
