New Year Resolutions
How to Create Resolutions that Actually Work — a Method for This and All the New Years of Your Life
The typical New Year resolutions of “be healthier,” “be happier,” or “get better grades” tend not to work. They sound nice, of course, but very quickly into the year we find out we couldn’t actually carry on with them, and we end up not changing much of our behavior.
When we realize we haven’t changed anything it is easy to blame our lack of willpower, or our laziness. We usually tell ourselves we didn’t work hard enough. That’s possible. But here is the truth: the secret to New Year resolutions that produce results is not to work harder, but to make smarter resolutions.
If your New Year resolutions always work, no need to keep on reading. But if you think you can use some extra help, I will show you a way of fixing the problem. All we need are two simple rules.
These two rules are based in two principles thought out by a modern-day American management guru and an Italian sociologist and economist. The rules are measurability and simplicity. And if you apply them to your New Year resolutions, I guarantee your results will be better than they have ever been before.
The American guy is Peter Drucker, and the principle behind measurability is his famous quote “what gets measured, gets managed.” So, rather than make broad, hard to measure resolutions, we use measurability to make our goals clear and easy to stick to. Here is an example: my girlfriend resolution was to have more energy. But, damn, that is a broad goal. To make it measurable, she focused on what changes she could make to have more energy. Those boiled down to sleep, exercise and eating healthy. Because she does most of the healthy hippie stuff you are supposed to do (daily yoga, eating vegetarian and whatnot), she decided she would specify the resolution to sleep more. Definitely a smarter resolution. But to make it truly measurable, she changed it to be in bed at 10 p.m. on weekdays. Bingo! The resolution is now specific and measurable. She is already sleeping more, and wakes up with more energy.
Measurability is a pretty good rule. But when we are making very specific goals, it is easy to choose a lot of them, and make it complex. For instance, my girlfriend could have decided on go to bed at 10 p.m., exercise twice a day, eat healthier foods, and do more yoga. The problem is: this is a heck of lot of goals to keep track of. And when we are overwhelmed with a complex resolution, lack of simplicity quickly become lack of action. So we use another rule to power up measurability.
The second rule is simplicity. To simplify our resolutions, we use the help of the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. He is the guy who came up with the Pareto Law, which states that 80 percent of results come from 20 percent of the causes. This tends to hold true in economics (80 percent of the wealth is owned by roughly 20 percent of the individuals), but also in our personal life (80 percent of the fun is packed in 20 percent of the days, or 80 percent of the homework is given by 20 percent of the teachers). Using the Pareto Law and the measurability principle we can transform our broad, difficult resolutions in a handful of specific and simple goals. Here is an example on how you can do it.
I have been reading a lot of Buddhist texts recently, and decided I could use some extra positivity in my life. My initial resolution was to be more positive. I am sure you can see the problem with it: too broad, yet too complex at the same time. Because I tend to be pretty positive about myself (you know, I buy into a lot of that “I am awesome” self-help stuff), I decided to be more specific on the goal. So I changed it to “only say positive things about other people.” Cool: much more specific. I still needed to simplify it, though. So I decided to give away a dollar to the person I am talking to every time I say something negative about anyone. Sweet: specific, measurable and simple resolution.
After some time, you start seeing the beauty of the Pareto Law. Just a few weeks after starting the resolution I have lost some money, of course, but I have also held my tongue many times to not talk smack on other people (including basketball players playing against us), and noticed an overall increase in positivity. Changing this simple, single behavior has made me a more positive person overall on both my words and thoughts.
We are about a month into the New Year now, and most of us have done very little towards the resolutions we so excitedly made not long ago. More importantly, if we make the same kind of resolutions we did last year, we will invariably get the same bad results.
Give these two rules a shot. It is easy to try, and it just might make your year (and maybe the years after) a whole lot better.
Arnobio Morelix is a social entrepreneur at PESSOA Institute
*This story was first published at the UDK
