How to keep New Year's resolutions past January

Keeping a New Year's resolution comes down to four decisions: choose just one, word it as something you'll start rather than something you'll stop, set it up before January 1, and agree with yourself now on what happens after the first slip. Plenty of resolutions die for boring, fixable reasons: there were too many, they were vague, and nobody planned for the first bad week.

You don't need more willpower in January. You need a better-built resolution, and the research on what that looks like is surprisingly specific.

The numbers behind the January cliff

The drop is real, and it starts early. When psychologist John Norcross and Dominic Vangarelli followed 200 resolvers in the late 1980s, 77% were still keeping their pledge after one week, and 19% after two years. More recently, a Swedish team led by Martin Oscarsson followed 1,066 people through 2017; 55% of those still answering at the end of the year considered themselves successful.

Before that sounds hopeless, look at the comparison group. In a 2002 study, Norcross followed people who made resolutions alongside people who wanted to change the same kinds of things later but didn't make one. Six months in, 46% of the resolvers had been continuously successful, against 4% of the non-resolvers. Making a resolution is worth it. Making it badly is the problem.

The classic bad version: a list of seven, all vague, half of them about quitting something, launched on a sleepy January 1 with no plan for the week your workload explodes.

One resolution, phrased as a start

Pick one. Every extra resolution splits the same attention, and a list of seven gives you seven ways to feel like a failure by February.

Then check the wording. In Oscarsson's study, approach goals (something you'll start or do more of) were kept more often than avoidance goals (something you'll quit or avoid): 58.9% against 47.1%. A few rewrites:

• "Stop ordering takeout" becomes "Cook dinner at home three nights a week."
• "Stop scrolling in bed" becomes "Read ten pages in bed."
• "Stop skipping the gym" becomes "Go to the gym Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7 a.m."
• "Stop putting off my thesis" becomes "Write 300 words before lunch on weekdays."
• "Stop sleeping in" becomes "Get up at 7 every day, weekends included."
• "Stop being lazy" becomes... well, that one needs an actual activity before it counts as a resolution.

A likely reason it works: an approach goal hands you something to do and check off every day, while an avoidance goal mostly hands you something to slip on.

Make it concrete, too: a number, a frequency, a place. "Get healthier" isn't a resolution. "Walk 30 minutes at lunch on weekdays" is. For the rest of the setup, our guide on how to achieve your goals covers if-then plans and tracking.

Copy what the successful resolvers did

Norcross and Vangarelli didn't just count who made it; they asked what people did. Over the two years, the successful resolvers reported using more stimulus control, reinforcement and willpower than the ones who fell off. Looking back, participants named counterconditioning and fading as the strategies that helped most. Translated out of psychologist:

• Stimulus control: change your surroundings so the old habit's cues are harder to find and the new habit's cues are impossible to miss.
• Reinforcement: give yourself a small, immediate reward for doing the thing, because the big payoff is months away.
• Counterconditioning: replace the old behavior with a new one instead of leaving a hole. A walk where the afternoon scroll used to be.
• Fading: cut down step by step instead of going from everything to nothing on January 1.

In a 1989 study, the same research group found that successful resolvers also used less self-blame and wishful thinking. Beating yourself up isn't on the list of things that work, and our article on whether tough love motivation works explains why.

Start in December

January 1 feels like the perfect start date, and that feeling is real: researchers call it the fresh start effect, and our article on why you always start on Monday explains how it works and how it backfires. But the things that predicted success in Norcross's 2002 study (readiness to change, confidence that you can do it, skills for changing) were all measured before January 1. The groundwork happens before the date.

Use December for it:

• Make the first step tiny, and do it now. If the resolution is reading, read five pages tonight. Then January 1 is the day you keep going, instead of the day you start from zero.
• Set up the environment (stimulus control, in practice). Workout clothes by the door, the book on your pillow, the language app on the home screen and the games off it.
• Name the obstacle. What killed this resolution last year? Write it down and plan for that specific thing.

Get one person on your side

Oscarsson's experiment had a twist. Participants were randomly split into three groups. One got no support. One got "some support": information about social support, someone they named to support them, monthly follow-ups and one email with tips for coping. The third got "extended support," which added guidance on setting goals and more emails. The middle group did best: 62.3% success, against 55.9% with no support and 52.5% with extended support.

More information didn't beat a little company. You don't need a course, a coach and three books. You need one person who knows what you're trying to do and asks about it once a month.

Decide now what happens after the first slip

Every resolution meets a bad week. In Norcross and Vangarelli's two-year study, 53% of the people who succeeded slipped at least once, and slips tended to come with stress, negative emotions or a feeling of losing control. The successful resolvers weren't slip-free. They restarted.

So decide now:

• What counts as a slip: one missed day, not the end of the resolution.
• What the restart looks like: the smallest version of the habit, the next day, at the usual time.
• What you won't do: make up for it with a double session, or wait for next Monday (or next January) to try again.

Our guide on how to get back on track has a full restart plan. If the slips come with weeks of low mood rather than a busy schedule, that's a different problem, and a doctor or therapist is a better next step than a stricter resolution (our support page lists helplines).

February is a checkpoint

Put a date in your calendar for the first week of February. Ask three questions: Am I still doing it? If not, when did it stop and why? What's the smaller version I can keep? Then adjust and continue. A resolution that shrank to fit your real life still counts. One you quietly let die doesn't.

Tonight's assignment

Write your resolution as one sentence that starts with a verb, includes a number and doesn't contain the word "stop." Then do the smallest version of it before you go to bed. Congratulations: you're starting the year with a streak instead of a promise.