The Current - Why is it so hard to stick to a New Year's resolution?

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

Research shows most people give up on their resolution four months into the year -- but experts say, it doesn't have to be like that. We speak with two people who study the science behind setting goals and changing behavior about how we can make our new years resolutions stick. And what's so special about January 1st, anyway?

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Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Eating healthy, saving money, going to the gym more, going to the gym once. Sound familiar? It is that time of the year when we try to commit to a New Year's resolution. I'm trying to, when I wake up in the morning, I'm trying not to touch my phone for the first 30 minutes of my day. I only have two goals and they're very connected. One of them is less screen time. And I'm a huge letter writer. I hope to be more consistent.

And so what I've said is I'm doing one a week. I made a resolution this year that I was going to start my day with a posture of gratitude. I do have a bit of a history of setting goals for New Year's resolutions and then they fall to the wayside. So for this one, I've actually tried to make it pretty intentional to start the day. And before I put my feet on the ground, I need to verbally out loud say something that I'm grateful for and looking forward to in the day. Not everyone makes these grand plans, but those of us who do make resolutions still might have mixed feelings about them. I don't use that term. It makes me anxious. I feel like it sets me up for failure and makes me all queasy. I think what I've just noticed is I wasn't able to keep up with them.

So maybe it was exercising. Maybe it was 10 minutes of journaling or reading a certain amount. Good intentioned. But like most, I imagine, it dribbles off within the first month. I think that they can be helpful. Actually, in the past, I've tried not to make them because I hate the idea of making this promise and that pressure. It can be inspirational. The one thing I don't like is when the gym is really crowded because of all the New Year's resolutions.

I could deal without that. Well, some good news. The crowds at the gym were probably thin out in the next few weeks. In fact, research shows that four months from now, the vast majority of people who have made any kind of New Year's resolution will have given up. My next guest say there are ways to guard against that and actually stay on track. Caitlin Willey is a professor of marketing at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. where she specializes in motivation science. She's in Ithaca, New York,

and Katie Milkman is a behavioral scientist at the Wharton School of Business, the University of Pennsylvania, and the author of How to Change the Science of Getting from where you are to where you want to be. She's in Philadelphia. Good morning to you both. Good morning.

Katie Milkman, I have heard you talk about this idea of the fresh start effect, the fact that a time like the beginning of a new year is a good opportunity to reset and rethink, Tell me more about that. What is so special about the new year that makes us think that we can make a big change? Yeah, well, it's actually not something special about the new year, but the new year is the big cahuna of the fresh start effect. There are many moments in our lives that give us a sense of a discontinuity in our life story.

So we actually think about our lives like we're characters in a book and the book is divided into chapters. And at these chapter breaks, we have a sense that the person we were before the chapter break, that was the old me. And this is the new me in this new chapter. And they come about at regular frequency in our lives. One big one or medium one, you could say, is the new year. Every year the new year gives us a chapter break. But Mondays are miniature fresh starts that have a similar effect on our motivation to pursue new goals. It's not as big of an effect, but it's still very present.

Because, again, it's a mini new beginning. Anytime you move to a new city, take a new job, celebrate a holiday that, has meaning to you in your religion or your culture as a turning point and clean slate moment. They give you this sense of that disconnect from whatever you meant to do last year you didn't get around to, but this year will be different or last chapter you didn't get around to this year will be different. And that is a big part of what seems to drive this change and our motivation and our behavior. And in many ways, again, those are arbitrary kind of moments, but we decide that they're weighted

such that they will push us to do something different. Exactly. It's just a trick we play on ourselves. It's related to the way we think about time, not as a continuous resource, but as a resource that's categorized into buckets. We do this with money too. And it's a kind of peculiar feature of our wiring, but it has, I see it at least as a benefit. It has this benefit, which is that it gives us a little extra motivation when we might need it every so often and a chance to start fresh with our vision of who we want to be. That's really useful because you don't want to to be sort of down on yourself all the time and you've tried it once and you're not willing to try it again. It gives us this rejuvenation and motivation. So I actually think it's a really great thing, even if it doesn't always lead to goal success. Caitlin, you have studied this. Tell me a little bit about what you learned about what makes us more likely to succeed with the grand intentions that we might announce on the 1st of January. Yeah, so I ran this New Year's resolution study actually with 2,000 participants who set

a resolution for the new year and we were curious what was going to predict their success over time. So we actually followed them throughout the course of the entire year, you know, every three months or so kind of checking in to see, you know, how successful have you been? Are you still sticking with your resolution sort of echoing some of those comments earlier that people, you know, have trouble sticking with their resolution? And what we found that was really interesting is that the factors that predict what sets a resolution were very different from what predicted actual adherence to the resolution. And so you can imagine, right, people are setting resolutions for things that are really important for them or that are

going to change their life or they're going to be really useful, like the gratitude journal or exercising or healthy eating. What we actually found that made people the most successful, where when they found pursuing the resolution, something that was interesting and engaging and enjoyable for them. So how useful are life changing it? was didn't actually predict their success, although that predicted what they sort of set. It was really, you know, do I enjoy, right, the journaling? Or do I, can I find interest or engagement or something exciting about getting to the gym that led people to be more successful throughout the course of the entire year we found?

Is your sense that people actually set those kinds of resolutions? I mean, often people will make the resolution that makes them feel better, virtuous. I'm not going to drink anymore. I'm going to drink less. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm not just going to walk past it. Even if people don't like those things, are those the sorts of resolutions that people tend to fall into? Or are they increasingly setting resolutions that they might actually find more enjoyable?

You're completely right. People are setting resolutions that are not necessarily enjoyable. And so it's not that some people are kind of setting more or less enjoyable resolutions. It's like to the extent that I can make avoiding alcohol or make avoiding screen time more fun or more interesting or more exciting, If I can sort of tweak or hack that resolution, that helps me be more successful. And so you can think about this with exercise, right? One person might set the resolution to go and they're going to get up every morning at 6 a.m. to go running in the dark. Right, that's not that enjoyable or exciting. Someone else might set the resolution to go and they find ways to make it more fun.

So maybe they have a podcast or, you know, a friend that they're running with and they can actually tweak the same activity. So it's not different activities that they're choosing. It's just the way that they approach the goal. Finding ways to make the goal more enjoyable helps people stick with it over time. So if I'm watching trashy TV while I'm on the treadmill, that is, I'm doing good for myself, but I'm actually enjoying myself while I'm doing that. And that's exactly what Katie has studied with some of her research. Yep.

Katie, do you want to talk a bit more about that? We're fascinated with trashy TV. You shouldn't watch it, but you should if it's going to do good for you. Well, you're catching me just after I watched The Diplomat while exercising on my elliptical. So it's perfect timing to decide. discuss this. Yes, so I've studied temptation bundling. It's this idea of finding something that feels like a chore if you do it alone, but then combining it with an activity that's truly tempting so that you're looking forward to and craving that other thing and it changes your

experience with what would otherwise be a chore. So the classic example is the one we just gave, which is exercise that you might find miserable. Now you combine it with, hey, I only get to watch my favorite trashy TV show or the diplomat's pretty upscale or, you know, not too, low brow. It doesn't have to be trashy. It just has to be really fun. And I only get to watch those shows while I'm exercising. And now, instead of dreading the workout, I am craving a trip to find out what happens to my favorite characters. I don't notice the time passing. The workout isn't painful. They're complimentary, like peanut butter and jelly, you know, go together better than they are alone. And in the bundle, I get guilt-free enjoyment of my favorite show, and I don't

have to waste time on that later. But you can do it with lots of activities. it doesn't just have to be exercise. You can think about, you know, only allow yourself to listen to your favorite podcast while you're doing household chores or open a favorite bottle of wine while cooking a fresh meal for your family. Or maybe there's sort of a, you know, not so good for you, restaurant. You only get to visit when spending time with a difficult relative. You know, there's lots of ways to temptation bundle in our research has shown it's

effective. And I think the reason it's effective, even though we actually did this work before we knew about Caitlin's findings because they weren't out yet. But I think that they are really complimentary to use the same. very peanut butter and jelly-like. I think it helps explain exactly why it is that temptation bundling is so powerful because her work has shown that if we don't enjoy our goal, if we're not enjoying the goal pursuit, we don't persist.

And temptation bundling just turns out to be one of the ways, one of the formulas we can use to change the equation. So it's instantly gratifying and not something we want to procrastinate on doing. Another that she mentioned is making it social. And we actually have some research led by UC Burk. Berkeley's Rachel Gershon showing that if you reward people for exercise and they do it alone, that's not nearly as effective as rewarding them only if they go with a friend to the gym, which is very counterintuitive because normally you'd say just pay people directly for what you want them to do,

but we actually get better results when people who sign up for an exercise program with a friend can only earn money when they and their friend both show up to the gym. They exercise 35% more than if we pay them just for. going alone. And it's the same kind of thing going on here where people find it more fun to work out with a friend and don't anticipate that benefit. Hey there, I'm David Kahn. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you got to know, and the conversations your friends

will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighborhood or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401. Check out, this is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. There are ways to hack this. That's so interesting. We spoke with a number of people about their resolutions. Barb Marshall is one of them. She's a writer in Ontario. This year she made a resolution to write and send one letter a week. I'm really committed. I mean, everyone is, aren't we, when we start off in the first three months. I love doing it. That's the thing. That's also sort of a plus. is yes, I do get into slumps, but I do love writing letters so much that in itself is part of the motivation, right? Like, where is the perfect stationary or where shall I sit right now and shall I

have a cup of coffee or a cup of tea? Like, it's the whole experience that keeps me doing it, whether people write me back or not. Katie, is she on the right track there? She's on the right track, right? How can you make that experience as joyful as possible? You know, where are you doing it? I love the perfect cup of tea. Maybe the perfect candle is, you know, burning, the perfect music in the background, all these things. If you can make the environment and the experience more fun, then I think that's an element of temptation bundling. But it's also an element of what Caitlin was describing. There's many ways to make it fun. You can choose the activity differently, too. Caitlin, how many of us, what have you learned in terms of how many of us are actually able to stick to our resolutions long term? So in our studies, we actually found that maybe 80% of people are adhering to them over time, right? So this is not achieving it. This is not, right, maybe kind of crossing it off their list like this resolution that Barb is pursuing.

It's something that she wants to follow through throughout the course of the year. And we actually found that in our data, about 80% of people were successful at sticking with it. And it might not look completely, right, linear. Like there might be ups and downs or ebbs and flows as the, you know, the earlier comment was talking about, right? It might not stick throughout, but people are able to kind of come back. And I think especially when you're able to make it

something that's pleasurable, right? It's like the people that are struggling, that are dreading the goal. Those are the ones who we find are dropping off and are less likely to adhere and are maybe failing at the resolution. Do we know how long it takes for a goal, an idea to become a habit?

I mean, again, adhering is an interesting way of framing it, right? That you have the intention of doing it and you do it so often, but it's not a daily or a regular thing. How does that become a habit, do you think? That's a great question. So, Wendy Wood at USC is the expert on habits. And I think the number that I've typically seen is like around three weeks.

I'm sure it depends on the type of behavior and how frequent you do it. But yeah, you kind of have to stick with it for a set number of time and then maybe helping it become more routine. And I think what helps you get there is if you're looking forward to it, right? it's much easier to form a habit if it's something that you can pursue with that enthusiasm, with that joy that will help to kind of get you over that hurdle and then maybe make it more of a routinized thing. I guess the last point on that is just, I mean, also giving yourself a little bit of grace. A year is a long time. And whether it's realistic, we have the best of intentions, but whether it's realistic to say,

I'm going to do this starting on the 1st of January and I continue to do it for 12 months' time. Is that realistic, Caitlin? Yeah, I think sometimes New Year's resolutions get a bad rep as we were hearing before. people don't like the experience of failure. And so when you set a goal, it means that there's some risk, right, some stake that I'm putting out there and I might fall flat. And people don't want to fall flat of their goals. And so I think this is a nice time to, you know, take stock of your, you know, what you're

hoping to achieve throughout the year and give yourself some grace. You don't have to be perfectly committed every single week. You can recommit yourself, you know, if you find yourself falling off. It's a long time. and people are setting these resolutions for the entire year. That's what you find in our data that most people, they're not setting something that they think they're going to accomplish by the end of the month or even six months. It's going to take them 12 months,

and it's hopefully going to be something that they're probably pursuing their entire life, right? If you think about some of these lifestyle changes. And so, yeah, approaching it with grace, understanding that setting the goal is going to make you more likely to achieve it in the first place. And you can always come back to it, right? It's something that is going to ebb and flow over time. Somebody else that we spoke to about their New Year's resolutions is Faith Winters. She's 25, lives in British Columbia, have a listen to what she said about how she's approaching her New Year's resolutions this year.

Previously, I'd done New Year's resolutions that were, like, fitness-based, and those don't stick very well because they were too big. Like, I was making goals that are resolutions that were, like, too broad and too big. So I tried to make this year's, like, smaller and more attainable. so not, you know, being on my phone for 30 minutes is something that's attainable. Not always, but most mornings. And that's another piece of like the flexibility piece of it where it's like totally fine. If I have a busy morning or if I need to like get up and go and check my phone, that there's like flexibility there. So I'm definitely not trying not to be hard on myself because then I'm just going to totally abandon it and it's not going to work.

Katie, how important is that flexibility? Flexibility is important. I also really like what, what she said there. about the importance of an achievable goal. So you want to set goals that are, you know, a little bit of a stretch, right? If you're already walking 2,000 steps a day just by, you know, merely existing and you set the goal of walking 2,000 steps a day, that's a whole, that's a total waste of a goal. It should stretch you a little. But you want it to be measurable, like her 30 minutes.

You ideally want to be clear on what is the bite-size action I can take either today or this week. We have some research showing that, and this was led by. at Nish Rai at University of Maryland, if this was an organization where people were committing to 200 hours yearly of volunteering. And that's an ambitious and great goal, and that's the kind of goal a lot of people set

and it has a target, but it's very distant and dispersed over a lot of time and a lot of people weren't getting there. And what we did is instead of communicating with people weekly about, you know, do a little every week to get to that 200-hour yearly goal, we changed the communication and said, do four hours every week to get to that 200-hour yearly goal. And that significantly increased the

amount that people were making progress by clarifying what is the bite-size weekly thing you need to do, not just a little every week to get to that big goal. So I think a bunch of nice things that are related to research came out of that little clip you played. So for people listening, make sure you set a goal that's a little bit of a stretch, but not a huge stretch. Try to make it measurable and concrete and make sure you're clear on what is the bite-size action you can take today, like 30 minutes later, you know, 30 minutes of no screen time in the morning is really great, or 10 minutes of meditation or five minutes of language practice, or 30 minutes of the gym, being really concrete in that way is going to be a big help.

Caitlin, I mean, there are a couple of different buckets that you can put these in. One is that you're going to do something. The other is you're not going to do something. You've written about and talked about avoidance-based goals and why they're harder to achieve than others. Why is that the case? Yeah, in our data, we find avoidance goals are challenging because they lack some of the benefits that we find how people stick with the goal. So they tend to be less enjoyable, less interesting to pursue, if I'm quitting or I'm trying to avoid alcohol, that's not really fun. And so one of the solutions, one of the suggestions we would have for people who are trying to avoid, right, drinking or cigarettes or even avoid screen time is trying to find a way to,

can you know, can you flip that and make it an approach goal, right? Once you change something into an approach goal, it makes it a little bit more easy to follow through on. And so I think with reducing alcohol consumption, that's becoming a lot easier with all these different types of mocktails. You can try it. It makes it more interesting and exciting. So instead of, you know, I'm not drinking tonight, it's like I'm going to try this non-alcoholic beverage. And that makes it something that maybe is easier to pursue. The same thing with avoiding spending money, are there ways that you can flip that and reframe that and turn that into approach goal? So it's not that I'm trying not to purchase something this month, but I'm trying to work towards the saving

goal that I really want to buy something that I really like and just trying to reframe the avoidance as an approach because it makes it a little bit easier to find that enjoyment aspect that helps people stick with the goal over time. You're just reframing it and there's a psychological boost there. That gives you a bit of an advantage if you say you're doing something rather than not doing something. Right. It's the same, you know, you're hoping to achieve the same outcome. It's just that reframing that's going to make you approach it in a way that's bringing you more joy,

bringing you more enjoyment. We're out of time. What have you resolved to do or not do, Caitlin? So my goal, I always try and set a reading goal. My goal this year is to read 25 books. So I hope that I can achieve that by December. That's great. by December.

That's, I mean, 25 books over the course of a year. It sounds fantastic. Thank you. Katie, what about for you? This year my goal is very simple. I am going to clean out all of the junk in my office and rearrange things so that it's a brighter, more inviting space. So it will be more fun to go to work. And that is very much inspired by Caitlin's excellent research.

You say it's simple, but if it was simple, you might have done it already, right? That's right. But it's not, you know, it's not a repeated goal. So it's a more achievable is bite size. It's I expect to be done by the end of January. So, you know, I think some people have more ambitious resolutions this year. I went with one that is a little simpler. Fantastic.

Good to talk to you. I mean, the strategies here in terms of how to think about this, but also how to engineer our behavior to make these goals achievable are really, really interesting. Thank you both for being here. Thanks for having us. Thank you so much. science, and she was in Ithaca, New York. Katie Mookman is a behavioral economist, the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and the author of How to Change the Science of Getting

from where you are to where you want to be. She was in Philadelphia. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.