Why do we make New Year’s resolutions?

How to keep New Year’s resolutions the whole year.

It has already been more than a month since 2026 started and I am sure that many of us have made a list of New Year’s resolutions. Maybe it's something small like read 5 pages a day, limit screen time or something big like make the varsity sports team, win a music competition, and run a mile everyday. However, this is also a time where we start going off track and forget about our goals. So, if we are going to spend so much time thinking of resolutions just to forget them in a few weeks, why are we setting goals in the first place? Here are the reasons behind why we set goals and fail and also how to stay on track for the whole year. 

So, why do we set yearly resolutions? This is something called the fresh start effect. The fresh start effect is where you get a sudden motivation to make positive changes when it's a temporal landmark. Take your birthday as an example. Many people take birthdays as one of the most important days of the year and I can guarantee that many of us decided that since we are a year older, we should act more mature. Unfortunately, you were probably complaining about something a few days later, acting immature. This is a classic scenario of the fresh start effect. January 1, the start of the year is the temporal landmark we are in and the New Year’s resolutions are the sudden positive changes we want.

But, if we want to make those changes that bad, why do we keep failing?  One reason might be because our goals are too ambitious. Unlike small goals, i.e. drinking 1L of water everyday, reading one page of a book every night, big goals like having 100% in every subject for the whole school year can not only be pressuring, but also give us false hope.

Many of us underestimate how difficult it will be to achieve the goals we set. For example, if your goal is winning a music competition, at first you might think that some practice on a concerto will win you first place. However, when you see the sheet music with notes filled everywhere it just looks like black lines from far away. Once you start playing the piece and hear squeaks everywhere from your clarinet, or the most out of tune chords on your violin, it gives you despair over whether or not this goal can be achieved. Instead we can make our goals small. It can be something like playing a single page perfectly instead of the whole piece. Another simple goal that is achievable can be practicing 2-3 lines until it sounds good everyday. 

Even while writing this blog I’m also going off track with my resolutions. My goals were to keep my room clean, but I see papers stacked everywhere on my desk, and music overflowing from my music stand. If you look back to the goals, most of them are habits we want to make or break. A way to do this is by setting small goals related to our routine. According to James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, there are four steps in creating a habit, cue, craving, response, and reward. He tells us that we should connect actions we want to make habits into these four steps, where cue is the trigger that makes us crave the action and do it as a response.

A way for you to keep the room clean can be rearranging some of your furniture. Like, moving the trolley or cabinet that keeps all the stationeries right next to your desk or the bookshelves can also be moved next to the desk. Now once you are done studying there is no need to walk across the room to put back papers and pencils, but simply just reach with your arms. 

Another example can be shown with walking the dog everyday. It is easy to ignore the cue when the leash is tucked away in a drawer. However, we will definitely know that the dog needs to be walked when we see the leash on top of the entry way cabinet. This will also make it easy to just put the leash on and head out the door.

James Clear also had a clear reason and a strategy on how to break out of bad habits. He says, “Rather than making it obvious, make it invisible”. If our goal is to stop watching too much tv or be on our phone less, we can get rid of the trigger, by simply removing it. We can move our phone to another room, instead of leaving it in the place we like to sit for hours and scroll. 

A goal that I have been able to keep so far was practicing clarinet more consistently. I would sometimes forget to practice. However, when I started trying the tricks and hacks I have been able to be more consistent with the practicing. Instead of the case stored in the corner of the room and all the music in the drawer, I would have my music stand with all the music facing the door, and my case on top of the storage cabinet next to my room. Now whenever I enter my room I am reminded that I need to practice. 

Now we all know that forgetting our goals and giving up isn’t just simply a I don't want to do it, but there is a whole system working behind the scenes. Knowing all of this can help us keep our resolutions by reminding ourselves why we want to quit and the many strategies on how to keep the goals. We can all finally stop blaming ourselves for not accomplishing things, but understand the system and try implementing the tricks to it!

Works Cited

Kendall, Kelsey. “ODU Professor Breaks down Psychology behind New Year’s Resolutions and Meaningful Life Change.” Old Dominion University, 7 Jan. 2026, www.odu.edu/article/odu-professor-breaks-down-psychology-behind-new-years-resolutions-and-meaningful-life. Accessed 19 Feb. 2026.

“The Psychology behind New Year’s Resolutions.” Parinc.com, Parinc.com, 2 Jan. 2024, www.parinc.com/learning-center/par-blog/detail/blog/2024/01/02/the-psychology-behind-new-years-resolutions. Accessed 19 Feb. 2026.

Vinney, Cynthia. “The Psychology behind Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail.” Verywell Mind, 1 Jan. 2024, www.verywellmind.com/why-new-years-resolutions-fail-6823972. Accessed 19 Feb. 2026.