Some claim setting New Year’s resolutions is useless. They’re wrong. It’s a way our culture helps us tap into one of the most remarkable capacities: our ability to think about our own thinking. Resolutions remind us to step back from the chaos and ask: Am I pursuing the right goals, and going about them the right way?
Anyone can use the latest neuroscience to improve their thinking about thinking. It can give us the grit to stick with goal—and the wisdom to adapt (or even quit) if changing course is the path to success.
Why do we have New Year’s resolutions? For planning. Whether you play chess or checkers, you know you can’t win relying only on habits, reflexes, or emotional responses. In life, planning makes the difference between running straight into a barrier or anticipating it and taking a detour. Our clever human brains can look ahead—through a decision tree branching into many potential futures—to pick the best option. This planning is a huge challenge: board games are simpler than most of real life, yet even a relatively simple game like “Go” has over 10170 possible positions (that’s 1 followed by 170 zeros). An adult’s brain can do amazing things. But because it runs on around of power (enough for a dim incandescent light bulb), it must use clever shortcuts. Understanding them can help us plan better.
One shortcut your brain takes is or clustering multiple actions into a single option that can be evaluated as a whole. Think of learning to drive a car. At first, every component needs conscious thought—one step might involve thousands of muscle movements. But over time, it becomes routine, second nature. Your brain plans hierarchically, with goals made of subgoals, each made of more subgoals, and so on.
That’s why breaking your New Year’s goal into manageable parts helps. And deep in February, remind yourself not to despair if you haven’t fully “learned French” yet.
Another of your brain’s shortcuts is creating menus of possible options (neuroscientists call them “affordances”) to narrow down the infinite actions you could take. For example, sitting at my desk, I could burst into song, eat my computer mouse, or buy bagpipes online. But what I’m actually considering is typing or getting coffee. There are times, though, when we must step back and actively search for new options—even, or especially, in seemingly unsolvable situations.
A famous story tells of Prime Minister Winston Churchill taking a moment to think while shaving one morning during Britain’s darkest World War II hours in 1940, when he suddenly “I think I see my way through.” His idea—“drag the United States in”—was no small thing. But in everyday life, you too can actively step back—maybe on your own, or with a friend or mentor—to think of options outside your usual menu.
Indeed, some of the most important options we need to recognize include changing our mind, adjusting our goals, and even quitting things we care about. After all, life involves balancing family, work, health, friends… Churchill often during the war and was willing to be argued out of ideas like sending troops to liberate Norway in 1942. Perseverance is important, but clinging too stubbornly to initial goals can be harmful. People who can quit effectively—abandoning goals that no longer work and finding new ones that do—tend to be more with their lives, less , and have decreased stress .
“Everyone has a plan,” as the boxer observed, “’till they get punched in the mouth.” To help persevere through inevitable failures and setbacks, ask yourself like “What can I do to help myself?” or “Is there a way to do this even better?” Keeping your New Year’s resolution may well involve creatively adapting how you achieve it over the year.
