Why many New Year’s resolutions fail—and how to make yours stick

It’s January 3: have you broken your New Year’s resolutions yet?

Today's expression: Fall short
Explore more: Lesson #117
January 3, 2019:

A New Year's resolution is a promise you make to yourself to improve for the coming year. Many people say they will lose weight, sleep more, get a new job, or improve their relationships. The trouble is, more than 90% of people don't keep their resolutions. Today we talk about why so many resolutions fail, and how to change habits so they stick (at any time of year). Plus, learn the English phrase "fall short."

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Have you made your New Year’s resolutions yet? Actually, it’s January 3: maybe I should ask, have you broken your New Year’s resolutions yet?

Hi everyone, welcome back to Plain English, the first episode of the new year, and episode number 117. The full transcript and instant translations are all available at PlainEnglish.com/117.

Today we’re going to talk about New Year’s resolutions—those little promises you make to yourself to change or do better in the new year. Problem is, so many people break them within a few weeks or a few months. So I did some looking into how to make better resolutions and set better goals, and that’s what we’ll be taking about today.


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Okay, you know what time of year it is: it’s the season of New Year’s resolutions. Do you make those? A new year’s resolution is your promise to yourself to change a habit or make an improvement in your life. Many people choose January 1, the New Year, to begin these new habits. But guess what? Only about 10 percent of people keep a new year’s resolution all year long, and most people don’t make it out of January. Yikes!

I thought for this first episode of 2019, I would do a little reading into the best advice for making and keeping New Year’s resolutions and share with you what I found. So here’s what I read:

The most popular New Year’s resolutions are to lose weight or get in shape, to quit smoking, to save more money, to get more sleep, and to improve a relationship. And guess what? Those are all terrible resolutions. No, not because they’re bad things in general—but they’re bad goals. They’re too big; they’re not measurable. The best resolutions are small, specific things that you can do regularly. Get more sleep is too murky; it’s not definitive enough. You need to pick a resolution that’s achievable and specific. So, how about “go to bed before 11 every time I have to work the next day.” That’s a better resolution than just get more sleep because it’s specific and it’s measurable. For most people, it’s probably also achievable, which is a good thing.

Okay, so after you make an achievable, specific, measurable goal, you need to come up with a plan. To create a plan, you might have to trick yourself. You can start by asking, why are things not the way you want them today? If you’re trying to change a bad habit, ask yourself, why do you do what you do? The trick is to find a way to give yourself the same good feeling that causes a bad habit, only with something better. Let me give you one bad habit of mine. In the afternoons, I tend to crave a cup of coffee. But if I have too much coffee in the afternoon, then I tend to crave junk food before dinner. It throws off my diet. So I recently switched to hot tea in the afternoon. The reason is, I think I just wanted something a little bit indulgent, something warm. Something to distract myself a little bit from work. And I found that having a cup of black tea in the afternoon gave me all the same pleasure as coffee, only without the caffeine. So, if you’re trying to break a bad habit, look for the reason you have this bad habit and try to substitute something else for your bad habit.

That works for breaking a bad habit, but some goals are about starting something good, not stopping something bad. Let’s say your resolution is to save more money. A good way to motivate yourself is to give yourself little rewards for hitting milestones along the way. Instead of saying you’ll save a big amount for the whole year, set a goal of saving a smaller amount every month. For every month you do save that amount of money, give yourself a little bit of a treat to stay motivated.

The next tip I have for you is to track your progress. Make sure you write down when you succeed and when you fail. Try to get as many good days, weeks, months in a row as possible. There are some good habit-tracking apps out there you can use for this.

Finally, the last piece of advice I read from experts is to not beat yourself up if you fall short of your resolutions. If you fall short—if you over-eat one day, or you have too much to drink one night, whatever the case may be—don’t be too hard on yourself. Nobody’s perfect. Just remember that what’s done is done, and try to get back on a new streak in the future. You don’t need to start every resolution on January 1. If you find your resolution isn’t going well on, say, February 10, then just change it. Make the goal smaller, more manageable. Or just start over. There’s no need to wait for the next year.

Okay, so I don’t usually do New Year’s resolutions, but after having done some reading on resolutions, I think I do want to try one this year. And I’m going to follow my own advice. Here’s what I want to do. I want to break a bad habit, which is staying up too late with screen time on nights before work. That could be either watching TV or working on my computer or getting lost browsing stuff on my phone in bed. I took my own advice and I asked myself, why am I doing this? I think one answer is that I’m really busy during the day and when the evening comes around, I feel like I don’t want to go to sleep without having a little time for myself. So even though it may be 10:45, I feel like I want to watch an hour of TV—and I wind up staying up too late and feeling tired the next day. It’s a bad cycle. So here’s my goal. I’m going to go to bed before 11:00 on any night before I have to go to work the next day. And since I know why I usually stay up too late, I’m going to dedicate an hour a day before it gets too late to do something nice for myself. Just an hour—it can be mid-day at work, right after work, even before work, whatever. But if I do that, then when 11:00 rolls around, I won’t feel like I haven’t gotten any time for personal relaxation. If for whatever reason I still want to stay up, I’m going to let myself cheat—but not with any type of an electronic screen. It has to be reading something on paper, like a book or a magazine.

So that’s my resolution. You know, that reminds me one other tip—and that is to have a support system. Good thing I have so many Plain English friends around the world to keep me honest! I’ll update you on my progress as the year goes by.


So as you all know, JR is the producer. He’s Mexican and he taught me what New Year’s resolution is in Spanish—it’s propósitos de año nuevo. And I asked JR to share his thoughts on whether he thinks propósitos de año nuevo are a good idea or not. Here’s what he has to say:

I think New Year’s resolutions are effective but not for the same reason that everybody thinks! I think they are effective because they are one way in which we acknowledge the changes we need to make in our lives for the better. We can use the occasion to take some time to think how we can improve our lives, eating healthy, drinking less alcohol, quitting smoking. Some of them we work on for just one or two months, (I remember seeing the gym full in January but empty by March). We can really achieve some resolutions, while there are others that we don’t even try to fully reach, but the important thing is to be honest and be conscious of the fact that that there’s always a way to improve ourselves. If your New Years resolutions are eating healthy and doing more exercise, reading more and being more patient, then you can join my club.

All right, thanks JR. If you’re looking to make a resolution about English, then maybe you can resolve to improve your vocabulary. One great way to do that is with all the great resources at MosaLingua, our partner. MosaLingua has a fun, tech-savvy way of teaching languages. They have lots of resources, exercises, pictures, audios, videos, tons of resources to help you learn the words you need to know. And you just learned to make a specific resolution, so maybe, practice with MosaLingua for five minutes a day, five times a week. That would be a good resolution—specific and measurable, right? So if you would like to learn more about what they have to offer at MosaLingua, check out PlainEnglish.com/learn and you can sign up for a free trial. PlainEnglish.com/learn.

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Expression: Fall short