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On January 1, he cannot move without encountering an article on New Year resolutions. You can’t say the same about February 1, and that can be part of the problem. Every year begins with us in the complete Bridget mode, solving to deliver a new sheet. Sometimes we keep our resolutions, we often do not. In any case, everyday life returns, and we forget them.
We know enough about how to make resolutions work. For example, it helps to think about the daily process. The resolution of “putting in” or “losing weight” shape “is fine, but it is likely that things are better if you have made a more specific plan: work through the Couch to 5K program, or subscribe to an exercise class, or Stop drinking alcohol on the nights of the week.
Social pressure works. If you hope to go to the gym regularly, look for an exercise friend. Agree the regular times to meet and make sure to appear to support each other. This gives you a positive and negative reason to appear: to help your friend and not go out in public. Gym sessions will also be more fun.
A public commitment also works. Do you want to quit smoking? Find a friend who will bet that you can’t. Hoping to learn to run? Register for a fun career of charity and begin to collect sponsorship.
It can be motivating to look for signs of incremental progress. Sometimes, progress is obvious: faster times, heavier weights, but, often, intermediate objectives must be made. They still work.
The most important thing is that people are more likely to meet resolutions if they consider that the whole business is pleasant. If you are trying to eat healthy foods, get good recipes. If you are trying to stop reviewing social networks on your smartphone, bring garbage novels to read in your place.
Those are five good ideas to stick to their resolutions. But did you really need to tell you some of that? The problem is that we do not think of such things in the change of the year when we agree with our stained shows and write down our unrealistic dreams to become a better person. For most people, the resolutions we make are not serious.
At this point it could be useful for Take an idea of educational psychology: “self -regulated learning.” (Psychologist Barry Zimmerman described this in more poetic terms such as “how students become teachers of their own learning.”) Some students are attentive about their own educational progress: they think of their strengths and weaknesses, they pay attention to their results and They adopt the correct tactics to improve, study, practice and review as appropriate. In jargon, they enter a “self -directed feedback cycle.” No one will surprise that self -regulated students thrive in school and university.
I promise not to submit to the phrase “Cumor of self -organized feedback” again, but reflect in their place, the following three questions that anyone should ask about their resolutions. What am I doing? How is he going? What do I need to change?
For example, suppose that its resolution is to stop drinking alcohol, and it has been successful, except when you see a particular group of friends in the pub, once every few weeks. Instead of hitting you to fail, or shrink from shoulders and surrender, think. You may decide that it is fine to drink if it is only with those friends every few weeks. Modify the resolution and declare victory.
Or maybe you decide that the resolution cannot compromise. Good. Meet your friends for coffee. Or try again, with a renewed determination of drinking only alcohol beer. The point is to seriously think about how the resolution is going and what it might need to change, and this is something we rarely do.
If you are unable to maintain a particular resolution, it is useful to think why. What exactly stops you? Is there a different angle that can work better? The willing force of white knuckles has not worked before (rarely does), so what could work in its place?
Which takes me back to January 1. Katy Milkman, scientist at the behavior of the Wharton School of Business and author of How to changeHe has investigated and popularized the “Fresh Start Effect” – That they are more likely to adopt new objectives on historical dates such as January 1 or our birthday. For example, with their colleagues HENGChen Dai and Jason Riis, he discovered that experimental subjects with an objective were more likely to register to receive a Motivational email reminder if it was told that it would reach “the first spring day” instead of the same date described instead as March 20.
But if the first of January is an attractive moment to make a resolution, when is it a good time to reflect on their old resolutions, particularly those that have collapsed under pressure? One possibility is to establish quarterly objectives (for work, physical state, fun, whatever, and review ancient objectives by establishing new ones at the end of the quarter. For what is worth, this is what I do.
That is not for everyone. Here is a simpler idea, then. When you write any new year resolution, write them on your calendar on March 20. Let’s call it the first spring day, why not? On that date, they are a good look. And then ask those three simple questions. What have I really done? How is it gone? What do I need to change?
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