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Here we are at the beginning of February. The first month of the New Year is gone. Have your New Year's Resolutions similarly flown the coop? If you’re still powering on with whatever you have given up or whatever you have started, good for you. However, if your resolve has waned and you’ve returned to old habits, don’t worry. You are not alone.
Did the thought of a New Year’s Resolution turn your stomach back in late December? When did you actually start thinking about making a resolution? Was it New Year’s Eve? Was it New Year's Day? Was your resolution made spontaneously when someone asked you what yours was? All these questions play a large part in people’s trouble with sticking to New Year's Resolutions.
When considering the factors that influence such resolutions, we can begin critical evaluation by asking the following questions: Why do people make New Year's resolutions? How come they’re so hard to stick to? Why do we decide to either quit something or start something arbitrarily, just because other people have similarly decided this is the day? It’s been said that the custom dates back to Roman rule, but despite its longevity, recent studies suggest that approximately 80% of individuals in the U.S. who make a resolution fail to stick to it beyond the first month; and only 8% stick with it for the long-haul, though less is known about the sustainability of these longer-term ‘achievements’. Following consideration of three major factors that dictate success or failure in light of these questions, discussion will turn to the metacognitive links between critical thinking and resolution making and maintenance.
Timing
As alluded to above, failure to adhere to one’s resolution may simply boil down to the arbitrary nature of it—an arbitrary day on an arbitrary calendar. “I don’t want to give anything up! I don’t want to start going to the gym!” Then don’t. Resolutions should be for you, the individual doing them; not what others expect of you, and certainly not what a calendar suggests you do. But, let’s imagine you do want to give something up or you do want to start something. January 1st may not be the best time for you to start. The timing may not be right. If you want to get into shape, maybe a stricter diet is a better option for you right now and increasing exercise in April might be a better idea. For example, beginning an exercise routine, outdoors in the spring might be a more attractive prospect than starting to go to the gym in the cold, dark days of January. Again, it is completely arbitrary in the sense that all this needs to happen January 1st—why not May 6th or September 31st?
Reframe and Forget about ‘Goals’
Some argue that in order for a resolution to succeed, we need to reframe the label from ‘resolution’ to ‘goal’ and that the more positive we make the task (be it losing weight or quitting smoking), the easier it becomes. For example, "I’m not giving up smoking, I’m giving myself the chance to be healthier and breathe easier." However, this isn’t always the case. When people ‘set goals’, they often focus too much on the 'goals' (which may be overly optimistic) and not enough on the setting; for example, “I’m going to lose 30 pounds by St Patrick’s Day.” Well, that’s a lot of weight in a relatively short amount of time—what happens when St Patrick’s Day comes and only 5 pounds have been lost? The individual is saddened by their inability to achieve their goal, but also fails to see that losing 5 pounds is something to be applauded. Such disappointment may inspire this person to try harder over the next couple of months, but it could also make them quit trying altogether.
As we saw in the last example, goals can be wild. What brings people back to Earth amidst such speculative goal-setting is questioning; for example, when and how are you going to do this? Recent research indicates that asking people a question about performing an intended (i.e. future) behavior positively influences the later performance of that behavior (Spangenberg et al., 2016). So, in terms of your resolutions, ask yourself why, ask yourself how, ask yourself when. Similarly, using S.M.A.R.T Criteria, which are often used for objective-setting in project management, is also a useful means of ensuring the requisite clarity achieved through questioning.
Organisation
When we think of goal-setting, we should of course think about what we want to achieve (and evaluate whether or not it’s reasonable to achieve); but perhaps more so, we should focus on the setting of the goal; that is, how are we going to achieve it? It’s great that you want to get fit, but this is not going to happen by itself. As discussed above in terms of questioning, we need to organize our goals: What are you going to do to make this happen? Diet? What kind of diet? Did you plan out a weekly menu? Gym, running, or a new sport, perhaps? Ask the questions first and then write down the answers, making sure to organize them into your routine. This needs to be clear.
That is, organization requires clarity surrounding your goal: So, you want to lose weight? How much? By when? If your goal isn’t clear, then you don’t really know what you’re trying to achieve. If you want to lose weight, then is the loss of one pound by next December 31 sufficient?
You also need to be clear about how you will achieve it. You need to organize the ‘how’ into your life. Old, maladaptive routines need to be replaced with new, positive ones. Being organized about it is the only way this will work, because quite often, ‘bad habits’ are simply part of a routine. By amending your routine and replacing the bad with the good, opportunities for the bad habits are removed or decreased, at the very least.
Notably, however, if you don’t organize these new, positive behaviors into your life in a way that supports your pre-existing values and goals, it’s likely that the new resolutions will fail. For example, you may want to get fit. You decide that the first step is to start going to the gym; but the only real time you can do this is after work. However, you want to spend time with your kids before they go to bed. Well, the gym just went out the window. So, amend your resolution: eat healthier at work and at home with your kids; go outside and run around with your kids when you are home; or maybe consider going to gym early in the morning!
Links with Critical Thinking
Beyond what’s been described already, sticking with your resolution is about motivation, it’s about willpower, it’s about discipline—all factors of self-regulation and metacognition. Critical thinking is often discussed as a metacognitive process (Dwyer, 2017; Ku & Ho, 2010). Metacognition was first described by Flavell (1976) as knowledge concerning one’s own cognitive processes and products or anything related to them; and the active monitoring, consequent regulation and orchestration of these processes (e.g. through self-monitoring or self-regulation). It has since been described as higher-order control processing used in executive planning and decision-making (Sternberg, 1985); and one’s ability to consciously think about thinking as a self-regulatory function, that is, the monitoring of one's own cognitive activities, as well as the results of those activities (Demetriou, 2000). From these descriptions, one can see that metacognition is largely focused on self-regulation and planning.
To succeed in critical thinking, we require a reflective sensibility that is consistent with metacognition—the ability to ‘think about thinking’ with respect to planning and self-regulation, both of which are requisite for successfully adhering to our New Years’ Resolutions. Though the link between this adherence and critical thinking is not explicit, there is considerable overlap among the factors that facilitate both (e.g. perseverance, reflection, resourcefulness, self-efficacy, intrinsic goal orientation, attentiveness, clarity, planning, organization and self-regulation). So, if we want our lives to change for the better, even if it’s only one small facet, critical thinking may help us develop and facilitate the change we want to see in our lives; and help us achieve our resolutions, no matter what time of the year they are made.
References
Demetriou, A. (2000). Organisation and development of self-understanding and self-regulation: Toward a general theory. In M. Boekaerts, P.R. Pintrich, and M. Zeidner (Eds.), Handbook of Self-Regulation, 209-251. London: Academic Press.
Dwyer, C.P. (2017). Critical thinking: Conceptual perspectives and practical guidelines. UK: Cambridge University Press.
Flavell, J. (1976). Metacognitive aspects of problem solving. In L. Resnick (Ed.), The nature of intelligence, 231-236. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Ku, K.Y.L. & Ho, I.T. (2010b). Metacognitive strategies that enhance critical thinking. Metacognition & Learning, 5, 251-267.
Spangenberg, E. R., Kareklas, I., Devezer, B., & Sprott, D. E. (2016). A meta-analytic synthesis of the question–behavior effect. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 26(3), 441-458.
Sternberg, R.J. (1985). Beyond IQ: A triarchic theory of human intelligence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
