An Argument Against New Year's Resolutions

Recent psychological findings show that breaking your New Year's resolution is a good idea. Or so I argued two years ago, on these very pages. That was before the pandemic, when New Year's resolutions still made some kind of sense. In any case, they made more sense than they do now.

Observation From Gramsci

This year I want to go further and show that making New Year's resolutions is a mistake altogether. And I will start with a brief observation from the Italian political thinker and one of the fiercest critics of fascism, Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937):

I hate New Year’s. I want every morning to be a new year’s for me. Every day I want to reckon with myself, and every day I want to renew myself. (“Sotto la Mole,” in the Turin edition of the journal Avanti!, January 1, 1916.)

Gramsci wrote this more than 100 years ago, but the general spirit of the remark is something that has gained some empirical support recently. Wanting to change is an odd idea to begin with. And using one specific day of the year to anchor our will to change is even more fraught with problems.

Effect of Strong Desire on Performance

Recent studies show that strong desire impairs performance on demanding tasks (although it helps performance when it comes to simple tasks). And the negative correlation between the strength of our desire and the success rate of our performance is even stronger when it comes to tasks demanding self-control, which, let's face it, is the case for most New Year's resolutions.

So we put a huge pressure on ourselves with New Year's resolutions, and this pressure makes failure more likely. Wanting to change under such enormous pressure is a bit like wanting to fall asleep—the stronger you want it, the less likely it is that you will succeed.

Does this mean that we should just give up on changing for the better altogether? Stay with our bad habits and just soldier on? Definitely not. And Gramsci's advice here can be very helpful. If we treat every day of the year as the 1st of January, then the pressure is less severe, and we may be able to change for the better.

Intentionally and deliberately changing is not easy. Most of the time we change in ways we have no control over—through the influence of other people, through the mere exposure effect, or even through frustration. But we can and do actively and deliberately change. It is just easier if there is no New Year's Day pressure to weigh us down. So go ahead and make your 3rd of January resolution and then your 4th of January one, and so on. As Gramsci said, every day is a good day to renew yourself.