New Year, True You: Three Tips For Setting Unconventional Resolutions
The Real Problem With New Year’s Resolutions Isn’t What You Think
It’s February, and here I am writing about New Year’s resolutions. It's a bit late since, by now, you’re either transforming those dreams into reality or (more likely) you’ve given them up.
Because everyone knows the problem with annual goals: we don’t stick with them. Estimates are that by February, 80% of us have abandoned our resolutions. That’s why there's so much advice out there on how to stay on track.
But there’s a bigger problem with resolutions we don’t speak about. And it has nothing to do with willpower, habits, or failing to set SMART goals.
It’s that our resolutions aren’t even ours to begin with. They’re mostly imitations. Think about it:
We set our resolutions when everyone else does
The arbitrary change from one year to another is when we all set our goals.
It’s a tradition that doesn’t account for where you find yourself on January 1st. Are you in the middle of a big life change? Did you start a new job? Are you overwhelmed with no extra bandwidth?
No matter our situation, we all set a long list of goals at the beginning of the year.
It’s not that this is wrong. But it’s too generic to work for everyone. Goals should be set when you desire change or improvement. Not when everyone else does it.
We all have the same resolutions
Do you want to improve your fitness and lose weight? Save or earn more? Develop your relationships?
Join the club.
Research shows that these goals are shared by a third to half of people in the US. Understandably, because they are important. Improving our health, finances, and relationships are universal desires.
It’s not that we shouldn’t have these goals. But the conventional “copy and paste” strategy of setting these obvious goals ignores the harder part: figuring out your unique desires and goals.
We persevere with goals we’ve outgrown
It’s a familiar storyline: make progress on a goal only to realize you don’t want the prize at the end of it.
Like the promotion that turned out to be 50% more work for only 20% more pay. Or achieving a fitness goal only to realize the lifestyle is unsustainable.
We ignore the signals we’re chasing someone else’s goal. We persevere because that’s what we’re told to do.
Oscar Wilde wasn’t writing about New Year’s resolutions, but he identified the theme that applies here too:
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
So, where does this leave us?
I don’t think the answer is to abandon resolutions. I confess that I actually enjoy the process of setting annual goals. But I don’t want to be left feeling like I’m resolving to be someone I’m not.
So, if you’re like me, these three suggestions may be helpful.
1. Get to know yourself
Ok, the first one is obvious: figure out what you want.
Yep, it’s not that simple. Most of us don’t know what we want.
Nietzsche grappled with this problem, and found himself as confused as the rest of us:
How can we ‘find ourselves’ again? How can man ‘know himself’? He is a thing obscure and veiled.
Despite centuries of philosophy and a booming industry of self-help books and gurus, most of us remain unclear on what we want.
And the reason we copy the ambitions of others is precisely because it’s easier than figuring it out for ourselves.
Another obstacle is the way we think about ourselves. It’s easy to imagine yourself enjoying pursuing or achieving a goal. But that’s all it is - your imagination. Many things you imagine you’d like end up being pretty disappointing.
So here is the first practical tip:
💡 Practical tip: Get to know your revealed self. These are the facts about you that you have evidence for from past experience. Don’t imagine yourself enjoying the pursuit of a goal, but find evidence of where you’ve enjoyed it before.
Ask: What experiences have brought you the most joy? What books do you read for fun? What do you find yourself talking about the most? What projects gave you the biggest sense of accomplishment? By answering these questions, you bring some objectivity to your goals.
Here’s an example. If you’re considering pursuing a career goal, think honestly about the parts of your work you have enjoyed the most before. Has it been managing people? Which would suggest a goal to attain a managerial position. Or has it been the technical work that you’ve enjoyed more? Which would suggest pursuing a role as a technical expert.
Regardless of the decision, getting to know your revealed self ensures your imagination doesn’t lead you to a place your actual self doesn’t want to be.
2. Set unconventional goals
A second suggestion is to purposefully set unconventional goals. To stretch yourself to come up with at least some unusual plans.
This is important because reflecting on your past experience has a severe limitation: if you’ve only done conventional things before, you’ll never discover new experiences you might find fulfilling.
It’s hard to express this better than Bertrand Russel did 100 years ago:
The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities of happiness he has, and the less he is at the mercy of fate, since if he loses one thing he can fall back upon another. Life is too short to be interested in everything, but it is good to be interested in as many things as are necessary to fill our days.
💡 Practical tip: Create an “opposite” experience list. Start by creating a list of your experiences in the last few years. And then create a list with the opposite of these.
Here are some examples. If your hobbies are in technology, try something in the arts. If you usually travel to popular tourist spots, choose destinations off the beaten path. If you normally read self-help books, try reading history. You can easily complete the list for sports, physical activities, the groups you participate in, etc.
Of course, you won’t be able to do all of these but make sure you balance your list of goals with these unconventional plans to expand your set of experiences.
3. Give up easily
While we’re on the topic of opposites, this next idea is the direct opposite of the common wisdom to “never give up.”
But it is an extension of the preceding tip. If you take on many new and unconventional experiences, you will enjoy some more than others. This isn’t a failure; it’s experimentation. And when you realize “this isn’t for me,” then the reasonable thing is to give it up.
Letting go of something you don’t enjoy makes room for what you do enjoy. So it’s time to give up on “never giving up.”
💡 Practical tip: Have checkpoints for quitting. Reviewing our progress is generally about what we should do better to achieve the goal. But we should also review which goals to quit. These reviews can be improved by deciding beforehand when we can quit.
For example, if you’re taking on a new hobby, this might be after one month of committing to it. For books, you might abandon them after three chapters.
This is harder for more significant decisions like quitting relationships and projects. But they’re just as important. We need to have checkpoints and quitting thresholds here, too.
The final advice is to do all of this more often. You don’t need to wait for a new year to become the new you. Life’s challenges and opportunities don’t respect the calendar. Socrates famously said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” The new year is a powerful reminder to examine your life. But it shouldn’t be the only one.
Because even though it’s February, it’s never too late to resolve to be you.