Don’t resolve to do something so easy it doesn’t require a resolution, nor something so hard no resolution could make it achievable. Resolutions are for raising the bar, not for laying the bar on the ground and hopping over it or for putting the bar too high for anyone to reach.
Make all your resolutions in public. The fear of social pressure, whether it materializes or not, will help you keep your word, since you are pledging not just to yourself but to others….
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This article was originally published on The Wall Street Journal.
Further reading
Jason Zweig, Your Money and Your Brain, especially Chapter Four, “Prediction”
Gharad Bryan et al., Commitment Devices (Annual Review of Economics, 2010)
Dan Ariely and Klaus Wertenbroch, Procrastination, Deadlines, and Performance: Self-Control by Precommitment (Psychological Science, 2002)
Piers Steel, The Nature of Procrastination: A Meta-analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-Regulatory Failure (Psychological Bulletin, 2007)