It is that time of the year. Christmas excesses are replaced by new year commitments. Gym memberships are up; diets and exercise regimes are initiated. The urge to set resolutions is pinned to adverts and endless article messages, but the inspiration too often fades quickly.

I’d established an annual habit of slagging off New Year’s resolutions. Except this year, I was reading ‘Do Hard Things: Why We Got Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness’, by Steve Magness, and it made me consider how it posed helpful messages about resolutions, the tough challenge of persisting and building routines. 

 The book challenges the notion of toughness as refusing to give up, gritty persistence at all costs, or old-school tough love. These messages relate neatly to the real challenge of persisting with resolutions and actually doing hard things. 

Here are some handy insights I gleaned from the book on resolution setting and habit building:

  1. Lower the bar; raise the floor. Instead of setting personal best challenges or taking on massive goals (running your first marathon…writing that first novel), be more pragmatic. Instead of setting a PB, aim for beating the average of your last 5 performances; instead of writing a novel, writing a detailed plan and a chapter. 
  2. Start small, before going big. It is common wisdom to start small, but when the busyness of January kicks in, small achievements are essential to make resolutions achievable. We may want to find the new dream job, but can we prioritise researching our options more fully first? We may want to read 50 books a year, but 5 first might be the resolution you need to start with in January. 
  3. Set resolutions based on the process not the outcome. We cannot always control the outcome of our efforts. We may not become a functioning athlete or a best-selling novelist. We can take enjoyment and achievement from persisting with the process. You may not write that book, but writing everyday is a worthwhile achievement. 
  4. Give yourself the choice to stop and drop. Our notions of toughness and grit is to persist with any challenge. It isn’t realistic and it sees the death of most resolutions. Instead, miss an exercise day, don’t worry if your daily writing isn’t every day (allowing for 'cheat days' helps). Doing most days with any of these resolutions will likely lead to real successes. 
  5. Create just-about-manageable habits to sustain your resolutions. We all respond to deadlines and routines – they work – even when they annoy us. I write a fortnightly newsletter. Sometimes that drives me mad and the deadlines it generates are frustrating. But it is just-about-manageable and it gets me reading and writing more regularly if I didn’t have the routine. 

 Maybe these insights are not groundbreaking or wholly novel. Maybe their flawed and problematic. In being all of those things, they’re just like New Year’s resolutions. And they might just be useful. 

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This week I include a book review of 'Doing Hard Things'.