Why New Year's Resolutions Fail

And how to make sure you never fail at setting goals again

Author

Cashflow Chronicles
January 05, 2024

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Hey Cashflowers,

New Year’s resolutions are one of the most popular trends during the new year, but unfortunately, they’re also one of the most popular goals people don’t follow through with.

These goals can be things like exercising or eating healthier, but on the flip side, they can also be to start a new side hustle or invest in real estate, which are the things we’re interested in.

Today we’re going to get into why New Year’s resolutions fail, what your word means to you, and how to make progress on your goals once again.

Let’s get into it!

Why Resolutions Fail

You’re Changing TOO Much

We’ve seen it time and time again, and we know you have too.

One day while you’re in the shower, in your bed, or doing one of many other things at night you think to yourself:

“I’m going to wake up at 5am tomorrow and do a ton of work in the morning”

Which you know you probably didn’t do.

But maybe you did, and if you did, you’re in the top 1% (at least to our best guess)

But back to the most likely: you probably didn’t wake up.

In fact, you probably snoozed your alarm from 5am until 7am when you actually had to get up to be to work or school or whatever other thing on time.

The problem here isn’t that you’re setting goals; the goals you set are great

The main problem is that it’s just too much

Going from waking up at 7am to 5am is a two-hour jump, and frankly, when you’re barely getting up at 7am every day anyways, 5am is too much.

Doing too much often causes burnout or failure in other instances, and with this it’s no different.

Your Word

Why Your Self-Promises Fail

On top of the last section, you know that you’ve done this more than just on New Year’s.

Some random Tuesday’s, or maybe it was a weekend you wanted to wake up early on.

Either way, there’s a reason you’ve barely ever actually woke up at 5am, let alone done it at all.

It’s because once you’ve failed once, what you tell yourself doesn’t mean as much and doesn’t have control over you.

When you’ve snoozed your alarm for two hours more than 3 times in the past week, even if you set it again what makes you think you’ll wake up this time?

Exactly

The next section is how you fix this

The Fix

Scale Down, Do Less, And Build to it

We’ve been using the example of waking up because it’s easy, and we are going to continue with that, but this still applies to anything you say to yourself that you’re going to do.

If you snooze your alarm every morning at 7am, are drowsy getting out of bed, and you always have to race to work to be on time, then 7am is barely working.

Start Small

Start by telling yourself that you’ll immediately get out of bed when your alarm goes off at 7am, and you won’t snooze your alarm.

A small goal that is perceivable.

Build it

By building it we don’t mean you have to wake up 5 minutes earlier every day, we are saying make it so that you can keep following this goal for a month.

Do something that makes it easier, like taking a shower immediately after waking up to make sure you aren’t drowsy and you don’t fall back asleep.

If it’s a side hustle, set out a block of 2-3 hours every day that you can have specifically to work on your side hustle.

Again, it takes optimally doing less to start making your word mean something to you, in order to follow it more in the future.

With that, Until next time Cashflowers

Cheers!

Cashflow Chronicles

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