Psychologists state that beginnings—whether the start of a year, a week, or a birthday—carry a motivational power that helps change behaviors and pursue goals.
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We often start the new year with good intentions, but heavy commitments quickly get in the way of achieving our goals. Life's distractions are numerous, and starting something new usually means stopping something else.
If the resolutions you made at the beginning of the year have faded, do not despair; you are not alone. As research shows, motivating yourself to set new goals and forming habits that support them is an effective way to make a change at any time.
So, how do we make resolutions that last? Experts emphasize the importance of leveraging what is called the "fresh start effect," alongside developing good habits and setting realistic goals.
Many New Year's resolutions end in frustration, with some studies showing that up to 92% of people fail to reach their goals. However, Katy Milkman, a professor of behavioral economics at the University of Pennsylvania, considers this percentage "misleading." She notes that because so many people attempt to change at the exact same time, it makes the failure rate appear higher than it actually is.
A recent US survey found that 87% of resolution-makers maintained them for at least a few weeks, while 13% could not last even a single week. Meanwhile, a British survey revealed that 38% of citizens kept their 2025 resolutions, while 33% managed to keep only some of them. From these two surveys, Milkman concluded that "time-based goals are remarkably effective."
You do not necessarily need New Year's celebrations to benefit from this advantage. The middle of the year, the start of a week, a birthday, or any personally meaningful date can serve as an excellent timing to start and utilize the "fresh start effect."
By reviewing goal-setting websites, Milkman found that searches for "diets" and "gyms" spike at specific times, such as the beginning of a week, a month, or a new school semester. You can choose your own special day to change your behavior instead of waiting for a specific calendar event.
Milkman noted that choosing a "special" day to mark a new period (such as the first day of spring) rather than a random start (like a regular Monday) can boost motivation and make people more driven to achieve their goals. Aligning a new commitment with a meaningful day also helps create a psychological break from past failures.
"In these moments when we feel a fresh start, we feel disconnected from our past, as if one chapter has closed and a new one is beginning," Milkman says.
While the "fresh start effect" helps launch a new goal, "forming positive habits" is essential to sustaining the effort. Benjamin Gardner, a psychology professor at the University of Surrey, says that while achieving goals requires conscious and continuous effort, habits happen with very little thought. The advantage of a habit is that it eliminates the need for constant willpower.
"Habits exist to help us do the things we need to do repeatedly, without needing to think about them," Gardner explains.
However, building a good habit requires perseverance. It takes an average of 66 days of repeating a behavior for it to become a habit, though this timeframe can range from 18 to 265 days depending on the complexity of the target behavior. For example, turning a fitness routine into a daily habit takes about six months.
Choosing simple goals can also help. A study tracking participants trying to form a new daily habit—such as running, eating fruit, or doing push-ups—found that simple actions like drinking a glass of water were easier to turn into habits than harder tasks like doing 50 push-ups.
Equally important is breaking habits that stand in the way of your goals—which is undoubtedly difficult, according to Gardner. However, this can be achieved by replacing undesired old habits with positive new ones.
Gardner says that "replacing a bad habit with a good one means that after a short while, a person will find themselves automatically doing what they want instead of what they no longer want." This strategy can be highly effective, as we naturally tend to stick to new habits more than we tend to simply drop behaviors we wish to avoid.
Goals must also be selected carefully. A recent US study involving more than 2,000 people found that participants who were genuinely excited about the daily actions required by their goals were more likely to persevere.
Ayelet Fishbach, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago, believes that overemphasizing the end result can hinder success. Fishbach recommends looking for actions we actually want to do, rather than things we want to avoid, noting that "this requires a level of self-knowledge."
Understanding the "surrounding environment" is another crucial first step for those who have the desire but struggle to keep going. Felix Naughton, a health psychology professor at the University of East Anglia, says that "desire is just one of many factors that determine our behavior, and therefore desire alone is not enough; it is incredibly difficult for a person to quit smoking if their friends are smoking, for example."
Naughton also recommends setting measurable goals with specific, regularly reviewed action plans. For instance, a goal like "increasing activity" is vague compared to "walking 8,000 steps daily over the next week," which is easily measurable.
Once a habit is formed, it becomes familiar to the mind. "If you used to smoke after eating and then stopped, the brain eventually breaks that link between eating and smoking," Naughton says.
If we are not enjoying the journey toward our goals, we might need to change our method, not our destination, according to Milkman. She emphasizes that enjoying the process increases our ability to persist.
This might require linking a less enjoyable activity with an enjoyable one—a process Milkman calls "temptation bundling." Examples include watching TV while exercising or working out with a friend. One study indicates that people are 35% more likely to exercise when doing it with a friend than alone. Another study found that students prefer combining gym workouts with listening to audiobooks.
It is worth noting that even if we enjoy the journey, losing passion halfway through is entirely possible, especially if the ultimate goal is far off. Ayelet Fishbach calls this feeling the "midpoint crisis."
To avoid this crisis, we can break long-term goals into short-term milestones—weekly or even daily. This breakdown makes it easier to monitor progress. If a day comes when we do not meet our goals, Fishbach suggests using it to identify what needs adjustment rather than viewing it as a personal failure.
When motivation wanes, we do not have to rely solely on willpower; the habits we successfully built along the way will support us. In short, the more we condition ourselves to do something, the more likely it is to become a habit, especially if we enjoy doing it.
BBC
