Spell It: How to stick to your New Year's resolutions

What’s your New Year’s resolution for 2024?

Click start to play today’s Spell It, where we ‘rang’ in the New Year and are now trying to set ourselves up for success with new and improved lifestyle choices and behaviours.

A new October 2023 survey from US-based Forbes Health/One Poll of 1,000 American adults found that the top resolution for the coming year has to do with better fitness. Last year, in contrast, people’s top focus for the year was improving their mental health. Unfortunately, according to a February 2023 report by the US-based Ohio State University’s Fisher School of Business, 23 per cent of people quit their resolution by the end of the first week, and 43 per cent quit by the end of January.

So, how do you make your goals stick? Here are some strategies by Ayelet Fishbach, a social psychologist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and author of Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation, who was interviewed in January 2022 by the US-based magazine Scientific American:

1. Put a number on your goal

When you create a specific goal, it makes it easier to monitor your progress. For instance, when you say you’ll walk 10,000 steps a day, that’s a whole lot more measurable than saying you’ll walk ‘a lot more’. You’ll know when you’re halfway there, or almost there. A study by the US-based University of California, Riverside, assessed data from about 10 million marathon runners, for whom the target time of four hours was most popular. Researchers found that a lot more people finished in three hours and 59 minutes, rather than four hours and one minute. When you have a target, you’ll push harder to achieve it.

2. Think of middles differently

We’re usually highly motivated at the beginning and the end of achieving our goal; it’s the middle that’s the toughest. The trick, according to Fishbach, is to think of middles differently. A 2014 study published in the journal Management Science, described a strategy called the ‘fresh start effect’ that helps people stick to their goals. It encourages people to use temporal landmarks, such as the first day in the month, a birthday or a holiday, to ‘restart’ a goal, so that people feel like they’re at the beginning again, rather than the middle.

3. Make it fun

Find the fun path to a goal – it’s the key to persistence. Fishbach says fun is an immediate outcome, so if you’re doing something that makes you feel happy and good while you’re doing it, you’re more likely to persist with it than if you think it’ll make you feel good at a future point in time. With fun, your intrinsic motivation increases, similar to when you feel like you’re learning.

What is your New Year’s resolution, and how are you looking to ensure you’ll stick with it? Play today’s Spell It and tell us at games@gulfnews.com.