Are New Year’s resolutions made to be broken? Science weighs in
The tradition of making New Year’s resolutions goes back about 4 000 years. We’ve been breaking them ever since! Benjamin Gardner, psychology professor at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom (UK), says we should ‘soft-launch’ our New Year’s resolutions in November or December to improve chances of success in January. He’s a leading researcher, lecturer and public speaker in the psychology of habitual behaviour and behaviour change.
New year, old me?
“Many people wake up on New Year’s Day not ready to embrace change. The key is all about readiness, so anything you can do before the change of the calendar year can help habits stand the test of time,” Gardner told the UK’s ‘Daily Mirror’(opens in new window). “It’s cold and miserable, the weather isn’t great, and you’re not really energised to make the best changes. There can be a lot of pressure to make the changes because other people are, but sometimes it has the opposite effect. As a result of everyone else doing it, you may end up committing to something you don’t really want to do, which is why soft-launching a resolution is a good idea as it gives you a chance to test the waters.” He explained the psychology behind resolutions in a ‘CNN’ interview(opens in new window). “[W]hat makes for a good resolution is one that is realistic, it’s challenging, but it’s challenging enough that it can be achieved.”
Hard habit to break
Gardner emphasises that ultimately, we want resolutions to become habits. “[A] habit isn’t necessarily something that you do, it’s an association that you formed between a trigger in your everyday environment and something that you do in response to that trigger. … many of us when we wake up, the first thing that we do is reach for our phones, we don’t think about what we’re going to do, it’s just become a kind of automatic response, it’s something that we do on autopilot.” He further explained: “Now the thing about habits is, they can be both the friend and the enemy of the New Year’s resolution. … if you can consistently do a particular action in a particular setting, you’re likely to be able to form a habit for doing that thing, and it will become part of your autopilot, so you’re likely to be able to keep doing that over time, so that’s what makes a good habit good. On the other hand, what makes a bad habit bad is that these are things that we do on autopilot, that we don’t really want to do, and that can actually undermine and derail our attempts to change our behaviour.” Gardner was part of a 2025 study(opens in new window) that found that habit, not conscious choice, drives most of our actions. “Our research shows that while people may consciously want to do something, the actual initiation and performance of that behaviour is often done without thinking, driven by non-conscious habits,” he commented(opens in new window) about the study. “This suggests that ‘good’ habits may be a powerful way to make our goals a reality.”