Give Your New Year’s Resolutions A 30-Day Trial


Part of the problem with New Year’s Resolutions is that you go from not doing them at all on December 31 to taking them seriously on January 1. If your resolutions are big behavioural changes, changing your habits without thinking them through can be a recipe for failure.Give those resolutions a 30-day trial run in December where you try, let yourself stumble and figure out the best way to change your lifestyle so you can succeed when the new year starts.

Photo by John Kwan\Shutterstock.

Christopher S. Penn explains that trying to do something like hit the gym three days a week or give up smoking on January 1 when you’ve been slacking all year or smoking regularly up to and through New Year’s Eve is never a great way to get started, especially when the changes you want to make will require other lifestyle changes as well. He proposes taking December to, for example, figure out how your “join a gym and actually go” resolution will impact your schedule and finances, and then give it a shot so you have time to make changes and “debug” your new behaviour before the beginning of the year.

If December 1 is too soon for you, there’s no reason you can’t use January as your 30-day trial run. The important thing is to give yourself a little room to get organised and plan out your resolution before you go after it full-steam. Doing so will increase your chances of success, and make that fresh start at the beginning of the new year a little easier to handle.

Are you thinking about your new year’s resolutions yet? Do you have any plans for the new year already, or do you usually wait until late December to even think about it? Let’s hear it in the comments below.

New Year’s Resolutions 30 Day Trial [Christopher S. Penn’s Awaken Your Superhero]


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

Here are the cheapest plans available for Australia’s most popular NBN speed tier.

At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments


Leave a Reply