Kevin Dickinson in Big Think:
The new year approaches and with it comes our annual habit of self-promises in the form of New Year’s resolutions. Statistically speaking, though, 2019 won’t be your year. While many of us start strong, we tend to flounder come February, and studies cite the failure rate to be anywhere from 80 to 90 percent.
In the face of those odds, many have grown despondent at the idea that a New Year’s resolution can make a difference and choose not to make one. But that doesn’t help much either. A notable study in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, published in 2002, found that New Year’s resolvers — people who actually tried to fix things — reported a higher rate of success in changing a life problem, than “nonresolvers.” Only 4 percent of the latter group managed that feat.
The study noted that the “successful resolvers employed more cognitive-behavioral processes” than the nonresolvers or, as they are more commonly known, “brain hacks.”
More here.