The key is not to have a goal but a path

We face the end of the year and arrive at January full of energy and new purposes for the new year. I’m sorry to be a little “Grinch” in this matter, but the problem is that a large part of those purposes deflate a few weeks later, often before the end of February. Gyms and language academies are witnesses of this.

How do those people who manage to maintain their goals for months and even years do it? The answer is that they do not depend on a heroic willpowerbut rather a system that turns purpose into a routine that you want to repeat.

The data from a study carried out by researchers from the University of Stockholm and Linköping (Sweden) with 200 people leaves no room for doubt: 77% of the participants fulfilled their resolutions in the first week, 55% kept it a month later and only 40% of the participants remained faithful to their commitment after six months. Other analyzes show that up to 43% of resolutions have been broken by the second week of February.

Why resolutions wither in February

Like a deciduous tree, the motivational effect of New Year’s resolutions loses its initial momentum in a maximum of five weeks. Science speaks of “fresh start effect“, in which dates like January 1 act as a “clean slate”, a new stage that motivates us to initiate a change. That initial emotion serves as an initial impulse, but it is not enough when the novelty wears off and the daily routine returns.

Many times, resolutions are seen as a test of willpower: if you stumble once, you feel like you have failed completely, and that brings guilt and abandonment. Studies at the University of Scranton indicate that 46% of people with a clear purpose feel successful after six months, but only 4% achieve it without setting that well-defined objective, which shows that having a clear goal helps, but it is not everything.

A recent study from Cornell University conducted with 2,000 adults in the United States followed their New Year’s resolutions for a year and looked at whether the motivation to achieve them came from external reasons (extrinsic motivation) or because they really liked doing it every day (intrinsic motivation). On average, external motivation obtained higher scores (6.27 out of 7) than internal motivation (5.41 out of 7). That is, external factors had more direct impact about motivation than your own willpower.

However, the Cornell researchers discovered something that did make a difference: internal motivation consistently predicted continuity success at all measurement points of the research year, while the external one did not have much influence. Those who completed their goal had 5.73 in internal motivation compared to 5.18 for those who did not. Each extra point increased the chances of success in the goal by 1.60 times.

The important thing is not the destination, it is the path

As and as I pointed out writer and leadership coach Tiffany Toombs on FastCompanythe most productive people do not see purpose as a fixed and distant goal, but as something flexible to create habits that fit into their daily lives and that work for them. pleasant to carry out. Instead of just obsessing about the bottom line, like “saving more money,” they look for small, daily actions that lead to an identity goal such as “becoming more responsible with money.”

To help you on that path, James Clear, author of the bestselling ‘Atomic habits‘, gives some keys to convert those purposes into habits integrated into your routine daily that no longer require effort to make, but rather become almost a reward.

For example, choose exercises in which, far from suffering, you have fun. You hate monotonous weights, so sign up for Zumba or a guided class, which will make you return to the gym with enthusiasm. If pedaling for a long time seems boring, put on a cool audiobook or a podcast while you train.

The key, according to Clear, is finding the system that allows you maintain consistency through activators that lead you to fulfill that habit. The same applies to eating better or saving: integrating small changes into your daily life that provide you immediate satisfaction. If you have to use willpower, it means that you have not integrated enough incentives to turn that purpose into a routine and you are among that 43% who will abandon their purpose in mid-February.

In Xataka | You don’t need more hours in the day. All you need is to understand how the brain works to work better with less.

Image | Unsplash (Tim Mossholder)