It’s that time of the year when people set their new year resolutions. Most of these are health-related: losing weight, quitting smoking, reducing alcohol dependence, eating better or meditating. Everyone knows that failure rate of such personal goals is high. But psychologists are a curious bunch and wanted to be sure of that. In an experiment, they tracked people’s new year resolutions and discovered that only 40% reported sticking to their yearly goals by the end of six months.
I find this high failure rate for new year resolutions utterly fascinating. How can someone fail at achieving a goal that depends solely on their own actions? If your goal is to lose weight, why not simply start eating foods with less carbohydrates? Of course, intuitively we know that achieving personal goals isn’t as simple as that. Even the staunchest believers in free will fail at quitting smoking. ...