Why 90% of New Year's resolutions fail (and what to do to succeed)
The 3 key factors that keep them in the 10%
🏷️ Categories: Habits, Behavior, Continuous improvement.
Most people who decide to change at the beginning of the new year fail.
Between 80% and 90% of resolutions are abandoned, many of them before February even ends. This is not an exaggeration—it’s what decades of psychological research show. If you took advantage of this time to change, the odds are not in your favor.
And it’s not because you don’t want it badly enough.
Every January, the same thing happens. Millions of people start motivated, with the feeling that this time it will work. For a few weeks, it does… and then, without realizing it, they fall back into their old habits (Norcross & Vangarelli, 1988).
How is this possible?
The classic narrative is broken.
We were told that change depends on discipline or willpower, but psychology shows something else: daily behavior responds far more to environment and automatic processes than to conscious intentions (Lally et al., 2009). That’s why we fail even when we know what we should be doing.
The problem isn’t the person—it’s the system they’re using to change.
And here are 3 keys to achieving real change in January—or at any time of the year…
1. Define the daily habit with precision
Goals give you direction, but habits take you there.
Every day, you need to be clear about the actions required to fulfill your habit. If you chase a result without designing the daily behavior that produces it, you rely on motivation—and that feels like rowing against the current until exhaustion.
Results arrive when the daily ritual becomes automatic.
Schedule: Define a specific time to perform the habit.
Place: Define where the habit will take place.
Simple rules: Define what “enough” means to count the habit as completed, or the steps needed to do it.
Decide in advance: The clearer everything is before you start, the better. For example, if you want to improve your diet, design a varied diet you actually enjoy, with multiple options for each day of the week. This allows you to focus on eating well and avoids the mental fatigue of deciding every day what to buy and cook.
And here is the most important key: change only one thing at a time.
Choose one. Just one. Ideally, one that creates a domino effect on the rest. When that habit becomes natural for you, you can add another—and maintain both. Then three, and so on.
Let’s move to the next key…
2. Create an incredibly small habit
The perfect habit is the one you can’t refuse.
A very common reason for quitting is starting too big. Ambitious goals require a lot of activation energy and create too much friction with our current lifestyle, which is why change feels so hard. But when a habit is tiny, it flies under the radar (Babauta, 2021).
Small habits don’t intimidate—and that’s why they get repeated effortlessly.
The initial goal is not progress. You don’t need to transform by February. Habits have overwhelming power in the long term. Right now, what matters is building consistency. Repeating something easy every day is infinitely more powerful than doing something heroic for a week and quitting because it’s unsustainable.
Every repetition is a brick in the new version of yourself you’re building.
First, you become consistent. Then, you improve.
Forming a habit can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months, depending on the person and the habit—be patient. And if you miss a day for some reason, don’t worry. Missing one day doesn’t ruin the process. Quitting does.
The key is not perfection—it’s consistency.
3. The environment is crucial
If you don’t change the context, you won’t change the outcome.
Your current habits don’t exist by accident. Many of them are learned responses to the environment around you. Same spaces, same cues, same temptations produce the same behaviors as always.
The environment decides for us more often than we realize.
That’s why sabotage is usually silent.
The phone next to the bed. Constant notifications. Visible food. Spaces associated with distraction. None of this seems serious on its own—but it all adds up. And it all pulls you in the wrong direction. It’s like running with extra weight.
The solution is to change the environment.
This point is so important that I didn’t want to leave it at just a few sentences. That’s why I dedicated an entire article to it some time ago. There, I explain calmly and step by step how to redesign your environment so that the right habit becomes inevitable and the wrong one becomes uncomfortable. If you feel you rely too much on willpower, start there.
When the environment pushes you where you want to go, everything flows.
The real goal isn’t changing in January
The real goal is that this still works in March, August, next year, and beyond.
Real change is boring, slow, and repetitive. That’s why fewer than 1% manage to sustain it—and why playing the long game gives you an immediate advantage. While everyone else looks for shortcuts, you’re building a new identity that will take you further than you imagine.
And it all comes from repeating one simple habit every day—flowing with the process and enjoying it.
Start today.
Define the habit.
Start in a small version.
Design a supportive environment.
Time is on your side. Next year, you’ll thank yourself for having started this year.
2026 will be incredible.
Want to go deeper? Here are 3 related ideas to explore further:
Activation energy: How to start any habit (even when you’re tired)
The psychological technique that doubles your chances of achieving goals
How to create an environment that drives you (and stop relying on motivation)
✍️ Your turn: One year from now, what small habit would you be grateful you started today—even if it seems insignificant?
💭 Quote of the day: “Small, smart choices + consistency + time = radical difference.” — Darren Hardy, The Compound Effect
See you next time! 👋
References 📚
Babauta, L. (2021). The Habit Guide: Zen Habits’ Effective Habit Methods + Solutions: Zen Habits’.
Lally, P., Van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2009). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal Of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998-1009. URL
Norcross, J. C., & Vangarelli, D. J. (1988). The resolution solution: Longitudinal examination of New Year’s change attempts. Journal Of Substance Abuse, 1(2), 127-134. URL
Norcross, J. C., Mrykalo, M. S., & Blagys, M. D. (2002). Auld lang Syne: Success predictors, change processes, and self‐reported outcomes of New Year’s resolvers and nonresolvers. Journal Of Clinical Psychology, 58(4), 397-405. URL
Solid breakdown of why the environmental piece is what actually carries behavior change. The progression from tiny habit to consistency to improvement mirrors what the longitudinal data shows, that transformation happens in plateaus rather than steady climbs. What's underappreciated here is how activation energy compounds when you're trying multiple changes simultaneously,the friction just piles up and crashes the whole system. Shrinking the habit until its frictionless is prob the most practical takeway.
This article and the one your mentioned have been key to helping me discipline my piano practice sessions. I'm getting closer to a daily habit and weekly prograss. Thank you.
Also, I want to practice and learn my Spanish (learned in grade school). Is there some way I can translate your articles to the Spanish version? Thank you.