Why New Year's Resolutions Fail & How to Make Them Stick

Written By Jacob Coffman

Every January, millions of people make promises to themselves:

  • This is the year I'll finally get in shape.

  • This is the year I'll eat better.

  • This is the year I finally address why back pain.

  • This is the year everything changes.

By February, most of those promises are either fading or already gone.

The standard blame is willpower or discipline. That people are lazy. That they just don't want it badly enough.

The truth is your resolutions aren't failing because you're lacking willpower. They're failing because they were never designed to succeed. The problem isn't you. It's how we've been taught to think about change.

Resolutions typically fail due to predictable, identifiable reasons that have nothing to do with your character and everything to do with design. Once we understand these failure points, we can build around them.

This is about moving past motivation and willpower and understanding how behavior actually works and designing your life accordingly.

Five Reasons Resolutions Fail

1. The Goal Isn't Truly Yours

There's a critical difference between a goal you've “adopted” and one you've “internalized”.

Adopted goals come from external pressure, what you think you “should” do, what sounds impressive, what someone expects. Internalized goals are connected to your identity and what genuinely matters to you.

When obstacles arrive, and they always do, adopted goals get negotiated away. "I'm too busy." "Maybe this isn't that important." "I'll start again Monday." Internalized goals face the same pressure but they don't break, because they deeply matter to you.

If your resolution feels like something you're supposed to do rather than something you genuinely want, it chance for success is much lower.

2. The Goal Is Too Vague to Follow

Even if you've internalized a goal, it can still fail if you can't define what "doing it" actually looks like.

  • I want to get healthier.

  • I'm going to exercise more.

  • I'll be more consistent with meditating this year.

These aren't goals. They're ideas.

Vague goals fail because they don't translate into action. Without a clear definition of what counts, there's no scoreboard, no trigger, no next step when life gets busy and hard.

How do you know if the goals isn’t too vague? The test is simple, can you answer "Did I do it today?" with a yes or no?

If you can’t, your goal is too vague. "Exercise more" needs to become "strength train twice per week for 30 minutes." "Eat healthier" needs to becomes "eat protein and vegetables at lunch and dinner." When you know exactly what counts, behavior becomes steerable.

3. The Plan Depends on Willpower Instead of Design

Knowing what to do is one thing. Having the capacity to do it when it matters is another.

Self-control isn't a character trait, it's a capacity that fluctuates with sleep, stress, hunger, skill, and time pressure. When you're rested and calm, willpower is easier. When you're depleted, it’s not.

If your plan is totally dependent on making the right decision at the moment of temptation, your plan is more likely to fail.

The alternative is design.

If your alarm goes off at 5am and you still have to decide what to wear, what your workout is, and how long you’re going to workout, you have a lot of decisions to make at 5am before you even step inside the gym.

Rather then making all those decisions the day of, plan ahead; put your gym clothes on the dresser the night before, don't keep junk food in the house, place your medication next to your coffee maker. Pre-planning decisions when capacity is high makes follow-through possible when your stressed, overworked, tired, and rushed for time.

You're not eliminating decisions, you're reserving your decision making energy for moments that actually require it.

4. The Environment and Habits Are Unchanged

Pre-planned actions help you start new behaviors. But they don't address why the old ones keep winning.

Old habits persist because they deliver something you need: relief from boredom, escape from stress, social connection, immediate pleasure, or the comfort of familiarity. These payoffs are fast, reliable, and woven into your daily rhythms.

Your new behavior might be "better" in the abstract, but if it doesn't provide a competing reward, or if it requires significantly more effort, the old pattern will reclaim its territory the moment you're tired, stressed, or distracted.

This is why understanding what your current habit “gives” you is essential. You're not just trying to stop something. You're trying to replace a functional solution with a better one.

If you scroll at night because it helps you wind down, going cold turkey leaves you with the same restlessness and no release valve. But if you can name the payoff, mental disengagement after a long day, you can design an alternative that gives you the same feeling: a 10-minute walk, a few pages of fiction, a simple stretching routine.

The question isn't "How do I stop the bad habit?" It's "What does this habit do for me, and how can I get that same thing in a healthier way?"

5. There's No System for Predictable Disruptions

Designing your environment handles the routine days, but what about the non-routine ones?

Most people treat disruptions as random events that require improvisation. But look at your calendar: Wednesday morning donuts at the office. Late meetings that push dinner back. Weekend travel. The week after a stressful deadline.

These aren't all random. Many of us have these predictable patterns throughout our daily life.

The problem is you're making decisions about them in the moment, when you're hungry, tired, or stressed, instead of during your weekly planning when you have capacity to think clearly.

This is the difference between a system and wishful thinking. A system anticipates where the plan will break and builds solutions before you're standing in front of the break room pastries trying to negotiate with yourself.

If Wednesday mornings have donuts, eat breakfast before you arrive and keep a protein bar in your desk as backup. Traveling next week? Decide now what your hotel room workout looks like. Client dinner Thursday? Plan beforehand what you'll order and what your Friday minimum will be.

The weekly review is where this happens: scan your calendar, identify the three situations most likely to derail you, and write specific if-then protocols for each one.

When you do miss despite planning, keep the loop alive: never miss twice, and do the minimum version within 24 hours. But most of your energy should go into prevention, not recovery.

Why You Should Start Small

You've designed your environment and planned for disruptions, but most resolutions collapse at the start. You have an idea of where you want to be and you start there.

You start with five workouts per week when you haven't exercised in months. You cut out all sugar when you've been eating dessert daily. You plan for a diet so restrictive it leaves you feeling miserable by day two. You hate being sweaty and breathless, but your first workout is high-intensity intervals. By starting where you want to be or rather too fast too soon, you set yourself up to fail. By ramping up too much too soon you're teaching yourself this new behavior is unsustainable, and your brain learns to avoid it.

Instead of starting where you want to be in six months, start at 40% of what you think you can handle. Two workouts per week instead of five. One dessert per week instead of zero. After a month, when it feels natural instead of forced, scale up.

You're not staying small. You're proving the behavior works before you add more.

Building A Plan: A Three-Part System

Understanding why resolutions fail is useful. But understanding alone doesn't change behavior.

You need a system—not a complicated one, but one that accounts for how behavior actually works.

Part 1: Make It Owned

Is this goal actually yours? Not "Did I choose it?" but "Have I connected it to something I genuinely value?"

If the answer is unclear, pause. Either find the personal connection that makes it yours, or let it go and focus on something that matters.

The clearest test: can you explain why it matters in one sentence without using the word "should"?

Part 2: Make It Measurable

Convert vague intentions into specific behaviors: what counts as done, how often, when and where it happens.

Define your capacity ladder: minimum version for bad days, standard version for normal days, optional add-on for good days. This keeps the behavior alive even when capacity drops.

Install a weekly 10-minute review: check what happened, identify the main failure point, adjust one thing about cues, friction, or timing.

Part 3: Make It Robust

Environmental design handles your routine days, but behavior doesn't break on routine days, it breaks when something changes.

Identify when your plan is most likely to break and why the old pattern wins in that moment. The old behavior delivers something real: relief, comfort, connection, escape. If your new behavior doesn't offer a competing reward in that same moment, the old one has a higher likelihood of winning when you're tired or stressed. Once you name both sides clearly, redesign becomes possible: reduce friction for the new behavior by pre-positioning what you need, increase friction for the old by removing, blocking, or delaying access.

Build protocols for predictable disruptions. Most people treat these as random events, but look at your calendar: you know traveling disrupts your routine, that weekends are chaotic, that early meetings compress your mornings. These situations aren't surprises.

The mistake is deciding what to do when you're already standing in the hotel room exhausted, or on Saturday morning with three competing priorities, or rushing out the door at 6:45am. By then, your capacity to think clearly is gone.

Instead, identify the three situations most likely to derail you this week and decide now what you'll do. Traveling Thursday? Your hotel room minimum is ten pushups before you shower. Late meeting means you'll skip your evening reading? Read for ten minutes at lunch instead. Weekend mornings too chaotic for meditation? Shift it to right after your first coffee while the house is still quiet.

You're not improvising. You're deciding with capacity so you can execute without it.

Now What?

If you've started and stopped the same resolution multiple times it could’ve been because you were working against how behavior actually functions.

The goal wasn't truly yours. It was too vague to execute. The plan depended on willpower at the worst possible moments. The old behavior kept winning because it delivered something the new one didn't. And you had no system for the disruptions you could have predicted.

Once you understand the failure points, you can build around them.

▸ Click to view Scientific References & Evidence

Motivation & Self-Determination

Goal Setting & Specificity

Self-Control & Situational Design

Habit Formation & Context

Planning & Implementation Intentions

Behavior Models & Ability

Jacob Coffman
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