Our Position: New Year’s Resolutions are overhyped, unachievable, and impractical.

You wake on Jan. 1, with your mind set on one thing: the gym. “One day or day one,” you tell yourself. Your aspirations for a healthier lifestyle are now in place. Today and henceforth, you will strengthen your body to levels never fathomed before. “New year, new me.” Right?
Wrong. You couldn’t be more wrong. The month commences, and your progress has been mediocre at best. But that’s normal, right? But by Feb. 1, the last thing you want to do is go to the gym. You stay home, procrastinate, and the motivation fizzles into oblivion with millions of other resolutions executed unfaithfully across the planet.
If it makes you feel better, you are not the only one. According to a 2023 Forbes study, only about 21% of resolutions last longer than six months. Additionally, 31% of resolutions are dropped within two months. So, why do New Year’s resolutions, such a staple of the holiday, fail most of the time?
To answer this question, we need to examine examples of resolutions that we claim to make every year. According to the study, the top resolution is to “Improve Fitness,” followed by “Improve Finances,” “Improve Mental Health,” and “Lose Weight.” But one of the main problems with these intentions is not what they are, but how they are said.
For example, if someone asked you what your resolution for 2026 was, and you said “Improve Fitness,” it probably wouldn’t last the week. Your goal should be incredibly more specific than that. Because generally, you are not changing anything.
Those types of goals are practically unattainable. But specificity in your resolutions is not helpful either. Goals like “Go to the gym five days a week,” when you have never been to the gym before, leave absolutely no room for error. Most concrete goals are unrealistic:your brain is likely to resist sudden changes, thus making it difficult to stick with them. Unrealistic goals can lead to frustration and disappointment when they are not achieved.
When a resolution fails, a person’s immediate response is a lack of motivation. For example, a person trying to improve fitness will likely give up on their resolution entirely after one missed workout, derailing positive outcome in their life.
You may say your goal is specific enough to succeed, but broad enough to attain. That you’re 100% committed to your resolution, and failure is never an option. But why are you doing these goals in the first place? According to psychologists, it’s mostly societal pressure. We’ve all been asked what our New Year’s Resolution was, and it would feel shameful to claim you didn’t have one.
So now, we can add in societal pressure to the long list of reasons our New Year’s resolutions fail, in addition to unachievable goal setting and the negative effects on mental health after failure. Are these resolutions truly beneficial to us, or actually harmful and possibly self-destructive? Conforming to societal norms is generally unhelpful for personal identity, mental and social health, and humanity’s overall progress. And that is NOT an overstatement. Science proves that the oh-so-popular resolutions set on the first day of every year by millions upon millions around the world are societal drawbacks. These resolutions should be implemented thoughtfully and carefully, with consideration of personal values and achievability. Bettering ourselves as people should never be limited to one day of the year.

Staff Vote: 17-6