The short answer
- Most resolutions don’t fail. In a 2020 Swedish experiment with 1,066 participants, 55% of those followed up said they were still succeeding a year later.
- Word your resolution as something to do (“walk 20 minutes”) rather than something to avoid (“stop sitting all day”): 58.9% success versus 47.1% in the same study.
- The group asked to name one support person did better than the others (62.3%).
- Pick one resolution, break it into a daily or weekly action, and log each time you do it.
- Plan for slip-ups in advance. A missed day doesn’t undo anything; quitting after it does.
What the research actually says
You’ll often read that “80% of resolutions fail by February” or “only 8% of people keep them.” We couldn’t trace either figure to a peer-reviewed study. The two most solid pieces of research on resolutions tell a more hopeful, and more useful, story.
Norcross, Mrykalo and Blagys (2002). These US psychologists followed 159 people who made a New Year’s resolution and 123 people who wanted to change the same kind of problem but made no resolution, interviewing them by phone for six months. At six months, 46% of the resolvers were continuously successful, against 4% of the non-resolvers. The most common goals were weight loss, starting an exercise programme and quitting smoking. What predicted success, measured before 1 January: confidence in being able to change, the skills to do it, and readiness.
Oscarsson, Carlbring, Andersson and Rozental (2020). This experiment, published in PLOS ONE, randomly assigned 1,066 people to three groups and surveyed 730 of them a year later. The most common resolutions concerned physical health (33%), weight loss (20%) and eating habits (13%). Overall, 55% of respondents rated themselves as successful.
Two caveats. Success was self-reported (in the 2020 study, participants had to rate their own success at 70% or more), and nobody checked the actual behaviour. And in the 2002 study, people who make resolutions weren’t randomly chosen; they may simply have been more motivated to begin with. So you can’t say the resolution caused the success. What the numbers do show is that a change started at New Year is far from doomed.
Why so many resolutions stall by February
Those studies, and the wider research on habits, point to four common causes.
- A vague goal. “Get fit” doesn’t say what, when or how much. On a tired evening, nothing settles the question of whether to go.
- A goal framed as avoidance. “Stop snacking” asks you to police a craving all day without saying what to do instead. The 2020 study measured the gap: 47.1% success for avoidance goals versus 58.9% for approach goals, a statistically significant difference (p = .002).
- Too many resolutions at once. Exercise, saving, sleep and screen time all compete for attention in the same January weeks.
- No record of progress. Without tracking, you notice neither the small wins nor the week that slips.
Getting started is rarely the problem. The new year gives a genuine boost, the “fresh start effect” we cover in our guide on how to get motivated. But that boost helps you begin, not keep going.
Rewrite your resolution: from “stop” to “do”
The most practical lesson from the 2020 study fits in one rule: turn every ban into an action. Same intention, different sentence.
| Avoidance resolution | Same intention, as an approach goal |
|---|---|
| Stop snacking at night | Have fruit or yoghurt ready for 9 pm |
| Stop wasting money | Move $50 into savings every Friday |
| Less scrolling in bed | Phone on the kitchen counter at 10:30 pm, then read 10 pages |
| Stop sitting all day | Walk for 20 minutes after lunch, three times a week |
| Stop paying bills late | Check due dates on the 1st of every month |
Stop snacking at night
Same intention, as an approach goalHave fruit or yoghurt ready for 9 pm
Stop wasting money
Same intention, as an approach goalMove $50 into savings every Friday
Less scrolling in bed
Same intention, as an approach goalPhone on the kitchen counter at 10:30 pm, then read 10 pages
Stop sitting all day
Same intention, as an approach goalWalk for 20 minutes after lunch, three times a week
Stop paying bills late
Same intention, as an approach goalCheck due dates on the 1st of every month
Every line in the right-hand column has an action you can see, a set moment and a quantity. That’s what research on implementation intentions recommends: in a meta-analysis of 94 tests, Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran (2006) found a medium-to-large effect (d = 0.65) from “when X happens, I will do Y” plans.
For habits you genuinely want to drop (smoking, sugar, screens), the approach framing still helps: you replace rather than remove. Our guide on how to break a bad habit walks through that replacement method.
One resolution, broken into small steps
A year-long resolution is too big to track as it stands. Break it into three levels.
- The goal for the year: “£1,200 in my emergency fund by 31 December.”
- The monthly milestone: £100 a month, or £1,200 over twelve months.
- The weekly action: move £25 every Friday. A month with four Fridays gives you £100; months with five put you slightly ahead.
The 2020 study adds an honest caveat here. The group taught to set SMART goals and six interim goals across the year did not do better than the control group (52.5% versus 55.9%). Breaking a goal down isn’t magic. Its real job is to make today’s action obvious and easy to tick off. Keep it simple: one action, one day, one amount.
If your resolution is about money, our guide on how much to save each month helps you pick a realistic figure.
Get support: the study’s clearest result
In the 2020 experiment, the “some support” group got information on why support matters, was asked to name a support person, received one email on handling setbacks, and was checked on monthly. It was the only group that did significantly better than both others: 62.3%.
In practice:
- choose one person rather than a whole group, and tell them your exact action (“walk 20 minutes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday”);
- agree on a regular check-in, such as a message every Sunday;
- if you share the resolution (saving for a trip, cutting food delivery), track it in one place you can both see.
Track your progress and plan for slip-ups
Tracking progress is one of the best-studied strategies there is. In 2016, Benjamin Harkin and colleagues pooled 138 randomised studies with nearly 20,000 participants: interventions that got people to monitor their progress improved goal attainment (d = 0.40), and the effect was stronger when progress was physically recorded or shared with others.
Slip-ups are normal. In Phillippa Lally’s 2010 study of habit formation, missing one opportunity had no noticeable effect on the habit forming. The real risk is the “well, that’s ruined” reaction that makes you give up after one lapse. Decide your rule now: “If I miss a day, I start again the next day, with no catching up.” Plan rest days too, so they don’t break your streak.
And forget the 21-day myth: Lally’s study found a median of 66 days for a behaviour to become automatic, with wide differences between people. Our article on how long it takes to form a habit has the details.
✓ done · ★ joker (planned rest day) · empty: missed
Keeping resolutions with Binome360
In Binome360, you state your resolution in one sentence, typed or spoken. Your assistant drafts the habit, savings goal or reminder, and nothing is saved until you confirm. Each evening, a message asks whether you did it; you reply in a few words and your streak updates.
This year I want to put $25 aside every Friday to reach $1,200 by December, and walk for 20 minutes after lunch three times a week
Here’s the draft. A savings goal “Emergency fund” of $1,200 by 31 December, with a reminder every Friday to log your $25. And a habit “Walk 20 min” on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with an evening check-in. Save them?
You can change the amount, days or time before confirming.
Try Binome360 for freeSay what you want to do; your assistant drafts the habit or goal and you confirm.
- Habits created in one sentence, including habits you want to quit
- An evening message so you can check in with a few words
- Streaks with jokers for planned rest days
- Savings goals with an amount, a date and a progress bar
- A shared assistant to keep a resolution with someone else
A shared assistant maps directly onto the 2020 study’s clearest finding: your support person sees the same habits or goal, and each of you checks in from your own phone.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of New Year’s resolutions succeed?
In Oscarsson and colleagues’ 2020 study, 55% of the 730 people surveyed said they were succeeding a year later. In Norcross’s 2002 study, 46% of resolvers were still succeeding after six months. Both figures are self-reported, not measured by researchers.
What are the most common New Year’s resolutions?
In the 2020 study, physical health (33% of resolutions), weight loss (20%) and eating habits (13%) came top, followed by personal growth (9%). In the 2002 study, weight loss, exercise and quitting smoking led the list.
Do I have to wait until January to make a resolution?
No. The start of a week, a month or a birthday gives the same kind of boost. What matters afterwards is the wording, the tracking and the support, not the start date.
How many resolutions should I make?
No study gives an ideal number. In practice, starting with one, tracking it for a few weeks and then adding a second lowers the risk of dropping everything at once.
In short
A resolution holds up better when it describes an action to take rather than a thing to avoid, when someone supports you, and when you log each time you do it. Slip-ups are part of the process; only quitting after one really counts.
First step: take your main resolution and rewrite it today as one sentence that says what, when and how much.
Sources
- Martin Oscarsson, Per Carlbring, Gerhard Andersson and Alexander Rozental, “A large-scale experiment on New Year’s resolutions: Approach-oriented goals are more successful than avoidance-oriented goals”, PLOS ONE, 15(12), e0234097, 2020: journals.plos.org.
- John C. Norcross, Marci S. Mrykalo and Matthew D. Blagys, “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, 2002: doi.org/10.1002/jclp.1151.
- Peter M. Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran, “Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes”, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 2006: doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1.
- Benjamin Harkin et al., “Does monitoring goal progress promote goal attainment? A meta-analysis of the experimental evidence”, Psychological Bulletin, 142(2), 2016: doi.org/10.1037/bul0000025.
- Phillippa Lally et al., “How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world”, European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 2010: doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.674.
- Hengchen Dai, Katherine L. Milkman and Jason Riis, “The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior”, Management Science, 60(10), 2014: doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2014.1901.
Also available in Français.