Why We Always Give Up on Resolutions, and How We Can Stop

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Have you ever said, with grit and determination, that you are going to do something—lose weight, quit smoking, exercise more—only to then give up? Have you heard your friends say the same and then watched them slide back to their old ways?

Ever made a resolution that’s come to nothing?

Such failures are more common than successes. Even though failing to carry out our own wishes causes personal distress, and feelings of failure and unhappiness, it is human. Even though unfulfilled promises and intentions cost companies and countries millions in lost efficiency, lost trust, health and social plans, these failings perpetuate.

The reason why people give up or fail to carry through on their intentions is one of the conundrums of our time. Despite having a unique consciousness that enables us to monitor our own behavior, humans still often fail to put into action that which we intended. Behavior change experts have attempted to identify the real barriers to change, and to articulate what we need to do make the changes we want (and often need), but the answers still elude them.

What really stands in the way of us getting what we want? Below I suggest 3 key barriers and 3 positive ways to make desired changes stick.

3 big barriers to change:

1. The Knowing-Doing Gap. Research shows clearly that information and knowledge are not enough to bring about change. For example in the USA and the UK the governments have spent billions disseminating food and nutrition advice. Yet obesity is now reaching epidemic proportions. Most overweight people know what they need to do to lose weight, but people do not behave according to what they know. or what is rational and sensible. This is because knowledge systems and doing systems are run by different brain processes.
2. The willpower issue. Willpower is overrated. At best willpower is weak and limited and any change that requires the long-term application of it will fail, except for a few people. Roy F. Baumeister’s research at Florida State University shows that—at best—willpower is a limited resource. In my view, U.S. policy in behavior change places far too much emphasis on developing willpower and it’s usefulness, for real world behavior change has been overrated. Willpower is too easily hijacked by more pleasurable behaviors or by old habits. It weakens over the course of the day and is unavailable at times of greatest need because of emotional and cognitive demands drawing on the same resources. I am convinced it makes no sense to try to improve willpower in order to bring about change: It will fail for most people most of the time.
3. We are all habit machines. A great deal of human behavior is habitual or automatic. The brain is a habit machine and operates on a need-to-know basis, and most of the time it decides you don’t need to know about your behaviors. Neuroscience research by Anna Greybiel of MIT has shown that chains of behaviors become "chunked" into long chains over time. They become chained together as one habit. I have called this the HabitWeb. These habits easily override conscious control mechanisms (willpower). So even if a person knows what they should do, most are likely to continue doing what they have habitually done before or are unconsciously driven to do. Hence Fletcher’s 90% Rule—about 90% of people’s good intentions fail because of the power of habits. Sure, some people can beat their habits in the short-term, but most are on autopilot much of the time.

What can we do to bring about effective change? 3 main ingredients are essential:

1. Small steps. Make sure that any required changes are broken down into bite-sized behaviors. Most people cannot make big changes and take huge behavioral leaps—old habits get in the way. Eat the elephant one piece at a time.

The Do Something Different technique incorporates this approach. People feel released when a big change is cut down to manageable change pieces, even for something as abstract as employee engagement. In a global corporate client, changes in employee stress levels alone produced benefits equivalent to more than the net profit levels of the group—6.2% of staff costs, as opposed to a net profit level of 4.9%. In another application of this small changes approach the same techniques applied to happiness (see Do Happiness) produced great personal benefits in happiness, and anxiety and depression levels of people in all walks of life around the world.

2. Integrate knowing and doing in the real world: MAKE IT REAL. It is necessary to make sure any desired changes needed are actioned or done—not just known or learned. The human brain is dependent on the context of the learning, and the situation in which it is carried out. Contextualized learning happens in the real world—in the workplace, on the job, or at home, not in a distant classroom. If people only learn what they should do, or think about good ideas and practices, they often fall into what I call the Thinking Trap—they fail to do what is actually needed to bring about the positive change. Sometimes people don’t actually do the small steps because they think they know already what will happen (and so assume it is not worth doing), or they think there could be no real benefit from doing the small actions. But there are always unexpected experiences from doing something different. Guaranteed.

In one big company, Do Something Different was deployed to develop digital leadership behaviors. This integrating learning within the job produced over 28% increase in new digital strategy behaviors among the staff. Previously knowledge-based training alone had had a negligible effect on actual changes in work practices. By sending them a text or an email telling them one change they could make, what they knew could be translated into what they could actually do.

3. Break habits by expanding behavioral flexibility. To bring about change, you have to break habits and disrupt the long habit chains that make us run on autopilot. Without this, people will snap back to old ways. To modify brain mechanisms, you need to do new things, not just think them. Actions change the brain mechanisms that can bring about further changes in behavior. Thinking does not. (In an earlier blog I described the link between behavioral flexibility and weight loss.)

My research shows that people who are more behaviorally flexible are likely to be more effective at their job. And they are much less likely to be stressed because they can have the tools to cope with a wider range of situations. The same job or life situation looks very different to the behaviorally flexible person than to someone with a narrow personality range. The flexible person has a larger toolbox to deal with the world.

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Our personality can be a prison and a real barrier to our change and development. Many companies fail to see the importance of increasing behavioral flex. We need to expand personality—to help someone who is predominantly assertive to experiment with being non-assertive, or someone who is risk averse to try taking a small risk.

Why does this approach work? And what does it mean for those who never manage to follow through their good intentions? I believe that most people cannot think—other than reflect—without the kick of action and doing. So how can we expect to change fundamentally how we behave just by trying to alter how we see things? Behavior has to be the lever to change behavior—and thinking, too.

We know some scientists and philosophers believe that consciousness is unique to humans, distinguishing us from other animals. According to this view, having conscious thought affords a person control over his or her actions. The evidence suggests otherwise: Either we humans are more animal than we think, or our ability to think has been given too much importance by our egocentric minds.