New Year’s resolutions rarely work, neuroscientist says: Try this smarter method
Towards the end of the year, many of us are aiming for ambitious, concrete goals, like cutting our screen time in half or running three miles every morning.
This approach often backfires, according to neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff, PhD.
Linear goals like this are popular because they give people “the illusion of certainty,” according to Le Cunff. “Little Experiments: How to Live Free in a Goal-Obsessed World.”
“They make us feel like we’re in control because we think if we have a clear vision and a clear plan and we execute that plan, we’ll be successful,” he tells CNBC Make It.
But real life rarely sticks to our best-laid plans, which is why so many people repeat New Year’s resolutions “over and over again, year after year,” without making progress, he says.
Instead, he recommends approaching your goals with an “experimental mindset.” Just as scientists collect data and use the results to inform their next choices, “you can do the same for your career and life in general.”
If you’re hoping to start a new routine this year, Le Cunff recommends doing “little experiments” with habits you want to try, rather than setting big, unrealistic goals.
How to create a ‘little experiment’?
According to Le Cunff, small experiments follow a very simple formula: “I will [do X action] for [Y duration]”
Some examples might be: “I will write 250 words every day for two weeks” or “I will go for a walk every day during my lunch break for a month.”
One of Le Cunff’s favorites is: “I won’t bring my phone into my bedroom for a week.”
According to Le Cunff, a good small experiment meets four criteria: It must be “purposeful, feasible, continuous and traceable.”
To be purposeful, the experiment should involve something you are “deeply curious about,” says Le Cunff, and an actionable experiment is one you can carry out “with your currently available resources.”
He explains that it’s crucial to run the experiment consistently to collect enough data, and that monitoring your consistency will help you determine how well the experiment is working for you.
The important thing, says Le Cunff, is to “defer judgment until you’ve finished running your experiment.” try something new It may be uncomfortable, but it’s part of the process.
After the experiment is over, you can decide whether you want to incorporate this action into your daily life. “You can actually use experiments as a gateway to discover new habits that work for you,” says Le Cunff.
Why does this approach work?
Le Cunff says most of us tend to “always gravitate towards the bigger, more impressive, more ambitious version of a goal,” but this mindset has many pitfalls. First, long-term goals such as “I will workout every day this year” or “I will read a book a week” are often “It’s too overwhelming or unrealistic.”
Announcing your impressive goal to other people gives your brain a “big hit of dopamine,” but paradoxically it can reduce your motivation to achieve the goal, says Le Cunff. After all, “We’ve already had the reward of people saying to us, ‘Wow, you’re so strong, you’re so ambitious.'”
By contrast, telling others, “I’m going to run twice a week for a month” may sound less impressive than saying, “I’m going to run every day for the next year,” but “then you actually get that very healthy dopamine at the end of actually doing that thing,” says Le Cunff.
Small experiments help people move from a results-based mindset to a curious, investigative mindset. From this perspective, he says, “Success is not about reaching a certain milestone that you have defined in advance. Success is about learning something new.”
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