New Year, Better You: Building Habits That Stick
New Year, Better You: Building Habits That Stick
New Year, Better You: A fresh start brings endless possibilities! Let’s kick off this year by focusing on building habits that last—habits that empower you, inspire growth, and lead to a healthier, happier you. Together, we’ll make 2024 your best year yet!
- Try to find a fun way to pursue your goals.
“We persist on new behaviors for far longer when we enjoy them, but we rarely think about how to pursue good habits in a fun way,” says Milkman. To make habits more fun, she recommends “temptation building,” or letting yourself enjoy a temptation while completing a chore. “For instance, only let yourself binge-watch your favorite tv show while working out at the gym. Or only let yourself listen to your favorite podcast while doing household chores. Or only pop your favorite bottle of wine while cooking a healthy meal.”
- Break your goal down into bite-sized parts and make specific plans.
“Instead of saying ‘I’ll exercise more next year,’ make a plan to exercise four hours each week by going for a run at 7 a.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday,” suggests Milkman.
- Enlist the help of a friend, or accountability partner.
“When we team up with others, we have more fun pursuing our goals and we’re accountable to someone, which increases the pressure on us to succeed,” she suggests. “By advising friends with similar goals when they run into road bumps, we also actually help ourselves build confidence and competence, according to research led by Lauren Eskreis-Winkler.”
- Set up a commitment contract.
As for getting rid of bad habits once and for all, Milkman recommends a “commitment contract,” such as putting money on the line that you’ll have to forfeit if you fail to achieve your goals. In a study by Dean Karlan, a professor of economics and finance at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and collaborators, they found that such contracts led to a 30% higher quit rate for people who wanted to give up smoking than only offering people standard smoking cessation tools.