Revealed: How to Actually Follow Through with Your Resolutions

Over the last few years, I’ve come to a pretty firm conclusion…

…We (humans), suck at sticking to our New Years resolutions.

I’m sorry but it’s true.

Hands up if you’ve ever vowed to start a diet/training regime /assignment etc. tomorrow or on Monday (because that’s when all good habits are formed)?

Keep your mental hand raised if come Monday you find yourself on the couch watching Brooklyn Nine Nine repeats . ( It's so damn good!)

Or how about when you’re trying to lose the love handles. You’re invited to a friends BBQ and you have all the intentions of keeping it light.

Hitting some lean steak and salad. Maybe you even brought a lower calorie salad with you. But when you’re staring down a perfectly organised pyramid of sausages, an esky of chilled beers, and the fancy sweet potato crisps are stationed right in front of you…

We all know what happens.

If you’ve never experienced the above scenario or something similar, then you’re kidding yourself. We've all been that guy/girl in some way or another. Or you’re an android.

The act of not following through with our intentions isn’t a new-age occurrence. Greek philosophers such as  Aristotle and Socrates talked of this issue. 

They called it Akrasia.

Akrasia = the state of acting against your better judgement. 

It’s when you do one thing even though you know you should do something else. Akrasia is what prevents you from following through on what you set out to do.

So what causes Akrasia?

While it’s unlikely that there is a single cause, one explanation for our continual battle with akrasia is due to “delay discounting”, also known as “time-inconsistency” in behavioural economics.

Delay discounting refers to the human tendency to discount the benefits or risks of a decision the further it is from the present time. That our preferences change on a subject depending on when exactly we make that decision.

For example.

If I were to offer you $100 now, or $150 in 12 months time, which would you choose?

The majority of people would take the $100 now despite the future reward being greater.

This is because we tend to value immediate gratification more than future rewards.

We tend to think that how we feel in the present is how we'll feel in the future. In reality, this is rarely the case. A study in 2009 investigated this phenomenon with individuals  online grocery shopping.

Specifically, they looked at how decisions made for tomorrow or a week in the future differ. What they found was that customers spent less total money when they ordered one week in the future compared to for the next day. Secondly, they found that for every day in advance of the delivery (further in the future), customers spent more on what they classified as 'should eat' items (vegetables etc.) and less on 'want' items (ice cream, pastries etc.).

Their data strengthened the evidence to suggest that humans behave more impulsively the sooner their decisions will take effect.

Here's another hypothetical for you.

If at the start of the semester uni students were offered a deal where they could pay $50 to take the exam one day later, how many do you think would pay? Anyone whose spent time at Uni knows that few students would likely pay this at that time. Now imagine the night before the exam. How many do you think would pay three times that amount to have an extra day of cramming? 

A lot more I'd wager.

So our current self may not feel the same as our 2-weeks from now self or our six months from now self.

So how do we increase our likelihood of actually following through with our good intentions?

1) Commitment Devices.

Commitment devices are strategies that help improve your behaviour by either increasing the obstacles or costs of bad behaviours or reducing the effort required for good behaviours. 

A useful commitment device increases your awareness of the long-term consequences of not following through with your intentions or the reward of taking action.

There is a story of the famous French author Victor Hugo, who when faced with a formidable upcoming book deadline from his publisher locked away all his clothes so that he could not socialise or leave the house.

The result? He finished The Hunchback of Notre Dame with weeks to spare.

While extreme, it had the desired effect. It forced Victor to do what was necessary and made more immediate rewards, such as shopping or going out to socialise a lot less rewarding.

More recently I discovered BeeMinder, which is a commitment device software tool. To quote their website; "Beeminder is goal-tracking with teeth. We plot your progress on a yellow brick road to your goal, and if you go off track, we take your money." 

You set a goal and create a contract that commits you to pay if you go off track (break your commitment). The true beauty is that this brings long-term consequences of breaking your pledge closer to your present. This gives it more weight and makes you less likely to miss that gym session.

Don't like the idea of paying some website/stranger? Why not team up with a friend? Just ensure that the cost/benefit to following through with your commitment is something you/they genuinely value.

To take this to the next level, I'd also add some form of objective data to ensure they're not playing you for a fool. E.g. screenshotting their Fitbit step-count at the end of each day (I realise this could still be tampered with), or their weight each morning etc.

As James Clear says…

"Find ways to automate your behaviour beforehand rather than relying on willpower in the moment. Be the architect of your future actions, not the victim of them."

2) Use episodic future thinking (EFT)

EFT is a fancy name for a simple exercise:

Before making a decision that pits your present self against your future self (e.g. going for a walk or chilling on the couch) imagine yourself in the future. Think of positive events in the future such as an upcoming vacation, wedding or birthday party. Try to picture the scene with as much detail as you can and imagine yourself enjoying it, the more graphic, the better.

Using EFT can increase activity in the brain region that processes abstract concepts like the future and therefore causes your brain to intuitively consider the future more in its decision-making process. Research shows that this can reduce the intake of energy dense, tempting foods by up to 30%.

3) Reduce the friction to action

It's not doing the work that's hard; it's getting started. Focusing on reducing the friction to getting started is often the most critical step in developing healthy habits.

Struggling to wake up in the morning to go for a run?

Get your running clothes ready the night before, so all you have to do is get changed and go.

Trying to make better food choices but finding you don't have the energy to cook after a long day at work? Plan a weekly menu, pre-cook some healthy meals or have a few fail-safe quick and easy meal options to go to when you can't be screwed.

There you have it.

You now know why we suck at following through with our intentions. You should also now have strategies to increase the likelihood of sticking to health related goals. Now it’s up to you to take action.

Just thinking about things doesn’t get achieve anything. You have to take that first step. Take a a risk and invest in your future self.