With the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025 comes the time for many of us to make New Year’s resolutions and, if we’re being honest, likely forget about them within a few weeks’ time. Setting goals for the new year certainly isn’t a new idea—in fact, it is a tradition dating back to as early as ancient Babylon. But for such a longstanding tradition, why is it so difficult for us to adhere to our own expectations for ourselves? Are New Year’s resolutions an obsolete idea or can they actually hold merit in the lives of younger generations?
According to a 2024 survey by Pew Research, adults aged 18-29 were the most likely age group to set New Year’s resolutions, with the likelihood decreasing in the results from older generations. Perhaps this is due to a lack of success in completing New Year’s resolutions as someone grows older.
As a college student, I am quite familiar with the process of setting goals for myself, at least academically, whether they be to adhere to deadlines, to expand my extracurricular activities, to be more outgoing, etcetera. However, I am not a person who makes New Year’s resolutions. In a short survey conducted among some of my peers, around forty percent said that they do indeed set goals for the new year, though only about seven percent uphold or keep them as the year goes on. Why is this the case and what can be done to change this?
Setting goals can certainly be effective, but there need to be some guidelines regarding what they might have to look like in order for goal-setters to actually be motivated to maintain their expectations for themselves. I find that a key aspect of a successful and motivating resolution is specificity. A goal needs to be not only attainable but measurable and finite. A goal setter needs to have something actually achievable to work towards, if even just to be able to say to themself confidently: “yes, I did this.” For example, instead of saying something like: “I want to write more in the new year,” a more productive and motivating goal could be something like: “I want to write two pages recreationally per week.” This way a goal-setter is able to experience the reward of having actually accomplished something tangible and they will have an achievement to be proud of. People, myself and other college students included, use deadlines all the time to motivate themselves at work and in school, so why not apply them to personal goals as well?
The act of writing a New Year’s resolution is certainly not obsolete or without value—desire for personal growth and self-improvement is an incredibly important quality to have, and setting goals can certainly reflect a person’s respect for themself and others. Despite this, though, I believe there needs to be a change in the way resolutions are approached in the coming years, with an emphasis on creating specific and attainable goals that will feel satisfactory and rewarding to complete.
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