An Economist’s Guide to Making New Year’s Resolutions
You’ll have a better chance of meeting your goals for 2024 if you honestly analyze their costs and benefits.
What will be the new year’s costs and benefits?
Photographer: Armend Nimani/AFP
If you’re planning on setting a New Year’s resolution, you’re in good company. Surveys suggest that about one-third of Americans outline one or more goals for the new year. The problem is that only about 1 in 10 can stick with them.
So how do you make a resolution that will stick? The first step is to apply a core principle of economics: You should do things only when the benefits exceed the costs. That may seem obvious, so the trick is in the systematic thinking which ensures that you follow through with this obvious advice. That means breaking down larger, more general goals into a smaller, more concrete ones. Instead of resolving to “exercise more,” for example, ask yourself how much you would benefit if you spent another 15 minutes a week exercising.