Ditch Your New Year’s Resolution Day: Reasons It’s OK to Ditch Your Resolutions

Just two weeks into the new year and, according to Static Brain, only about 8% of the people who made resolutions will stick to them. Most don’t make it past the two week mark — which is probably why January 17 was designated Ditch Your New Year’s Resolution Day. In honor of the day, here are 4 reasons it’s OK to ditch your resolutions.

Unstructured Objectives It’s not enough to just set goals, you have to have an outline of how you are going to achieve the goals. For lofty goals you don’t have a method for completing — like running a marathon without having a training schedule — take it off your list and focus on goals that are a bit easier, with simple steps to accomplish them.

Impractical Ambition Research shows that the more narrow your goal, the more likely you are to succeed. Ideas like “lose weight” or “be more productive” might be too broad for you to accomplish. If there are items on your resolution list that don’t have outcomes that you can qualify or quantify, it’s OK to leave them alone this year and rework them for next year.

Too Much, Too Soon You may not be ready for a change. Habits like quitting smoking take more effort than just saying “I’m done with this.” They may require you to be emotionally and spiritually ready in order to achieve the goal. If you’re not ready, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle that requires a lot more effort and focus to get meager results, if you get results at all. If there’s anything on your list you know you’re not ready for, taking it off your list may save you a lot of stress. It’s more efficient to spend that energy on goals you’re ready to take on.

Spreading Yourself Too Thin According to researchers from Stanford University, the more resolutions you set for yourself, the less likely you are to achieve them. Our brains are not designed to multitask efficiently, so if you’re putting too many goals on your plate, you may be wasting your time trying to accomplish all of them. It’s much better to make one goal that’s minor than to get half way through ten major goals.

The Lakeside Collection has dozens of products to help you make positive changes this year — with or without resolutions! Whether you’re looking for new cookbooks to help you make your dinners more interesting or you need new linens for your bedroom, shop Lakeside for unique products at practical prices.