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How to Set Better New Year’s Resolutions

Erman Misirlisoy, PhD
5 min readJan 3, 2022

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Photo by Myriam Zilles on Unsplash

2022 has officially begun and I hope you’re all feeling a fresh sense of optimism as you enter the new year. I’ve heard people describe their 2021 in similar terms to how they described their 2020, but at least for me, 2021 was a clear improvement on the dark void of 2020. Either way, there’s no reason to think 2022 can’t be our best year yet.

Although any day is a good day to consider how to enhance your life, people commonly save their goal-setting for this precise moment in the calendar. New Year’s resolutions are a sign of enthusiasm, aspiration, and a wish for personal betterment. So while those feelings are still bubbling away in the first week of 2022, here’s some evidence to help you commit to better resolutions.

Comic from Mr Lovenstein

Decide what you will do rather than what you won’t do

A study published in December 2020 analyzed the New Year’s resolutions of over a thousand people. The researchers randomly assigned people to one of three groups, but I’ll focus on the first two groups for now.

People in Group 1 acted as a control group who set themselves New Year’s resolutions and discussed their chances of…

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Erman Misirlisoy, PhD
Erman Misirlisoy, PhD

Written by Erman Misirlisoy, PhD

Research Leader (Ex-Instagram / Chief Scientist at multiple startups). Author of the The Brainlift Newsletter: https://erman.substack.com/

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