New Year’s resolutions don’t work: Try this bingo card instead

There’s something incredibly compelling about a brand-new year. A fresh start beckons, with each day untroubled by your past decisions. Whatever mistakes you made in 2025 are old news. They were sooo last year. You’re a new person now with new priorities, new habits, and new strategies. It’s in this spirit of new-leaf-turning-over that nearly a third of American adults —and almost half of 18- to 29-year-olds—decide to make New Year’s resolutions for the coming year. Unfortunately, making resolutions doesn’t work. Baylor College of Medicine reported in January 2024 that 88% of people who make resolutions abandon them within two weeks. That doesn’t mean change or improvement is impossible. It just means we’re going about it wrong each year on January 1 by declaring, “This year will be different!” If you’d like to improve your finances, your health, your relationships, or any other aspect of your life in 2026, try some anti-resolution strategies for making the year great—since your resolutions probably won’t live to see Groundhog Day . Why resolutions don’t work Before choosing the best anti-resolution strategy for 2026, it’s a good idea to understand the psychological reasons why resolutions just don’t work. One of the problems has to do with the fresh start the new calendar year offers to us. We are anticipating a “new year, new you” moment for ourselves, which often leads to unrealistic and overambitious goals . We love to tell ourselves the story that we could go from broke and couch potato on December 31 to frugal and running 5Ks on January 1 through willpower alone. This story doesn’t give us room for struggle, frustration, or failure. Additionally, a New Year’s resolution is an external motivation . That decision to change comes about because the calendar is changing and not because of an internal push to change. This means that when the external motivation has disappeared—at about the same time Planet Fitness has stopped airing New Year’s membership deals 24/7—we’ve usually moved on, too. Finally, we often make resolutions that require us to give something up . Financial resolutions ask you to deprive yourself of luxuries or conveniences, like streaming services or DoorDash when you’ve had a rough day. Health resolutions expect you to live without ice cream or fried foods indefinitely. While the intention behind these deprivation resolutions is good—saving money or improving your cholesterol levels—you can’t expect to white-knuckle your way through these losses for an entire year. Humans are wired to be loss-averse , which means the pain of giving up things we like feels more intense than the pleasure we enjoy when we receive the same treats. Unresolved in 2026 Looking at the start of a brand-new year makes me want to harness the excitement and enthusiasm of starting over with brand-new behavior. But I’ve learned over the years that I need actual strategies that will help me change my habits if I want to make lasting improvements to different areas of my life. The strategies that work tend to...

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