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Comment by Afforess | Hacker News Reader

I don't like resolutions. They are lies we tell ourselves, false promises from our present self about our future self. If you actually believe you can accomplish your resolutions, you don't need a manufactured holiday, like New Year's, to decide to change your life. Any day of the week should work. Don't wait until 2018 - start today.

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“Don’t wait until 2018 - start today.”

Posted on January 1st, 2018 for the majority of the world. ;)

I get your point, but resolutions are powerful tools. Ever walked into a room and forgotten why you did? It’s because you artificially create a new cognitive context when you walk through a door. A new year is similar. It may only be symbolic, but shedding dead weight and planning for a new year is an important exercise for many people - successful goalsetters included.

> Ever walked into a room and forgotten why you did? It’s because you artificially create a new cognitive context when you walk through a door.

Wow I did not know that there was an explanation for this. Makes sense. :)

Wow. Well said. It's so true. If the resolutions were so important to you, you wouldn't have waited for a specific date to start.

One should draw a line in sand. Of course any millisecond might be your resolution. But we are humans, not machines. Motivation derives from importance. Anything you value is good enough.

If resolutions were so powerful, why not have monthly, weekly, daily, or hourly resolutions? Imagine the things we could accomplish if all it took was to attach a goal to a discrete unit of time. My new day resolution is to get some more sleep.

Say you want to quit smoking. If you do it with a weekly resolution, you can basically give up any moment and start over next week. So there is little motivation to keep your goal. Monthly resolutions are a bit better, but still wouldn't work for smoking. Yearly resolutions seem to work best.

A lot of companies set quarterly goals, that's probably not a bad idea. Also, goals need to be etched into habits to work, and values determine goals, so it's worth introspecting all three at a time.

I set monthly reminders to keep me on track this year and they helped a bit, I might try weekly too this year. Course correcting once a year is definitely not enough.

Because that would mitigate the motivational effect.

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