On New Year’s Resolutions and Why We Don’t Need Them

Studies reveal that while 38.5% of U.S. adults set New Year’s resolutions annually, only 9% successfully keep themβ€”a depressing figure, perhaps, but not a shocking one; when it comes to New Year’s, it seems just as much tradition to fail at our goals as it is to set them.

Per History.com, the ancient Babylonians are believed to have been the first people to make New Year’s resolutions over 4,000 years ago during annual religious festivals, which involved making promises to the gods. These promises, considered forerunners of modern New Year’s resolutions, would earn the Babylonians favor with the gods if kept. About 2,000 years later, in ancient Rome, emperor Julius Caesar established January 1 as the beginning of the new year. Named after the god Janus, January had a special significance for the Romans. Believing that Janus symbolically looked backward into the previous year and ahead into the future, the Romans offered sacrifices and made promises of good behavior for the coming year.

According to Merriam-Webster, the term β€œNew Year’s resolution” first began to appear in the 19th century. By that time, they were already rarely upheld, so much so that the habit of making resolutions became satirized and often criticized as an excuse for misbehavior in the weeks leading up to the new year. A Boston newspaper from 1813 is quoted as saying, β€œThere are multitudes of people, accustomed to receive injunctions of new year resolutions, who will sin all the month of December.”

So what’s the point in making resolutions when we all know they don’t work? People are dissatisfied with the lives they lead, and they want to try to become better. In many ways, the start of a new year seems to be a perfect time to do this: a new year is, after all, a blank slate. A new year gives you a chance to start fresh, to create a new version of yourself, unshackled and no longer tied to past mistakes. But remember that January 1 is no different from any other day. Our conception of January as the start of a new year was the completely arbitrary decision of Julius Caesar, not based on anything, scientific or magical, that would make our resolutions more potent; it’s simply a day. So why not think of every day as a blank slate?

A survey of U.S. adults who have made resolutions for 2025 found that the most popular resolution in America was to save more money, seemingly a fine and fiscally wise goal. But what if you started saving in December? November? That’s an extra two months’ worth of money in your pocket. And what if your resolution went deeper than money? What if you wanted to eat healthier, or spend more time with family, or be nicer to others? What if you wanted to be a better person? I propose that we treat our self-improvement with more urgency, that instead of “new year, new me,” we say β€œnew day, new me.” If we put effort into ourselves every day, there becomes no need for New Year’s resolutions. That failure that has become so common in our time is replaced by small successes and losses that we can learn from. So sure, you could wait until January to make a change in your life, but why not start today?