A Quote by Dave Barry

Many people have trouble sticking to their resolutions, and there is a simple scientific explanation for this. In 1987, a team of psychologists conducted a study in which they monitored the New Year's resolutions of 275 people. After one week the psychologists found that 92 percent of the people were keeping their resolutions; after two weeks we have no idea what happened because the psychologists had quit monitoring.

Dave Barry

Quote Topics

After Because Explanation Found Had Happened Idea Keeping Many Monitoring New New Year New Year's New Year's Resolutions No Idea People Percent Psychologists Quit Resolutions Scientific Simple Sticking Study Team Trouble Two Two Weeks Week Weeks Were Which Year

Quote Author

Dave Barry
American - Journalist
Born: July 3, 1947

The problem with New Year's resolutions - and resolutions to 'get in better shape' in general, which are very amorphous - is that people try to adopt too many behavioral changes at once. It doesn't work. I don't care if you're a world-class CEO - you'll quit.

Tim Ferriss

January is always a good month for behavioral economics: Few things illustrate self-control as vividly as New Year's resolutions. February is even better, though, because it lets us study why so many of those resolutions are broken.

Sendhil Mullainathan

You make New Year's resolutions. And you make them into the teeth of old resolutions which were different. Then you don't keep your new resolutions and you tell yourself you are weak-willed. You aren't weak-willed, you are simply obeying yourself as of yesterday.

L. Ron Hubbard

I resolve never to make any resolutions because all resolutions are restrictions for the future. All resolutions are imprisonments.

Rajneesh

If you want to understand human beings, there are plenty of people to go to besides psychologists.... Most of these people are incapable of communicating their knowledge, but those who can communicate it are novelists. They are good novelists precisely because they are good psychologists.

Anthony Standen

Resolutions are a wonderful thing if we can keep them, but many resolutions go by the wayside because we have not done anything different with our mindset.

Monica Johnson

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

I don't make resolutions, because resolutions seem so ephemeral and transient to go away.

Ian K. Smith

I dont make resolutions, because resolutions seem so ephemeral and transient to go away.

Ian K. Smith

Sometimes we know the best thing to do, but fail to do it. New year's resolutions are often like that. We make resolutions because we know it would be better for us to lose weight, or get fit, or spend more time with our children. The problem is that a resolution is generally easier to break than it is to keep.

Peter Singer

When it comes to sticking to your resolutions, research has shown that 'action-oriented' resolutions have a better chance of being upheld than 'idea-oriented.' For example, a resolution to lose weight is really only an idea with nothing actionable to do. However, sticking with that goal in mind, you could make the resolution action-oriented by saying 'get up 30 minutes earlier every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and do a 20-minute workout at home before work.' Now you have an actionable path on how to achieve your goal.

Brett Hoebel

One of my resolutions is to quit smoking. I've tried for the past two years, but this year I am going to stick with it.

John Oldham

Regardless of the extent to which the media promote "politically correct," but scientifically wrong, resolutions from professional societies such as the American Anthropological Association, facts remain facts and require appropriate scientific, not political or ideological, explanation. None of this should be construed as meaning that environmental factors play no part in individual and group differences. But with each passing year and each new study, the evidence for the genetic contribution to these differences becomes more firmly established than ever.