A Quote by Sendhil Mullainathan

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

Quote Topics

Always Because Behavioral Behavioral Economics Better Broken Control Economics Even February Few Few Things Good Illustrate January Lets Many Month New New Year New Year's New Year's Resolutions Resolutions Self Self-Control Study Things Those Though Us Vividly Why Year

Quote Author

Sendhil Mullainathan
American - Economist
Born: 1972

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

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

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

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

I'm not the biggest fan of New Year's resolutions, but I'm a huge backer for real life change - that's why January gets me so geeked up.

Mark Schlereth

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

Rajneesh

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

New Year's resolutions have always been something to beat myself up with by the second week of January. It seems perverse to set yourself up for failure right at the start of the year.

Romesh Ranganathan

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

February is for curmudgeons, whinge-bags, and misanthropes. You can't begrudge us one month of the year or blame us for being even crabbier, it's so short. There is nothing good about it, which is why it's so great.

Lionel Shriver

My New Year's Eve is always 2 July, the night before my birthday. That's the night I make my resolutions. And this year scares the life out of me, because no matter how successful, how good things appear, there is always a deep core of failure within me, although I am trying to deal with it. My biggest fear, this coming year, is that I will be waking up alone. It makes me wonder how many bodies will be fished out of the Thames, how many decaying corpses will be found in one-room flats. I'm just being realistic.

Tracey Emin

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

Dieting on New Year's Day isn't a good idea as you can't eat rationally but really need to be free to consume whatever is necessary, moment by moment, in order to ease your hangover. I think it would be much more sensible if resolutions began generally on January the second.