Staying Motivated After The New Year Momentum Wanes

It’s early February, but I’m still keeping up with the 300-day good habit-building program I joined as my 2022 personal development focus. (It’s called Optimize, and they have a lot of free resources and a new app coming soon). Depending on which statistic you believe, most people get derailed from their new year’s resolutions as early as January or February! If you’ve already fallen off track or are feeling momentum waning, here are 7 tips to get moving on your goals again:

1 – Shorten your timeframe

I dedicated an entire previous post to Miho Kubagawa’s tip on making 12 one-month resolutions in lieu of annual goals. This way, you don’t feel like you have to press on indefinitely, and there is an immediate light at the end of the tunnel. In the post, I give examples for fitness and personal finance. In a guest blog for my alma mater, I also list a potential 12-month goal program for career.

Do you have 12 smaller goals you can substitute for your fewer big ones?

2 – Bundle temptations

The New York Times featured bundling temptations in a round-up of motivation strategies. In their example, you tie a delicious but wasteful habit to a new one you’re trying to encourage – e.g., reading trashy novels might only be done when going to the gym. I watched 187 movies in 2021, not including TV series that I binged (Ted Lasso, Selling Sunset and a real estate show set in the Hamptons that I can’t even remember the title and don’t care enough to look up!). If I got a piece of cardio equipment and bundled my streaming habit with exercise, I could probably power a small nation.

What can you bundle?

3 – Stack new habits

I could also have used the verb “bundle” here, but this tip is from a book that refers to the technique as  stacking. In Habit Stacking: 97 Small Life Changes That Take Five Minutes or Less, author S.J. Scott advises grouping habits together so that you incorporate new habits into an existing routine. For example, if your new year’s resolution is to drink more water, you might stack drinking a full glass of water into your regular morning routine. Scott provides multiple suggestions for small positive changes that stack well with each other.

Can you group any of your new year’s resolutions into routines you follow to help the new activities stick?

4 – Gamify your actions

Rocketrip is a corporate travel company that turns saving money for its clients into a game. Rocketrip designs travel programs that award points redeemable for rewards whenever the employee saves its company travel money. With the rewards incentive, the employees’ motives are aligned with the company’s motives, so the savings behavior and choices stick.

What system of milestones and rewards can you set up for each of your goals, so you incentivize yourself to stay on course?

5 – Put on a happy face

Sometimes motivation wanes because goals are tiring. A 2014 study published in the Frontiers of Human Neuroscience (and summarized in The New Yorker) suggests that the fatigue is not just mechanical (e.g., your muscles are too tired training for that 5k) but also motivational. On the motivational front, seeing a subliminal smiling face encourages flagging runners to power through, even when the physical measurements suggest they are just as fatigued. Maybe you can post happy face stickers where you keep your running clothes, or at your entrance way or on the band of your heart rate monitor.

How can you inject more positive reinforcement while you’re working hard?

6 – Schedule your worry

This tip is something I have been using for years since it was recommended by a friend and mental toughness coach (to Navy SEAL candidates!), Renita Kalhorn. If anxiety about a goal is getting in the way, Kalhorn recommends scheduling a specific time dedicated to worry and to even put an appointment in the calendar. This way, when you find yourself worrying, you can remind yourself that you have planned for this and will take care of it [insert calendar appointment here].

Is worrying or other negative self-talk an obstacle that you can schedule and perhaps set it to forget it?

7 – Pick new goals (or at least new wording)

If any of your goals are “should’s” (I should lose weight, I should save more money), reframe them into something you want. Should-goals won’t be interesting enough to get you past the tough times. Instead pick something that you want and that gets you excited, but directionally moves you towards the same end – e.g., instead of losing weight as the goal, you pick running a 5k or learning to tango.

How can you reframe an uninspiring stuck goal?

---

Bundling of temptations seems like it would work best for me. Which motivation hacks will you try? Any others to recommend?