The odds of being successful with your new year’s resolutions are stacked against you.

Resolutions are famously hard to keep and easy to break.

But as we near the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025, we’ve been reviewing the scientific research around resolutions. What we’ve found might surprise you.

Below we share three research-backed insights and the single best predictor of success to get 2025 started on the right foot.

Three Insights About New Year’s Resolutions

1. Pew Research found that the percentage of Americans who set New Year’s Resolutions steadily declines as they get older. Nearly one in two (49%) adults ages 18-29 make at least one resolution per year. But for 30-49 year-olds, that number drops to 31%. For people older than 50, only 21% make resolutions.

2. Successfully achieving a new year’s resolution does not depend on what kind of resolution it is. Researcher and psychologist Dr. John Norcross has conducted multiple longitudinal studies on new year’s resolutions, and he found that people who were hoping to lose weight and those who were attempting to mend relationships were equally successful after two years: only 19% had stuck to their resolutions. The insight? The type of resolution is not a predictor of success.

3. There is a valley of death in the first few months. If you can keep your resolution for six months, then the odds of it becoming a permanent change increase. Norcross’s research revealed that it takes about three months for a change to become routine. If you’re able to maintain that change for six months, the likelihood of keeping it for the rest of your life goes up dramatically.

The single best predictor of success

Norcross has found multiple predictors of success (stimulus control, behaviorally contingent rewards, and self-efficacy, or the belief in oneself that change is possible), but there was one predictor that stood above all the rest.

It is the readiness to change, or how prepared a person is to enter the action stage of behavior change. Far and away, according to his research in 2002, Norcross found that participants who made commitments and plans to effect change in their lives were 10 times more likely to succeed than adults who were not yet ready to put plans into action.

But readiness for change requires a “contemplation” stage, where we reflect on if we’re actually serious about the change we seek. And in the last two weeks of 2024, there is no better time to reflect on the changes we want to make so we are ready on January 1st.

Reflection Tools

Here are a three reflection tools that can help you evaluate your readiness:

1. The Year Compass: The Year Compass tool helps to connect the past with the future in a way that generates themes and new ideas.

2. EVRYMAN member’s personal reflection guide: Kyle Westaway, a member of the EVRYMAN community, created a personal year-end reflection tool he uses to reflect on the past year’s key insights and what that means for the future.

3. Harder to Kill’s Looking Back framework: We liked this framework from Harder to Kill about the hidden power of reflection before making big plans for the year ahead.

What are you ready to change in 2025? We’d love to hear from you.

Insights

The 5 Most Important Exercises For Men Over 40. Are you middle-age strong? To build a resilient body for the coming decades, it starts with mastering basic range of motion and body mechanics. Five exercises, when done well, can improve range of motion, strength, and fortify you against injury. Muscle & Fitness (3 minutes) 

The Problem With Making Health & Happiness Your Central Aim. If we seek happiness (or health) we run the risk of getting stuck in comparison. They’re not ultimate aims in themselves. Instead, we should prioritize mastery and belonging instead. Here’s how to do it in 2025. The Growth Equation (5 minutes)

The Way We Think About Retirement Is Backwards. Most men think of “retirement” as a point in time when everything suddenly changes. One day you’re working full-time, the next you’re doing nothing. But this approach creates problems later in life. After years of work dominating a person’s time and being the biggest part of their identity, traditional retirement can leave a person feeling empty. It’s better to think of retirement on a sliding scale where we can build a multi-dimensional identity and purposely design our life. X (formerly Twitter) (3 minutes)

It’s Never Too Late to Become A Runner. Here’s How. As we age, tapes start to form about ourselves. Maybe you’re not a morning person or don’t like to run. But those stories reflect fixed mindsets that can change. So, if you’re ready for your running era, start here. Inside Hook (12 minutes)

Take Action

Learn more about EVRYMAN

Man Memes