Happy New Year! Regardless of whether you believe in making resolutions, it’s great to have visions and goals and to build your plans and programs around them. I’ve got a couple quick tips for you, and I’m going to present them in an interesting manner. At least I think so. I’ll tell you first how to fail at your resolution and then turn around and offer the evidence-based and experience-born secrets of success. Here we go.
- Disregard seasonality. By this I mean not taking into account the time of year and how it affects our circadian biology. This has been an evolutionarily consistent principle for 3 million years. As modern humans, we try to override nature by doing the same thing all year. But following the seasonality model can make huge differences in your health and performance. You can check out the Seasonality article or podcast if you’d like to dive deeper.
- Don’t have a clear vision. In other words, failing to see where and who you want to be, and building your year accordingly, tends to diminish your chances for success. Invest in the process.
- Pay no attention to who you are. With this statement I’m referring to the need to know ourselves. Self-knowledge is key and knowing your personality, tendencies, and preferences can help you to make your training and lifestyle interventions fit you best.
- Do it all alone. While you can certainly do a lot of your resolution-based endeavors by yourself, having the support of others can be a real gamechanger.
- Don’t be consistent. This might seem like no-brainer, but believe me I’ve seen it a ton. Either folks crush themselves with overly zealous workouts and diets, then have lots of gap days — or they end up letting the excuse-making get a bit too frequent. You don’t have to be perfect…just stack up the little wins.
- Take yourself way too seriously. There’s a sweet spot here. You have to care. Just not too much. It’s an art form.
If you like these suggestions but would love to hear a deep and meaningful conversation on these points, check out the podcast I recorded with PK on this topic.
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