Talking about New Year’s resolutions on Feb. 1 feels less fun than when I was first sitting on the Amtrak on Jan. 2 considering the clean slate of a new calendar year. A month later, a week-long campus closure and frozen sidewalks became an easy excuse to ease up on movement goals, and the time demand of a Georgetown University schedule makes the idea of starting up a new hobby daunting. In fact, only 59% of people who set New Year’s resolutions said they stuck to all until the end of January.
It seems unlikely to me that all of these failed goals fall victim to the common rationale of setting unrealistic or vague goals or simply lacking the grit to follow through. What actually goes on in the brain when goals fail or are achieved — and is it possible to save a failing resolution as the cultural focus shifts away from the novelty of the year?
A comprehensive review on goal neuroscience breaks the effort into two categories: the intentional executive function required for the skill and knowledge to achieve a goal, and the sustained desire and mental prioritization of that goal. The executive function side boils down to a few main takeaways. First, the brain cannot multitask the novel and conscious effort that resolutions require. While the energy for these tasks is not likely equivalent to a reserve that will run out after a certain number of tasks, setting aside isolated, prioritized blocks of time could help overcome the barrier of new goals requiring undivided attention.
Furthermore, once new tasks become habits, they are processed differently by the brain, so automating aspects of a goal through repetition can free up the effort and time required of new goals over time. The brain can adapt larger processes into these automatic tasks over time by “chunking” a series of behaviors together, the way the many individual considerations of driving a car become one subconscious act of driving through repetition.
The motivation aspect is different from physically processing the tasks of goals themselves. The brain function that leads to wanting to complete a goal and reap the reward of that goal is associated with a region of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Lots of goal-setting advice focuses on the importance of the reward system making the brain want to repeat actions that led to reaping the reward of a goal, and research on the vmPFC adds a few interesting nuances to this idea.
First, what happens if we fail and do not feed a positive feedback loop? This can feel especially daunting as negative impressions and experiences are shown to have more impact on the brain than positive ones. However, research suggests that a mindset of autonomy can prevent the complete shutdown of the reward system in the vmPFC when one fails to achieve the reward. Second, the vmPFC is linked to self-identity and value, indicating that linking goals to certain personal values could help achieve those goals.
The link to identity also comes through a psychological theory that people self-sabotage their own goals when those goals conflict with their internal narrative about their self-image. For example, unconscious perfectionism could cause someone to see themselves as a failure if they mess up their new goal, so they self-sabotage to avoid trying again.
A few weeks into a new semester and with the first midterms beginning to loom ahead, keeping up on resolutions feels like it is falling down the priority list, let alone the idea of starting a new one. However, weeding out some information about how goals become easier and how to stay motivated might take some of the load off of an environment where half of people online seem to know the next planner or trend challenge that will get a goal to stick.
