January 2012 seems extra long! In fact, there are five — count ’em, five — Mondays in this month. And while I’ve never missed a Math at Work Monday, I decided to take a break this week. (Want to read up on previous Q&As for this month? Check them out: Robert the exercise physiologist, Janine the professional organizer, Jameel the budget counselor and Kiki the career coach.)
This month has been all about New Year’s Resolutions: getting in shape and getting organized, boning up on budget basics and becoming your own boss. But what are our chances of actually succeeding in any (or all) of these things? Once again, I ask you: let’s look at the math.
According to a 2008 survey conducted by author and motivational speaker, Steven Shapiro and the Opinion Research Group (Princeton, NJ), 45 percent of Americans set New Year’s Resolutions, but only 8 percent of these reach their goals each year and 24 percent say they never keep their resolutions.
(Disclaimer: I really can’t vouch for the veracity of this study, because I can’t find the data. But let’s go with it, just to prove my point. The numbers aren’t really all that important.)
How many of you read those statistics and thought: “Well, there’s no point in even making resolutions! With chances like those, I’m doomed to fail!”
Here’s the good news: If you nodded your head, you are not alone. And here’s the better news: Statistics don’t work that way.
It’s easy to look at stats and think that they must be true and must apply to everyone in every situation. Cold, hard numbers don’t lie, right? Maybe the numbers don’t lie, but it sure is tempting to use those numbers to describe something that isn’t true. (Politicians do it all the time.)
There are a couple of ways to describe this particular fallacy. But I think one of most important is to consider what is known as independent events. See, each person who sets a New Year’s Resolution is independent of all of the other people who do the same thing. (Even if you’re all making the same resolutions.)
And it gets even trickier. Each year that you set a resolution is independent, and each resolution that you set is also — you guessed it — independent.
In other words, your success probably doesn’t have much of anything to do with how well others have followed through on their yearly goals — or even how well you’ve done in years past. (I say probably, because you may be one of those folks who is easily influenced by statistics. In other words, you may decide that you cannot succeed in meeting your resolutions, simply because you read somewhere that most people don’t.)
There’s tons of research out there on why people make resolutions and how they can be successful in them. If you looked at this research and determined that you have many of the same obstacles, maybe — just maybe — you could predict your chance of success.
But simply because many other people aren’t successful doesn’t mean you are automatically doomed to fail. Independence is only one reason for this. Randomness is another.
Dice are random, but people aren’t. (In fact, I saw a great video that demonstrates this last week. Of course I can’t put my hands on it now, but I’ll post a link, if I do.) While a (fair) die only has to worry about gravity, we have many more things that influence our behavior, decisions and more. That doesn’t mean that people aren’t more likely to act a certain way under certain conditions. But it certainly does mean that your New Year’s resolutions are not beholden to statistics.
So, the next time you read an article about the low rate of success with New Year’s Resolutions, remember this: You certainly can succeed — even if you failed last year. And if you are philosophically opposed to New Year’s resolutions, you’ll need a better reason than most people don’t keep them.
How are you doing with your New Year’s Resolutions? Share in the comments section. And come back on Wednesday — I’ll reveal how things are going with me!Save
