<via The Guardian>
Abandon resolutions. Stop looking for a soulmate. Reject positive thinking
New Year's Day, when you stop to consider it, hasn't been very well thought through: the day traditionally assigned for the turning over of new leaves is also the day many of us are far more likely than usual to be waking up hungover, or at least seriously late, and generally without the energy for launching effortful new self-improvement projects. The gym's probably closed; new year resolutions rarely work out anyway; and besides, today marks the 30th anniversary of the achievement of self-government by the island nation of Palau, which is surely as good a reason as any to indulge in further alcohol-fuelled celebration. Then again, on some level, who doesn't want to be a bit happier, more productive and generally a better person? Allow us to suggest a few modest, down-to-earth, evidence-backed ideas for 2011 that might actually work…
Abandon your new year resolutions – today
If you've made any new year resolutions, steal a march on the rest of the world by abandoning them today, rather than waiting a week or two for the moment when everyone else's will inevitably collapse in a quagmire of failed hopes, self-reproach and packets of Pringles. The lure of making a "complete fresh start" can be hard to resist, and gleaming-eyed self-help gurus pander to that urge. In fact, aiming for across-the-board change – to get fitter, eat better, spend more time with the family and less time playing Angry Birds, all at the same time – is exactly the wrong way to change habits. Willpower is a unitary, depletable resource, which means investing energy in any one such goal will leave less remaining for the others, so your resolutions will, in effect, be fighting each other. Far better to aim for one new habit every couple of months or, better yet, to manipulate your surroundings so as to harness the power of inertia, so you needn't spend your precious reserves of willpower at all. (It's infinitely easier to watch less television when you don't have one, or to use your credit card less when it's locked in a cupboard.) Making things automatic, not consciously and continually striving hard to be better, is the key here, as Alfred North Whitehead recognised back in 1911: "It is a profoundly erroneous truism... that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing," he wrote. "The precise opposite is the case. Civilisation advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them."
Stop looking for your soulmate