Why Your New Year's Plans Never Last Past Three Weeks
It's the Shape of the Plan, Not Your Willpower
If your New Year's plans stop around the third week, it may be less about weak willpower and more that the shape of the plan doesn't fit your traits. We read where plans stall through the mix of Organized and Inquisitive, and share five ways to redo your plans at the end of the year.
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In the first week of January, everything goes smoothly. You circle each day in your new planner and head out for your morning workout without fail. The second week keeps going more or less, too. Then one day in the third week, on a night you come home after working late, you skip a day. You skip the next day too. You don't like looking at the empty boxes, so you open the planner less and less, and by February the plan has quietly turned into something that never happened. Then the end of the year comes around, and you write down the same plan all over again.
If your New Year's plans always stop around the same time, it isn't only about willpower. In this piece, let's read why plans stop around the third week through the mix of Organized and Inquisitive, and talk about what you might change before you make new plans at the end of the year.
Two things run out together in the third week
For the first two weeks after you start a plan, two forces hold it up. One is newness. The excitement of a new planner, new sneakers, and a new resolution gets you moving. The other is breathing room. Early in the year, the work and plans you put off often haven't fully come back yet.
Around the third week, both drop out at once. Newness turns into repetition, and the work and plans you'd postponed come back. From here on, the plan has to hold up on its shape alone, not on excitement. And if that shape doesn't fit your traits, this is exactly the point where it's most likely to fall apart.
So stopping in the third week means your plan faced its first real test. How it stops is different for everyone, too. Some people skip one day and then stop cold, and others do it a little less often until it fades away. Either way, if it didn't make it past that week, it's time to take another look at its shape rather than blame yourself.
Your social self makes the plan, and your private self carries it out
New Year's plans are usually made by the you around people. You decide you're going to be a certain kind of person this year and pick goals that look good to others, too. Things like waking up at six, working out for an hour every day, or reading four books a month.
But the one who actually carries out the plan is the you when alone. The you on nights you come home from work completely drained, the you on mornings you just want to turn off the alarm. The wider the gap between the you who made the plan and the you who carries it out, the more the plan feels like someone else's homework to the one doing it. If you're a planner out in the world but easygoing when you're alone, this gap is especially wide.
So when you make a plan, it's worth asking the you when alone at least once: “Is this something you actually want to do?” Among the goals your social self picked, there are some your private self doesn't really want. A plan your private self doesn't want feels heavy from the first week, not the third.
Four ways plans stall, by Organized and Inquisitive
| Combination | Where the plan stalls | What to build into the plan |
|---|---|---|
| High Organized, high Inquisitive | The plan is detailed, but the repetition gets boring | One change to make in week three |
| High Organized, low Inquisitive | Missing once feels like the whole thing has collapsed | A rule for missed days |
| Low Organized, high Inquisitive | New plans keep popping up and push the earlier ones aside | Only one plan at a time |
| Low Organized, low Inquisitive | The plan is vague, so when to do it never gets decided | Attach it to something you already do |
People high on Organized are good at making plans. The problem is that the plan is so elaborate that a single empty box makes it feel like everything is off track. Add high Inquisitive, and boredom piles on the moment the elaborate plan turns repetitive. With low Inquisitive, the nagging feeling from one empty box grows bigger.
People low on Organized have loose plans from the start. With high Inquisitive, a new plan comes to mind every week and the original plan loses its place. With low Inquisitive, a vague plan like “do it when I have time” never ends up getting any time at all.
The same New Year's plan stalls for different reasons depending on which box you're in. That's also why a method that worked great for someone else didn't work for you.
If you're not sure which box you're in, think back to the day your last plan stopped. If missing one day was the start of it, you're likely in one of the top two boxes. If you got pulled away by a more fun new plan, the third box. And if there weren't many days you got started in the first place, the fourth box.
Check for yourself
Thinking back to your last few New Year's plans, pick the lines that apply to you.
- After you missed one day, you didn't want to look at the plan anymore.
- Partway through a plan, you switched to a new one that looked more fun.
- The moment you made the plan was more fun than the days of keeping it.
- You wrote down only what you'd do, not when or where.
- The you written into the plan was quite a bit more hardworking than the you of today.
The first line often shows up on the high Organized side, the second and third lines on the high Inquisitive side, and the fourth line on the low Organized side. The fifth line can happen to anyone, and it's a sign that your social self made the plan. If you land on several lines, just mix two or three of the methods below.
Five ways to make a plan that doesn't stall
- Write it for the most exhausted version of you. When you make a plan, ask, “Could I do this even on a night I come home from working late?” The size you can manage even on that night is the floor of your plan. Not an hour of exercise, but something like “change clothes and stretch for ten minutes.” It's okay if it looks too small. Small plans get skipped less, and on days you actually get started, you often end up doing a little more without trying.
- Set a rule for missed days ahead of time. “If I miss a day, it's okay to do just half the next day.” With a rule like that, an empty box isn't a failure but something within the rules. When there's a box for “did half” instead of an empty one, you'll mind opening the planner less, too. This suits people high on Organized especially well.
- Build in what you'll change in week three from the start. If you're high on Inquisitive, write “change the route” or “try one new workout” in the week-three box of your plan ahead of time. If something new is already booked for right around when things get boring, the repetition is easier to stick with. If you're low on Inquisitive, it works the other way: deciding on one thing you won't change even in week three gives you a sense of stability.
- Attach it to something you already do. For people low on Organized, deciding when to do it is the hardest part. If you attach it to something you already do every day, like “two pages of a book after I make my morning coffee,” you don't have to find separate time for it. Since it slips a new habit into a familiar routine, it also suits people low on Inquisitive, who find unfamiliar things a burden.
- Rewrite it once at the end of January. A plan isn't something you make once and you're done. After the third week, write down “what was harder than I thought” and “what was easier than I thought,” and rewrite the plan. That way you're not stalling, you're revising. The rewritten plan is likely to end up smaller than the first, and that's not a step backward. It's a plan that has been fitted to you.
Don't read it this way
- It doesn't mean plans stall because your willpower is weak. The idea is to start by checking whether the shape of the plan simply didn't fit your traits.
- It doesn't mean you have to be high on Organized to keep your plans, either. People high on Organized are strong at making plans, and people low on it are strong at starting over when things go off track. It's the strength to not make a big deal of it and quietly pick things back up the next day.
- It doesn't mean you have to make New Year's plans at all, either. Spending a year without big goals is a perfectly fine choice too.
- If the self-blame after not keeping a plan is so heavy that it shakes your daily life, taking care of yourself comes before the plan. If even resting feels uncomfortable, you might also read Guilty When Resting.
Wrapping up
A plan that stops at the same time every year is sending you the same signal every year. This year-end, instead of making a bigger plan, try reshaping it into something the most exhausted version of you can still carry. A plan that makes it past the third week gradually starts turning into a habit from there.
The free personality test shows the you around people and the you when alone on five personality traits, separately. Seeing where you land on Organized and Inquisitive in each of those two situations shows which box your plans stall in.
This piece is meant to help you understand yourself and does not replace psychological diagnosis or treatment.
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