In 2014, the most popular New Year’s resolution was to lose weight. Guess what percentage of people successfully achieved this resolution?
8%!
That’s right, 92% of people failed to achieve their goal. In school, 92% is an A. That means that Americans got an A in failing to lose weight last year. Not sure how you can get an A in failure, but we are America and darned if we didn’t figure out a way.
So how do we get better results in 2015?
An article from Fulfillment Daily says the key might be what’s called the spacing effect.
“The spacing effect can be best understood in the context of learning,” says Justin Mertes-Mistretta. “Information that you learn over a spaced out period of time has proven to be much easier remembered than information that is crammed without intervals of time.”
It is better to study for a test one hour a day for 5 days than it is to try and pull a 5-hour all-nighter the day before the test.
In much the same way, spacing out our goals over time make them look much more realistic. It seems more plausible to lose 5 pounds a month than it does to lose 60 pounds in a year.
I love this quote in the article from Dr. Kari A. Hortos:
There is a reason the saying is ‘an apple a day keeps a doctor away,’ not ‘365 apples a year keeps the doctor away.’”
That makes perfect sense to me. I can handle one apple a day. 365 apples on the other hand (even spread out over an entire year) sounds much more daunting.
So remember, when you are attacking your goals this year, break them up into little chunks. You don’t need to go out and load up on 365 apples.
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