--- title: A Neuroscientist's Advice on New Year's Resolutions description: New neuroscience explains why resolutions matter—and how planning, flexibility, and self-reflection help them stick. canonical: https://time.com/7342704/new-year-resolutions/ author: Nicholas Wright article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-12-28T20:52:18.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-11T00:43:19.711Z article:section: Ideas og:title: A Neuroscientist's Advice on New Year's Resolutions og:description: New neuroscience explains why resolutions matter—and how planning, flexibility, and self-reflection help them stick. og:url: https://time.com/7342704/new-year-resolutions/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbd20c49b17003bf3/6998cc9293610c0241c30442/GettyImages-2252854707.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5012 og:image:height: 2819 og:image:alt: US-LIFESTYLE-HOLIDAY-NEW YEARS og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: A Neuroscientist's Advice on New Year's Resolutions twitter:description: New neuroscience explains why resolutions matter—and how planning, flexibility, and self-reflection help them stick. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbd20c49b17003bf3/6998cc9293610c0241c30442/GettyImages-2252854707.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # A Neuroscientist's Advice on New Year's Resolutions > Sponsored content. 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There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=b1e46c93-1c9a-429b-ac0d-45ddfc7f2a48&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) by [Nicholas Wright](https://time.com/author/nicholas-wright/) ## Nicholas Wright Wright is a neuroscientist at University College London and Georgetown University who advises the Pentagon and is author of Warhead: How the brain shapes war and war shapes the brain Dec 28, 2025 8:52 PM UTC  Seven-foot-tall numerals for "2026" are displayed during an illumination ceremony on December 26, 2025 at One Times Square in New York City, ahead of the this year's New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square. Seven-foot-tall numerals for "2026" are displayed during an illumination ceremony on December 26, 2025 at One Times Square in New York City, ahead of the this year's New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square. Timothy Clary-AFP by [Nicholas Wright](https://time.com/author/nicholas-wright/) ## Nicholas Wright Wright is a neuroscientist at University College London and Georgetown University who advises the Pentagon and is author of Warhead: How the brain shapes war and war shapes the brain Dec 28, 2025 8:52 PM UTC Some say making New Year’s resolutions is pointless. They are wrong. It’s a way our culture helps us harness one of the [human brain’s](https://read.macmillan.com/lp/warhead-9781250286871/) most remarkable capacities: our ability to think about our own thinking. Resolutions remind us to step back from the hurley-burley and ask: Am I pursuing the right goals, and pursuing them in the right ways? Any of us can use the latest neuroscience to improve our thinking about thinking. It can help give us the grit to stick with goal—and the wisdom to adapt (or even quit) if changing our mind is the route to success. Why do we have New Year’s Resolutions? Planning. Whether you play chess or checkers, you know it’s impossible to win only by using habits, reflexes, or emotional responses. In life, planning makes the difference between running straight forward into a barrier, or anticipating that barrier and taking a detour instead. Our clever human brains can look ahead—through a decision tree that branches out into many potential futures—to pick the best option. Such planning is a huge challenge: board games are simpler than much of real life, yet even a relatively simple game like “Go” has over ten170 possible positions (that’s 1 followed by 170 zeros). An adult’s brain can do wonderous things. But because it runs on around [20 watts](https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/neuroscientists-use-ai-simulate-how-brain-makes-sense-visual-world) of power (enough for a dim incandescent light bulb), it must use clever shortcuts. And understanding them can help us plan better. One shortcut your brain takes is “chunking,” or clustering multiple actions together into an option that can be evaluated as one. Think of learning how to drive a car. Initially each component requires conscious thought, as one step might involve thousands of muscle movements. But over time, each becomes routine. Second nature. Your brain is making plans, and in a hierarchical way, with goals made up of subgoals, each comprised of more subgoals, and so on. That’s why it helps to break your New Year’s goal into manageable parts. And to remind yourself, deep in February, not to despair if you haven’t completely “learned French” yet. Another of your brain’s shortcuts is creating menus of possible options (neuroscientists call them “affordances”) to narrow down the infinite actions you could take. For example, sitting here at my desk I could burst into song, eat my computer mouse, or buy bagpipes online. What I’m actually considering, however, is typing or getting coffee. There are times, however, when we must step back and actively search for new options, even, or maybe especially, in seemingly insoluble situations. A famous story has Prime Minister Winston Churchill taking a moment to think while he shaved one morning, during Britain’s darkest hours of World War II in 1940, when he suddenly [said](https://www.weidenfeldandnicolson.co.uk/titles/antony-beevor/the-second-world-war/9781780225647/) “I think I see my way through.” His idea—"drag the United States in”–was not small. But in everyday life you can also actively step back—perhaps on your own, or with a friend or mentor—to think of options outside your usual menu. Indeed, some of the most important options we need to recognize include changing our mind, changing our goals, and even quitting things we care about. After all life involves balancing family, work, health, friends… Churchill often [changed his mind](https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Supreme-Command/Eliot-A-Cohen/9781471105142) during the war, and was willing to be argued out of his ideas like sending troops to liberate Norway in 1942\. Perseverance is important, but too stubbornly sticking to initial goals can be harmful. People who are able to quit in an effective way—by abandoning goals that no longer work and finding new ones that work better—tend to be more [content](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167203256921) with their lives, less [anxious](https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2023-30343-001), and have decreased stress [hormones](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/chapter/bookseries/pii/S2215091919300148). “Everyone has a plan,” as the boxer [Mike Tyson](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/strategy-9780199325153) observed, “’till they get punched in the mouth.” To help persevere through inevitable failures and setbacks, ask yourself [questions](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2002529117) like “What can I do to help myself?” or “Is there a way to do this even better?” Keeping your New Year’s Resolution may well involve creatively adapting how you achieve it, over the year. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7342704/new-year-resolutions/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7342704/new-year-resolutions/"},"headline":"A Neuroscientist's Advice on New Year's Resolutions","datePublished":"2025-12-28T20:52:18.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-11T00:43:19.711Z","description":"New neuroscience explains why resolutions matter—and how planning, flexibility, and self-reflection help them stick.","url":"https://time.com/7342704/new-year-resolutions/","keywords":["U.S."],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbd20c49b17003bf3/6998cc9293610c0241c30442/GettyImages-2252854707.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Nicholas Wright","jobTitle":"Wright is a neuroscientist at University College London and Georgetown University who advises the Pentagon and is author of Warhead: How the brain shapes war and war shapes the brain","url":"https://time.com/author/nicholas-wright/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbd20c49b17003bf3/6998cc9293610c0241c30442/GettyImages-2252854707.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"US-LIFESTYLE-HOLIDAY-NEW YEARS","caption":"US-LIFESTYLE-HOLIDAY-NEW YEARS","creditText":"Timothy Clary-AFP","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/u-s/","name":"U.S."}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/7342704/new-year-resolutions/","name":"A Neuroscientist's Advice on New Year's Resolutions"}}]}] ```