It’s easy to look at New Year’s resolutions with a bit of skepticism. If you’re like most of us, you’ve got plenty of failed January attempts to improve your health, your discipline, or your finances. But you probably have at least a few bright spots too. Times when you made an important change that really stuck. So rather than get weighed down by the failures, let’s figure out how to amplify the bright spots.
When you have been successful in making significant changes, you can probably look back and see multiple factors that contributed to that success: social support, a new identity narrative, related commitments, early wins, a structured but realistic plan, and a few fortunate external factors.
None of those factors was a single, isolated root cause. When many interconnected factors are at play, we know we are working with a complex system. And complex systems don’t benefit from more detailed plans or stronger dedication. Complex problems are best solved through well-designed experiments.
Why resolutions fail (and experiments work)
When you make a resolution like “I’m going to work out five days a week,” you’re treating change as a planning problem. Success assumes you know what will motivate you, what obstacles you’ll face, and how you’ll feel on a cold Tuesday morning in February when you didn’t get as much sleep as you’d hoped.
Once you’ve given in to the warm bed a few times in February and skipped your workout, the story easily shifts to willpower. “I just need to be more disciplined. What would David Goggins say here? I need to try harder!”
But that diagnosis overlooks the nature of human behavior and motivation. We are not predictable machines. Our behavior emerges from what’s going on around us and inside us, and it only becomes visible when we encounter real, day to day life. That workout plan that sounded energizing on January 1st almost certainly doesn’t account for how you actually feel after a long workday, whether you’re motivated by competition or social engagement or time alone with your thoughts, or whether you are energized by getting out before dawn or would be far better off with an evening run instead.
The problem isn’t just a lack of willpower. It’s that you’re focusing a linear plan onto the beautifully complex system of human behavior.
So the alternative isn’t stronger commitment or trying harder. It’s taking a different approach. Instead of treating New Year’s resolutions as plans to execute, treat them as a series of experiments to design and run. Experiments that help you discover, over time, what conditions you actually need in place to be make important personal changes that stick.
An experimental approach to building a workout habit
Let’s say your goal is to establish a consistent workout routine. Here’s how to approach it experimentally:
Start with a hypothesis based on past experience
“I believe working out first thing in the morning will stick better than trying to exercise after work, because I’ve noticed I tend to skip evening activities when I’m tired.”
This isn’t just a plan. It’s a testable hypothesis based on what you already know about yourself.
Design a small, concrete experiment
“To test this, for the next three weeks, I’ll set my alarm 30 minutes earlier and do a 20 minute workout before breakfast, three days a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.”
Keep it small. A few weeks is long enough to learn something without requiring months of commitment. Three days a week is achievable even when things don’t go perfectly.
Define what you’ll measure
Don’t just track whether you did the workout. Pay attention to other signals that shape whether your approach is going to work in the long term:
- Did I actually get out of bed when the alarm went off?
- How did I feel during and after the workout?
- Did it affect my energy level for the rest of the day?
- What got in the way on days I didn’t work out?
Run the experiment and learn
After three weeks, look at your data. You might discover things like:
- You did great on Monday and Wednesday, but Friday mornings were consistently terrible because Thursday nights ran late
- Morning workouts made you more energized, but only if you ate something first
- Twenty minutes felt rushed and unsatisfying. Thirty minutes fewer days per week might be better
Adjust and run another experiment
Based on what you learned: “For the next two weeks, I’ll work out Monday and Wednesday mornings for 30 minutes, and I’ll prep a quick breakfast the night before so I can eat something before starting.”
You’re not abandoning the goal because the first attempt wasn’t perfect. You’re fine-tuning your system based on what you are learning about how you actually function, not how you hoped you would.
Building a system that works for you
Notice what’s happening here. You’re not just testing different workout schedules. You’re discovering and gradually building a system of conditions and habits. A system that makes consistent workouts more likely over time.
After a handful of experiments, you might learn things like:
- You need breakfast prepped the night before, so you add that to your evening routine
- You’re more consistent when you lay out your workout clothes before bed
- Accountability matters, so you text a friend after each workout
- Three days a week actually was better, but 30-minute workouts left room for a good warmup and some real activity
Each experiment reveals another piece of the system. And here’s the key: once you’ve built a system that works, you don’t need much willpower. The system does most of the work for you.
Willpower is what you use to force yourself through a poorly designed system. A well-designed system, one that actually fits you, doesn’t require much force at all.
Why this experimental approach works
This works better than a detailed resolution because behavior change is inherently complex.
Your preferences and motivations are hard to predict. What sounds motivating on paper isn’t always what motivates you in practice. A workout routine doesn’t exist in isolation. Each workout is influenced by how well you slept, how demanding your workday was, what your family needed from you that day, and how the weather fluctuated.
Life happens. The gym is unexpectedly closed. Your scheduled shifts. You get sick. New constraints pop up, and old assumptions stop holding. If your resolutions don’t take those into account, they become brittle predictions that crumble in the face of reality. Experiments, by contrast, are designed for uncertainty. They assume things won’t go as expected, and give you a system built to respond to real conditions, not imagined ones.
Since you can’t predict all of this upfront, the goal isn’t to plan in more detail. It’s to learn faster. Run experiments to discover what actually works, then adapt as the system around you changes.
Staying committed to the goal through the experiments
Through the series of experiments, the goal stays constant. You’re still committed to establishing a consistent workout routine. What changes is how you get there.
When something doesn’t work, it’s tempting to conclude “I guess I’m just not a workout person.” That’s the wrong takeaway. A better question is “What did I learn, and what should I try next?”
Morning workouts didn’t stick? Try evenings. Three days a week was too much? Start with one. The gym feels demotivating? Try home workouts or running outside.
Each attempt that doesn’t work is still progress. You haven’t failed, you’ve learned. You’re ruling out what doesn’t fit you and discovering what does. That learning makes every next experiment more informed than the last.
Piece by piece, you’re building a system. Not forcing yourself through a predetermined plan, but discovering and shaping a system that actually works for you.
Try it
What’s one goal you have for the new year? Instead of making a resolution, design an experiment.
- What’s your hypothesis about what might work?
- What will you test?
- What will you measure?
- How long will you run it?
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Then run the first experiment and start learning.
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