New Year’s Resolutions Are a Trap

Fitter. Happier. More productive. There, robot worker drone, you’re fixed!

Photo:
Luis Alvarez / Getty Images

You know what would be great? If I weighed 30 pounds less, worked more efficiently, fought for justice, parented with patience, spent less money, and never experienced sadness, anger, frustration, or temptation.

Hey, I know what I’ll do! I’ll just resolve to make that happen! First, I’ll decide that I’m going to change, um, everything about myself, and second, I’ll decide on an arbitrary day to begin — oh, hell, call it January 1.

To start, in order to lose 30 pounds, I’ll get a wearable health device and join a gym. Unfortunately, this means I’ll need to break my resolution to spend less money. To compensate, I’ll work harder to make more money. But this means I’ll have less time to devote to causes that are meaningful to me. So much for that resolution—but to be honest, I kinda just threw that one in there anyway. To make up for it, I’ll double down on family. We’ll have board game nights and family dinners and meaningful experiences and throw our phones into the river.

See how really, really great this is all going?

Okay, look, I’m not saying it’s pointless to try to improve yourself or your life. What I’m saying is you are not actually broken. Your money, your parenting, your weight, your emotions, your vices — these are not defective things that need to be fixed or optimized or tamed into submission. They are part of being a person.

And right there, friends, is why New Year’s resolutions suck: They do not benefit you so much as they reinforce the idea that you are not enough. But they do benefit larger forces that you did not create and have no control over — the same forces that convinced you that you were broken in the first place.

In other words, New Year’s resolutions are a fucking trap, and I’m calling them out.

A brief history of why New Year’s resolutions suck

From their Bronze Age beginnings, New Year’s resolutions were about the gross domestic product. The first New Year resolutions were made by ancient Babylonians at the beginning of their planting season, when people promised their gods and…