88% of people who set new year’s resolutions fail. Now there’s a depressing stat to start a newsletter. What’s worse, some will tell you that those 88% of people fail actually within the first 2 weeks of January on 'Quitters Day' (but you really shouldn’t believe everything on the internet – that’s not what the study showed). The original ‘New Years Resolution Project’ research by Professor Richard Wiseman, way back in 2007, tracked 3,000 people at the start of the year – people setting goals to try to lose weight, stop drinking, get a promotion, find a better job… the usual things that we only seem to think are good ideas in the depths of December.

The first stat that jumps out is that at the start of the study, only 52% were confident they would succeed. It's probably no surprise that so many failed given 48% thought they were likely to fail before they even started. Secondly, is the headline finding that 88% failed by the end of the year - similar to the 92% failure rate in the (oft cited, but seemingly impossible to find) University of Scranton study that determined 'only 8% of adults ever achieve their goals'.

So, what is it about those 12% that did succeed, and what can we learn from this research that can help us achieve our own goals?
 
What it actually takes to achieve your goals?

So why do some people beat the odds? What’s different about those 12% who follow through and deliver on their goals? After years of working with high performers – from Olympic gold medallists to Fortune 500 employees (check out some of our BecomingX interviewees) – I’ve seen clear patterns, and our research at BecomingX backs it up too.

I’ve also had my own experiences of trying to achieve some pretty audacious goals (like racing to the North Pole and across the Sahara in the same year – something for another newsletter). I’ve failed lots of times at lots of things, of course I have, but along the way, there’s some things I’ve learned that have really helped (as well as all our research at BecomingX). So here’s my take on what you need to do if you want to achieve your goals:

1. Define goals that actually matter: If you are setting a goal as a new year’s resolution, the chances are that this goal really isn’t that important to you. Otherwise, you’d be focused on it already. Real goals have to matter. The things you dream of. The things that keep you up at night. They need to be so important that you probably wouldn’t want to wait until January 1st to start trying. To stand any chance of achieving a goal, you’ve really got to want it. So if you are going to set a goal, be sure to go for something that is genuinely important to you.

2. Limit your focus: The people that tend to succeed at big goals typically have a very narrow focus. They are often only trying to achieve just one, or perhaps two, big things at once – so they can really give the effort needed. My caveat to this is if you can learn to really ‘timebox’ effectively. For example, delivering an ambitious work project in the day, can co-exist with a major goal after hours or on the weekend. The more goals, the more effective you need to be at timeboxing.

3. Create a plan for habitual change: Create an actual plan, with specific goals, actions and timelines. It doesn’t need to be too grand, but write it down. I typically create a spreadsheet that I open daily. You need to be extremely clear about what you are going to do to get you towards your goal. It’s not enough to say ‘I want to get promoted’, or ‘I want to run a 4-hour marathon’. You need an actual plan for what you will do to create the habits and complete the actions to get there. You want to get fit? Then you need a realistic daily training plan and to follow it as much as possible. The bigger the goal, the more structured and specific your plan needs to be.

4. Tell other people: Accountability is a game-changer. When you declare your goal - whether to a friend, a mentor, or on social media - you add a layer of external motivation. Personally, if I tell people I’m going to break a world record or run 24 hours straight, you can bet I’ll do it. There’s no backing down (no matter how painful the reality might be).

5. Stick to it. Always: My co-founder Bear Grylls is famous for his ‘Never give up’ ethos. I give him the examples of smoking and toxic relationships. Sometimes you need to give up. That said, he’s right for the most part – for the goals you really care about and believe in, you really shouldn’t give up. Sometimes you may need to find another way to get there, but you should always stay true to the end goal. If you are trying to get fit and you miss a training session in your plan. It doesn’t mean you have failed. You just need to go again, and harder, the next day. The Olympian’s I’ve worked with do occasionally miss sessions, and have dips in motivations. That’s reality. You keep going. As the great Dr. Wladimir Klitschko declares in my interview with him ‘discipline is the key’.

Putting the theory into practice

Something our clients always tell us at BecomingX is that we really ‘walk the walk’ – our team are not just ‘trainers’, we are highly experienced professionals, who have each done some pretty amazing things… who now train people. I’d like to think I too can speak from real experience. So to stick to my personal mantra of ‘doing’ and not just ‘talking’ (and to avoid being a monumental hypocrite), I actually set myself three new year’s resolutions just so I could write this article with some credibility. Here's the three I came up with based on my own advice:

1. To break a world-record: Admittedly more of a big goal than a 'resolution', but this is now in motion, and those who know me well have already had the ‘announcement’ which will keep me honest. It’s in October and requiring an incredible amount of planning and preparation. So far, so good.

2. To reduce my phone usage by 50%: I’ve moved my phone away from my bed and limited screen time for several apps. I have maintained 40% less screen time so far (measurement is complicated because I have an extra ~45 mins a day because of resolution number 3).

3. To row 310km in January: Averaging 10km a day on a rowing machine for a month is hard. I set this as a deliberately tough short-term goal, specifically to test if my own advice holds. With kids, weekends away and work trips limiting my ability to row every day, I knew this would be hard, but I wanted to see if I could do it. I told enough people to know that if I fail, it will seriously hurt my credibility.

At BecomingX, we help people not just dream, but achieve. If only 12% of people can reach even their simplest goals, imagine the impact of developing the skills, mindset, and strategy to consistently succeed. The difference between failure and success isn’t luck - it’s knowing how to execute. And that’s something we can all learn.

Right now I have another 17km to row by the end of the day, and zero excuses.

References:

Baylor College of Medicine (2024) ‘New Year’s resolutions: Why do we give up on them so quickly?’, Baylor College of Medicine, 11 January. Available here.

Diamond, D. (2013) ‘Just 8% of people achieve their New Year’s resolutions. Here’s how they did it’, Forbes, 1 January. Available here. 

Wiseman, R. (2007) ‘The resolution experiment’, Quirkology. Available here. 

Books I recommend on this topic:

Duckworth, A. (2016) Grit: The power of passion and perseverance. New York: Scribner. Available here.

Keller, G. and Papasan, J. (2013) The one thing: The surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary results. New York: Bard Press. Available here.