How To Keep Your New Year Resolutions

It’s been 11 months since you made that new year's resolution and now it’s almost time again. Once we get past the holiday season of excess cookies and extra spending, it'll be self-improvement time again. Turns out, we might all benefit from a little help—at least according to a recent analysis in Psychological Bulletin. Having back up—or an audience—might be more important than we thought. We’ve always known that keeping track of our progress is essential to making it. But overwhelming evidence now suggests that doing so in public is the most effective way to help us reach our goals. Dr. Benjamin Harkin analyzed 138 different studies and experiments about motivation and discovered that holding yourself publicly accountable and reaching out for the support of social media can make all the difference in whether you change your diet... or change your diet and succeed at losing weight. Bottom line: it’s important to monitor your progress, but—as Dr. Harkin writes—“ some methods of monitoring are better than others.” So go ahead and tell your friends. This year, try making your resolutions public. Be specific. Share your goals. Use social media to hold you accountable for keeping them. And make your progress public too.