If your New Year’s resolution is still going strong by midnight tonight, you’re among the elite. Happy QUITTER’S DAY, everyone.
The second Friday in January is called Quitter’s Day now, after a study in 2019 found it’s the day you’re statistically most likely to pack it in and give up on your resolution. 80% of resolutions have supposedly been abandoned by now.
A new poll on health-related resolutions more or less backs that up. The average person said that if they gave up their favorite food for New Year’s, they’d have a hard time resisting it by Day 14. So, that would be this Sunday.
The poll found the most common health-related goals we made were to exercise more and eat better. But big, sweeping goals are the hardest to stick to. So one way to make it through Quitter’s Day is by just dialing back and adjusting.
Here are a few tips on how to power through Quitter’s Day . . .
1. Be more realistic and slow down. Don’t try to make it happen all at once. Instead of abandoning your resolution, just adjust it.
2. Remember progress isn’t always linear. Setbacks are inevitable. They don’t have to mean you failed. Instead of Quitter’s Day, think of it as “Correction Day.”
3. Celebrate what you HAVE accomplished. Maybe you said you’d work out five days a week, but you’ve only done it two days a week. Good for you! Now keep it up and try to build on that.
4. Don’t use Quitter’s Day as an excuse to give up. It’s really supposed to be a day for RESTARTING your resolution. So hit the reset button, reassess whether your goals are realistic or not, and dial back if needed.
(SWNS / Entrepreneur / KUSA / The Standard)
(The original study by a site called Strava actually claimed the 19th was Quitter’s Day. They adjusted it to the 15th the next year based on new data, and the 17th the year after that. Now they apparently just ballpark it as the second Friday in January.)