An Invitation to Rethink New Year’s Resolutions
Leveraging a strategic lens to craft enduring, adaptive resolutions
Happy 2026! As we close out the first full week of the year, a topic that is top of mind for me is New Year’s resolutions.
Every year, people set New Year’s resolutions. On average, the majority are forgotten or abandoned midway through the month. January 17 is even known as Ditch Your New Year’s Resolution Day. Interestingly, studies show that many individuals reuse that same resolution for the following year…and likely experience the same result.
I’m all about recycling, but this seems like an unhelpful cycle.
What can we learn from strategy that can be applied to the setting of New Year’s resolutions?
Strategic planning frameworks, often regarded as the territory of C-suites and formal boardrooms, offer a useful lens to rethink how we form, frame, and manage New Year’s resolutions throughout the year.
Organizations leveraging a robust strategic planning approach don’t jump right into goals when building a new strategic plan. Most planning disciplines begin with an analysis of the external environment and the internal functions of the organization. From there, a desired future state is identified, mission is developed or affirmed, and goals, measurements, and tactics can begin to emerge, bringing the organization’s strategy to life. The ultimate strategic direction is often shared broadly across a wide audience encompassing leaders, direct participants, enablers, and interested stakeholders to ensure aligned and consistent communication on the approach.
The principles that drive strategic planning can also be applied in crafting New Year’s resolutions.
This is a space I’ve been exploring and iterating on for the last four years, and I’m excited to share a first look at my thinking on this area. While I’m still refining this model, here are four ways to begin rethinking New Year’s resolutions today.
1. Start with a pause and a look at your environment. Anchor your thinking in your current space, schedule, and responsibilities. Understanding where you are and where there are nonnegotiables, flexibility, room to grow, or underutilized space sets a strong foundation. In my world, managing celiac disease is nonnegotiable and brings a set of health requirements that must show up in my routine and be supported in other activities. When setting a health or fitness resolution, I start by considering what internal and external factors related to celiac might need to be factored in. This is similar to how an organization might consider regulatory or operational requirements when analyzing their internal environment.
2. Review past data or experience within a given area to set a realistic area of focus and target. By setting a realistic expectation for the potential to change in a given year, your resolution is more likely to be sustainable and achievable. When I first started running, I couldn’t run two miles without stopping to walk. If I had set a resolution to run a total of 1,000 miles that year, I wouldn’t have met it (or I would have likely sustained an injury). Instead, my resolution was to work up to a five-day-a-week running schedule, which gave me the ability to focus more on distance the following year and build up my endurance. Two years later, I exceeded 1,000 miles through this steady, but not explosive, increase of mileage. Setting the right pace is critical – and organizations seeking sustained change are often best supported by measured progress over dramatic, frantic shifts.
3. Give yourself space to try it out and adjust before next January. Setting a resolution to guide an entire year during the coldest, darkest month of the year after a frantic holiday season is already tough. By calendaring regular check-in’s – whether that’s weekly, monthly, or quarterly – to see how your resolution is going and where you might need to adjust, you can update, recalibrate, or pivot where needed based on your learning. For me, a seasonal check-in works great. As the snow starts to melt, as the days grow longer in early summer, and as the leaves begin to fall, I check on my resolutions and see where I am on track, what’s working and what’s presenting an obstacle, and identify where my strategy may need to shift. Organizations with mature, adaptive planning processes don’t let their plans sit idle on a shelf. They seek to annotate, measure, and adapt based on double-loop learning, which is designed to not just measure results but to reconsider the assumptions behind them.
4. Build a visual and showcase it! Find a way to make the resolution part of your environment. Bringing a visual representation of your resolution increases the visibility in your mind and will help keep this an area of focus throughout the year. My favorite approach – despite not being remotely artistic – is to draw a picture of myself achieving the goal and keep that somewhere where I can see it throughout the week. There’s a lot more accountability for me when I see Stick Figure Jackie making it happen! Organizations have a wide array of ways to make strategies come to life, from printed deliverables to digital dashboards to communal learning sessions, and what’s central to these approaches is the application of shared artifacts that ensure priorities are both vivid and visible.
Through these four practices, we can reposition resolutions from January 1 declarations to yearlong practices to guide success. Resolutions become strategies that are realistically grounded, enabled by learning and adjusted as needed, and visibly represented. Imagine a resolution with the potential to become an enduring roadmap for the year ahead, one you can return to revise, and build on along the way.
Lavorgna Strategy Studio helps leaders, teams, and organizations prepare and plan for the future through strategic planning and strategic foresight. Connect with Jackie Lavorgna, Founder and Principal, to learn more about Lavorgna Strategy Studio and schedule a free discovery call today.