There Is No “There” There: Rethinking Resolutions, Goals, and the Hedonic Treadmill
Did you make a resolution this year? If you did, did you make it past Quitters Day? The second Friday in January (this year, January 9th) has been dubbed Quitters Day, as research shows this is when people who set resolutions tend to quit. It’s not all “it’s over, you loser, try again next year,” though. The people who design things like Quitters Day (and who does do these things, BTW?) note that the day has a hopeful tone. Those who’ve quit their resolutions should take it as a signal that it’s time to get up, dust themselves off, re-commit, find ways around obstacles, and start their resolutions again.
We get pulled to make resolutions, goals, huge plans, whatever we have, because of who we think we’ll be when we achieve them. When writing about missing my goal weight by the end of 2025, I realized that deep down, I really do believe that I will be happier and my life will be better when I achieve that goal. But rationally, can that even be true? I’m now eight pounds away from my goal weight. Is life going to be all that different eight pounds from now? Will I have heaps more energy, will I fit into gorgeous, sample-sized clothes, and will the state of the world be sorted entirely with all but thirteen people blissfully happy Pluribus-style? No. If those things haven’t happened by now, chances are that they will not happen eight pounds from now.
Whenever we achieve goals, we get our quick hit of dopamine and then adapt to life s/p goal achievement quite quickly. It’s called the hedonic treadmill, “the concept that people quickly return to a baseline level of happiness despite positive or negative life changes.” Think about it. When you were in med school, you were so excited to be a resident because you believed life would be so much better. When you were a resident, you looked forward to becoming a fellow because then you’d really be doing what you wanted to do, without all the filler you couldn’t care less about. When you were a fellow, gosh, you couldn’t wait to be an attending, because that’s when life would really be extraordinary. And what about when you’re there, finished with all of your training? Are you pining for retirement, because that’s when you’ll really be able to do what you want? Closely related to the hedonic treadmill is the arrival fallacy, “the false belief that achieving a specific goal will bring lasting satisfaction.”
The hedonic treadmill and arrival fallacy sustain academic medicine; otherwise, why would we put ourselves through it?! While I don’t have data on whether physicians maintain their New Year’s resolutions more or less than the general public (I could make arguments both ways), it stands to reason that if we succumb to Quitters Day, it may be because we implicitly know there’s no “there” there. Years of medical training have shown us that no matter the goal, life just kind of “is” afterwards. And when we fall short of the goal, life just kind of “is” afterwards, then too.
The trick isn’t to stop making goals. Honestly, I don’t even think that’s possible for most people; there’s an evolutionary pull to make things better, to be better, otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten out of our caveman days, with our gorgeous, sample-sized loincloths and all. The trick is to make the goal the process of achieving the goal. Instead of my goal being a specific weight, the goal becomes achieving the daily practices that will eventually get me to that weight: planning my meals, stopping myself when I want to eat for an emotion instead of to satiate hunger, moving every day, and getting enough water and sleep. A day when I do more of those things than not is a day I’m closer to achieving my goal. Another way to think about this is asking, “If every week were like last week, would I be closer to my goal?” Making goal achievement about the process, rather than the goal, allows for the life that will get in the way of our perfectionistic aspirations. It makes Quitters Day just another day on the calendar.
So, if you’ve already fallen off the New Year’s resolution wagon, have some self-compassion. It happens. And it will continue to happen, to all of us, for the rest of forever; it’s just how things work. (Otherwise, Quitters Day wouldn’t be a thing.) Realize there’s no magic in New Year’s Day, or Monday, or next month, or next year, or even Quitters Day: the day you want to change something about yourself is the exact right day to start. But this time, try making it about the process of achieving the goal instead of the goal itself. And then, look back and see the amazing person you’ve become in the process.