“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
The Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote about the best laid plans of mice and men going awry back in 1785. Two and a half centuries later, we’re still making the same mistakes every January, convinced this time will be different.
Spoiler: it won’t be. Not because you’re broken or lazy, but because you’re approaching the whole thing wrong.
I say this as someone who has personally failed at New Year’s resolutions with the kind of consistency most people reserve for breathing. My track record is so impressively bad, I should probably put it on my CV under “Special Skills.”
Let’s start with some data that should humble everyone reading this. Psychologist John Norcross studied New Year’s resolutions and found that 23% of people abandon their goals within the first week. One week.
Before the holiday decorations even come down, nearly a quarter of resolution-makers have already tapped out.
It gets worse. Only 19% of people maintain their resolutions for two years. That means if you and nine friends make New Year’s resolutions together, statistically, only two of you will still be at it 24 months later. The rest will have quietly pretended it never happened.
Which, let’s be honest, is exactly what you did with that gym membership you bought in 2023. I know you still have the card in your wallet. I can see it from here.
The point isn’t to shame anyone. The point is this: if your best laid plans keep failing, you’re not the problem. The approach is the problem.
Here’s what most people think: “I just need to want it badly enough.” They wait for motivation to strike like lightning, expecting it to carry them through months of habit change and discipline.
This is like waiting for a sugar rush to fuel a marathon. Fun while it lasts, gone when you need it most.
James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits, explains that motivation is fundamentally unreliable. It’s an emotion, and emotions fluctuate. Some days you wake up ready to conquer the world. Other days you can barely conquer the snooze button. Building your best laid plans on motivation is like building a house on quicksand.
What works instead? Systems. Not the sexy answer, but the honest one.
Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert and author of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, breaks it down simply: if you do something every day, it’s a system. If you’re waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it’s a goal.
Goals point you toward some future destination. Systems keep you moving in the present. And here’s the kicker: systems work whether you’re motivated or not. That’s the whole point.
Most New Year’s resolutions fail for predictable reasons. Let’s examine them:
Your best laid plans aren’t really about willpower. They’re about habits—the automatic behaviors you perform without thinking. According to Clear’s research, it takes anywhere from two to eight months to form a new habit. That’s right: months, not weeks.
If you’re trying to stop eating donuts for breakfast, you can’t just remove the donuts. You need to replace them with something that satisfies the same craving.
Otherwise, your brain rebels, your best laid plans crumble, and you’re back at the drive-through by February.
Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has shown that your brain is remarkably plastic—it can rewire itself when you change your thought patterns. But here’s the catch: if you’re trying to implement new behaviors while maintaining old beliefs about yourself, you’re fighting an uphill battle.
Think of your mindset as the operating system running your life. If the OS is outdated, your best laid plans will crash like a buggy app. Change how you think, and you change the neural pathways that determine what feels natural versus what feels like torture.
Here’s an uncomfortable truth: not everyone who says they want to change actually wants to change. Change is hard. It requires time, effort, discomfort, and sustained attention. Many people like the idea of transformation more than the reality of it.
Before your best laid plans can succeed, you need three things:
Without these, you’re just performatively trying to improve while secretly hoping nothing has to actually change.
Psychologists Janet Polivy and Peter Herman identified what they call “false hope syndrome”—the pattern of setting unreasonably high expectations for change, failing to meet them, and then feeling so discouraged you quit entirely.
When you promise yourself you’ll lose 50 pounds, wake up at 5 AM daily, learn Japanese, and run a marathon—all starting January 1st—you’re not making best laid plans. You’re setting yourself up for spectacular failure and the subsequent self-loathing spiral.
And look, I say this with love: if you’re currently waking up at 10 AM and haven’t jogged since PE class in secondary school, maybe don’t aim for “Iron Man triathlete” as your January 2nd persona. Start with “person who occasionally takes the stairs.”
Work your way up from there. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was anyone’s fitness level, despite what Instagram would have you believe.
New Year’s resolutions are inherently short-term thinking. They’re designed to be achieved within a specific timeframe. But real change doesn’t work on a calendar. Real change is about building a new lifestyle, not hitting a target.
Clear puts it this way: new goals don’t deliver new results. New lifestyles do. And a lifestyle is a process, not an outcome.
Your best laid plans need to focus on the daily process, not the distant destination. Fall in love with the habits, not just the hypothetical results.
Attempting massive life overhauls is a recipe for burnout. If you’ve been sedentary for years, the thought of running a marathon feels absurd. The goal seems so distant and difficult that you don’t even know where to start.
This is where micro-goals save your best laid plans. Instead of “run a marathon,” start with “walk for 20 minutes every morning.” The small goal is achievable. It builds momentum. It creates confidence. And paradoxically, these tiny wins compound into transformations that massive goals never achieve.
Forget everything you know about New Year’s resolutions. Here’s what research and real-world experience actually support:
Systems beat goals because systems are present-focused and repeatable. They don’t depend on motivation. They work whether you feel like it or not.
Adams defines a system as something you do regularly that increases your odds of success over time. The magic word there is “regularly.” Consistency is everything.
Here’s how to build a system for your best laid plans:
Not what sounds impressive. Not what other people expect. What you genuinely want. This requires brutal honesty. What ignites your passion? What gives you a sense of purpose beyond just checking boxes?
Write it down. Clarity creates focus.
And no, “be happier” doesn’t count. That’s not a goal, that’s a horoscope. Be specific. “I want to feel less stressed about money” is better. “I want to save $5,000 by December” is even better. “I want to finally stop pretending I understand cryptocurrency” is probably the most honest answer most of us could give, but I digress.
Charles Duhigg, in The Power of Habit, identified keystone habits—single behaviors that trigger chain reactions of positive change. Exercise is a classic example.
People who start exercising regularly often spontaneously improve their diet, become more productive at work, and sleep better. They didn’t set out to change all those things. The keystone habit created a ripple effect.
Find the one habit that will anchor your best laid plans and make everything else easier.
Your system isn’t static. It evolves. Check in weekly or monthly. What’s working? What isn’t? Where are you getting stuck? Adjust accordingly.
Consider finding an accountability partner—someone who will check your progress and call you out when you’re deluding yourself. External accountability dramatically increases follow-through.
Most plans fail because they’re disconnected from your core identity. You’re chasing what seems impressive or what you think you should want, rather than what actually matters to you.
A personal mission statement solves this. It’s not a New Year’s resolution that expires in February. It’s a compass that guides your decisions year after year.
Stephen Covey, in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, calls this “begin with the end in mind.” Visualize your ideal self in vivid detail. Not the fantasy version where everything is perfect, but the authentic version where you’re living according to your values.
Covey suggests a thought experiment: imagine attending your own funeral. What would you want people to say about you? What would you want to have accomplished? What kind of person would you want to have been?
Morbid? Maybe. Effective? Absolutely. It forces you to think beyond the immediate gratification of hitting arbitrary goals and consider what actually constitutes a life well-lived.
Your personal mission statement becomes the filter through which you evaluate all decisions. Does this align with who I want to be? If yes, pursue it. If no, drop it, even if it looks good on paper.
Tennis legend Arthur Ashe said that success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.
This runs counter to how most people think. We obsess over results. We measure success by achievements, by milestones crossed, and by goals reached. But the people who actually succeed at their best laid plans? They’ve learned to love the process.
They find satisfaction in the daily practice. They enjoy the small improvements. They appreciate the learning that comes from setbacks. The outcome becomes almost secondary to the experience of showing up consistently.
When you shift your focus from outcomes to process, something interesting happens: you stop being devastated by setbacks. A bad day doesn’t derail everything because your satisfaction comes from the act of showing up, not from perfect execution.
We’re living in an era of rapid change. Technology evolves constantly. Economic conditions shift. Personal circumstances change. The old model of “create a rigid five-year plan and execute it perfectly” doesn’t work anymore.
Your best laid plans need flexibility built in. Think GPS with rerouting capability, not a paper map. When obstacles appear—and they will—you need the ability to adjust course while keeping your destination in mind.
Resilience isn’t about never facing setbacks. It’s about having systems robust enough to withstand disruption and values clear enough to guide you through uncertainty.
Here’s the practical summary:
Follow this blueprint, and your best laid plans transform from fragile New Year’s wishes into durable systems that actually change your life.
Burns was right. The best laid plans often go awry. But maybe the lesson isn’t that planning is futile. Maybe it’s that we’ve been planning wrong.
Stop making resolutions destined to fail by February. Stop relying on motivation that evaporates when things get difficult. Stop setting unrealistic goals that set you up for shame and disappointment.
Instead, build systems. Choose keystone habits. Align your actions with your values. Focus on the process, not just the outcome.
Do this, and your best laid plans stop being annual exercises in self-delusion and start being practical tools for genuine transformation.
The choice is yours. You can keep doing what doesn’t work, or you can finally try something different.
Your best laid plans are waiting. Time to build them properly.
DISCLOSURE: In my article, I’ve mentioned a few products and services, all in a valiant attempt to turbocharge your life. Some of them are affiliate links. This is basically my not-so-secret way of saying, “Hey, be a superhero and click on these links.” When you joyfully tap and spend, I’ll be showered with some shiny coins, and the best part? It won’t cost you an extra dime, not even a single chocolate chip. Your kind support through these affiliate escapades ensures I can keep publishing these useful (and did I mention free?) articles for you in the future.
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