We tend to approach New Year’s resolutions in a predictable way: by targeting precisely those areas where we are weakest.
This year, I will finally stop wasting time on Facebook.
I will stop eating at night.
I will take cold showers every morning.
I will study German for at least fifteen minutes a day.
We endure this for three weeks, suffer intensely, and then abandon the effort altogether. The only tangible result is that we have successfully poisoned three weeks of our lives.
This outcome should not surprise us. If our brains were wired in such a way that we could effortlessly stop eating at night or resist social media, we would not need New Year’s resolutions in the first place. When we must rely on constant self-coercion—because our natural inclinations pull in the opposite direction—it is only a matter of time before those inclinations prevail.
Modern neuroscience has made one thing abundantly clear: it is structurally impossible for rational willpower to triumph indefinitely over impulses rooted in evolutionarily older parts of the brain. As Jonathan Haidt has convincingly shown, the age-old advice of religious and moral teachers—that our “higher,” more rational self should suppress our lower instincts—is among the worst pieces of guidance ever produced in human history.
What can work, however, is a different approach: resolutions that build on what we already do well—on those areas where our personality is naturally strong. In other words, using our strengths as levers for further growth.
I, for example, will not make resolutions about dietary restraint. That would be a waste of time. Instead, I will try to become a wiser person over time. For me, that means:
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Trying to view every issue from multiple perspectives
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Cultivating openness to genuinely new ideas and schools of thought
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Strengthening the desire to learn
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Nurturing curiosity
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Developing creativity—in my case, the search for ideas and explanations that are original, unconventional, yet fully rational
I do not claim that I am particularly strong in these areas. But they suit me far better than, say, cultivating spiritual contemplation—a domain in which I would be utterly lost and miserable.
None of this denies that we would benefit from improving precisely where we are weakest. We probably would. But such efforts are almost always doomed to failure.
A realistic ethic of self-improvement begins not with fantasies of moral conquest, but with an honest assessment of human nature—our own included.