The trick to making New Year’s resolutions stick
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2026
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Go to sleep earlier. Read more books. Eat better. Exercise.
Changing our behavior is hard, but what if some simple – and dare we say fun – tricks could help us keep our resolutions for the new year?
From temptation bundling to buddying up, Optimist reporter Maggie Penman shares the science on how to make your New Year’s resolutions, whatever they are, stick in 2026. Plus, on the eve of national “Quitters Day,” we explore why making resolutions can actually be beneficial – even if you don’t stick to them perfectly.
Today’s show was produced by Elana Gordon. It was edited by Dennis Funk and mixed by Sam Bair. Thanks to Allison Klein and Theresa Tamkins.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Maggie, have you heard my approach to resolutions? |
| 0:04.8 | I have not. Please tell me. |
| 0:06.2 | So every year, I just make so many New Year's resolutions. |
| 0:10.4 | So I have like 30 resolutions every year. |
| 0:13.5 | Oh, my God. |
| 0:14.6 | It's like a whole page of that. |
| 0:16.2 | And then when I look back at the end of the year, I'm like, okay, well, at least I did like four or five. |
| 0:20.4 | So there's some success there. All right. But I think last year was particularly bad for me. |
| 0:28.6 | You're hearing me talk with reporter Maggie Penman, a familiar voice on Post Reports as host of |
| 0:34.1 | our weekly optimist podcast. Today, we're talking about New Year's resolutions. |
| 0:39.7 | Maybe you love making them, maybe you load them. Either way, I have not been feeling so great |
| 0:45.7 | about achieving resolutions lately. I was looking back through my 2025 resolutions. I had |
| 0:53.9 | read 20 books, 15 books before a baby, five books after baby. |
| 0:59.3 | Definitely did not happen. |
| 1:01.6 | I also, the one that I think is the most indicative of my, like, incredible hubris going into this, |
| 1:08.4 | was I was going to meditate 1,000 minutes in 2025, and I looked back and I meditated for 24 minutes the whole year. |
| 1:17.3 | Okay, so I have some thoughts about this. |
| 1:20.5 | I brought Maggie in because she has discovered some research-backed strategies that she says can really help us hack our resolutions |
| 1:28.2 | to actually succeed at them, no matter how disappointed you might feel about your |
| 1:33.2 | previous attempts. |
| 1:37.3 | First of all, I think it's great that you're setting resolutions. |
| 1:41.6 | And what I have learned in reporting on this is that setting resolutions, |
... |
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