The problem with HAM and the real reason New Year's resolutions fail

No, this isn't going to be a post about nutrition or weight loss. It's a different kind of HAM I'm going to focus on today. Though I suppose if your New Year's resolution is to eat healthier, but you really love ham, then the problem might actually be the 🐷kind of ham...

Does your family set New Year's resolutions? I know many people are quick to dismiss the practice because they claim resolutions don't work. (Those people are right, but we'll get into that in a moment). Whether you call them resolutions or goals, the process of setting goals and working towards them is immensely valuable and essential for long-term academic and career success. In fact, a key executive function skill that we want children develop as they grow is called goal-directed persistence.

The process of setting New Year's resolutions provides an excellent opportunity to practice goal setting and goal-directed persistence. Should it be limited to the month of January? Of course not. But since everyone is talking about New Year's resolutions right now, let's jump into the conversation and explore how we can leverage resolutions to help our children develop goal-directed persistence.

This doesn't mean we go around the table on December 31st or January 1st and share our resolutions and then call it a day. I can guarantee you with 99.9% certainty those resolutions will quickly be forgotten.

Did you know that it is estimated that 80% of New Year's Resolutions fail by February? To unpack all the research on why we're so quick to jump ship on our shiny new resolutions would take far more than one blog post, so today I'm focusing on just one slice of...well...HAM (maybe I should make my New Year's resolution be to use more puns?)

So what do I mean by HAM if I'm not referring to the 🐷kind?

H = Huge

A = Abstract

M = Meaningless

Resolutions that are huge, abstract, and/or meaningless are bound for failure.

Here's an example:

Let's imagine your child (we'll call him Jake) has a goal to do better in school. Does this goal have a HAM problem?

• Huge: Yes. If Jake is currently nearly failing, then to suddenly do better is a HUGE (and likely impossible) goal.

• Abstract: Yes. What does it mean to do better in school? How much better? Is this measured by grades? What GPA would show this? What about effort or other measures of achievement?

• Meaningless: Possibly. Is this goal actually meaningful to Jake? Or is it a goal he has because he thinks he should have it? Is doing well in school something that's important to Jake or just his parents and teachers?

See the problem here? It's no wonder that this goal doesn't actually result in any change for Jake.

So what should Jake do instead? Invert HAM: make it tiny, make it specific, and make it meaningful. If a goal fits all three of these criteria, then it is much more likely to be met. Now if only TSM were a better acronym...

Let's go back to the scenario above to see how Jake's goal can be modified to go from huge, abstract, and meaningless to tiny, specific and meaningful.

Tiny: Goals that feel impossible or that take too long to reach are the ones that are abandoned the fastest. There's a reason why video games are so successful--players experience an ongoing stream of dopamine hits as they meet smaller goals and earn points as they move towards the larger goal. Without the smaller goals of getting more points or leveling up, the larger end of game goal might feel too huge to keep players motivated.

Essentially, you can think of the original HUGE goal as the end of the game and overall goal. Break that down into the smaller quests or levels the player has to move through to reach the larger goal and you have your tiny goals.

Jake can make his goal tinier by setting the goal to turn in all of his homework for a month.

Specific: Another way to think about whether or not a goal is specific is to ask if it is measurable. How will you know when you have met the goal?

Jake can make his goal specific by adding that he will not have any missing or incomplete homework grades posted on the grading portal.

Meaningful: This is where young children can really struggle with goal-setting, and why the goals they often think of first relate to getting a new toy. Jake's new goal of turning in all of his homework on time is tiny and specific, but it may not be entirely meaningful to him. Children live very much in the present, so long-term and abstract goals can lose motivational power quickly.

Sure, we could tell Jake that turning in all of his homework on time will help him do well in school and then get into a good college and so on and so on. But is any of that meaningful to him? This is where we as parents can leverage all of the wisdom and perspective that comes with age (and grey hairs🙋‍) to help our children make their goals more meaningful. Maybe Jake loves animals and dreams about being a veterinarian one day. His mind doesn't automatically make the connection between doing his homework every day and becoming a veterinarian, but we can help him see how they are in fact connected. In order to get into veterinary school, Jake needs to do well in college. In order to get into college, he needs to do well in school. In order to do well in school, he needs to turn in his homework on time.

So if your family made any New Year's resolutions this year, do they have a HAM problem? Can you take them from huge, abstract, and meaningless to tiny, specific, and meaningful?

This is the first part in series on resolutions and goal-setting. We'll take a deeper dive into how to make goals meaningful, tiny, and specific in upcoming posts.