How to make a New Year's resolution - you won't quit in a week

Every year, you make the same promises, and every year fail miserably. So, this New Year, why not try a whole new approach?

Nothing can spoil the start of a new year quite like a long list of promises you already know you are going to break. Some resolutions - the privations, mostly - get betrayed right away; others remind you of your ongoing failure to do something for months. But the cancellation of this annual contract with yourself needn't be a painful process. With proper preparation and a little care, the making and breaking of New Year resolutions can be both easy and, in its own perverse way, rewarding. Let the following 12 resolutions for making resolutions be your guide.

1. Don't choose too few

Life coaches will tell you that the way to succeed with new year's resolutions is to pick a single goal that's attainable in a series of manageable steps. This one egg/one basket approach may suit organized people, but most of us are working with a lifetime backlog of underachievement and a limited number of new years ahead of us. One goal per annum won't cut it. Draw up a list of at least a dozen resolutions, preferably more. While this won't necessarily make success more likely, it does help to spread the disappointment across the year.

2. Retrofit last year's achievements 

Of your dozen or so resolutions, at least three should be goals that were accidentally met in 2015 but which were never granted full status as resolutions simply because you neglected to resolve to do them - or not to do them - at the end of 2014. For example, this time last year it was impossible to say: "I hereby resolve not to catch fire while riding a flaming hoverboard." No one know that was going to be a thing. That doesn't mean those of us who managed it should be any less proud.

Some achievements only present themselves in the lens of hindsight. Once six months have passed, the difference between "I finally managed to quit the job I hate" and "I got fired from the job I hate" is pretty negligible. 

3. Don't let the drink dictate 

Any resolution you made while drunk or crying on New Year's Eve doesn't count, even if that resolution was to stop getting drunk and crying at New Year's Eve parties. Forget about it. Actually, you probably have.

4. Resolutions made upon waking the next day are also non-binding

You're not always going to feel that hungover, and you deserve a right to reconsider all rash pronouncements once you're able to keep a cup of tea down.

5. Avoid the top 10 resolutions 

Losing weight, quitting smoking, getting fit etc. Everyone does these, which means you'll be faced with competition, and competition means attention. If all your friends know and share your 2016 aspirations, it'll be that much more embarrassing when it comes time to chuck those goals under a bus in mid-February. A good resolution should be simple enough to state in one sentence, and yet peculiar enough that there is no Facebook group for it - something along the lines of: "I resolve to cultivate a personal style so striking that Japanese tourists will take pictures of me when I go out to buy lightbulbs."

6. Be realistic 

Don't say: "I'm going to write a book in 2016." Do say: "I'm going to start writing a book on holiday, get about 8,000 words in before taking a few days off to think about how I might spend the film-rights money, then suddenly have another, even better, idea for a book, then give up on both projects in order to spend the autumn feeling bad about myself." It's all about setting achievable, incremental targets and sticking to them.

7. Aim for a preponderance of win-win resolutions

The win-lose type - lose weight or don't - is exactly the sort of rigid, high-risk proposition that gives the New Year resolution such a bad name. You can set yourself equally preposterous goals that are still worthwhile when you fail at them. Some people, for instance, resolve to read 50 books over the course of the year. It never sounds that hard on 2 January, but when August rolls round and you have only read six, the final stretch begins to look daunting. However, even if you only manage 10 books in 2016, you're still 10 books less stupid than you were at the end of 2015.

8. Consider 14 January Reset Day

The one-two punch of Christmas and New Year can leave one feeling drained and less than wholly committed to a fresh start. You may find yourself drinking to celebrate your newfound sobriety, or enjoying a box of doughnuts while making that sign for your fridge. But an early relapse needn't thwart your good intentions: you just have to switch your allegiance to the Orthodox calendar, accept 14 January as your new New Year's Day, and begin again. Chinese New Year is 8 February, by the way. After that, I can't help you.

9. Adopt the 'Two-years' resolution'

Certain long-term aspirations - learning to play an instrument, getting elected to office, eating in every Burger King on the M6 - are better suited to a 24-month timetable. If nothing else, the larger window will save you having to make any 2017 resolutions, unless by some miracle you have managed to visit all eight Burger Kings on the M6 by then. Obviously, the two-year system doesn't work for everything. If you've been meaning to visit any islands with an average elevation of less than a couple of meters above sea level, don't wait.

10. Don't revisit old resolutions

If you have already let yourself down with a resolution in the past, don't bring it back for another try this year. Consider it a failure for ever. That needn't be as depressing as it sounds: it can be quite liberating to realize you will never have to download another sourdough recipe, especially when you look back over all your past achievements and realize that life is meaningless.

11. Exercise caution when making resolutions about social media 

A lot of people will undoubtedly resolve to spend less time on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook in 2016, having wasted huge chunks of 2015 in a haze of nonsense, misdirected bile and pictures of cakes. But it can be hard to quit cold turkey, and it's probably easier to adjust your outlook. Bear in mind that people on social media aren't real and that when you aren't looking at it, it stops happening.

12. Lower your expectations

I have looked into the future, and it's not going to be a good year. All the portents - the weather, Donald Trump's hair, George Osborne's smile - point to a period of political upheaval, economic uncertainty and climactic catastrophe. I could be wrong, of course, but every amateur eschatologist has to name a start date for the Apocalypse eventually, and I'm sticking my pin in 2016. For obvious reasons I don't want to be too specific about the exact nature - and schedule - of the approaching End Times, but put it this way: come the summer, nobody is going to be listening when you say, "I'm halfway through my online French course - right on schedule!" No one will care that you have been eating a lot more fruit lately. Your first resolution for 2016 should not be: "Travel more." It should be: "Stockpile AA batteries."