I once knew someone, let us call her Margaret, who had been trying to lose weight for many years, and then, just like that, she lost 40 pounds or so in the course of a single summer. I asked her what had happened.
“I finally decided to do it,” Margaret said. “I told myself one evening, ‘I am really going to lose the extra pounds,’ and for the first time, I believed what I was telling myself.’” “After that,” she went on, “it was easy.”
Margaret explained that while she had attempted to lose weight on multiple occasions previously, she never thought she would succeed. She wished she would and fantasized about what it would be like if she did but without conviction. She kept trying this method and that—diets, exercise routines, and so on—occasionally making progress toward her goal only to slide back shortly after. The target always remained out of reach, as if success did not depend on her. But that evening at the start of the summer when she lost weight, Margaret came to think that the path to victory had been open before her all along. Attaining the aim, she thought then, was chiefly a matter of decision.
There is a good deal to learn from Margaret’s case. Resolutions of various kinds are made only to be broken shortly after. Sometimes, we make them before the start of the New Year, hoping to draw some kind of power from the calendar, as though the new year self will be an improved version of the person we are, only to find, two weeks in, that we are just the person we were.
Or we may announce resolutions on social media in the hope the announcement might serve as a commitment device. If everyone knows we are trying, we will be embarrassed should we fail. But this doesn’t work either since, in all likelihood, most everyone on social media is just like us. So we know in advance that if we do fail—as we expect—we could share that also and get a positive response, a warm welcome into the club of those who’d already fallen off their wagons.
What interests me here, however, is not the role of social media but of decision or the lack thereof. I wish to suggest that contrary to appearances, most resolutions are never broken; rather, they aren’t made to begin with. Making a resolution—truly making it—requires a certain view of ourselves that we often fail to maintain.
When, like Margaret before her summer of change, we pick a goal and perhaps proclaim publicly we’d work toward it but do not believe we would succeed, a likely explanation of our pessimism is that we see ourselves as playthings in the hands of fortune. We do not think we can decide what to do.
We may still try to trick ourselves into staying the course by using some strategy or other, but if the task is of significant difficulty, we tend to fail. Importantly, the failure is not due to challenges outside of our control but to what we ourselves do or fail to do.
George Eliot captures the core of the phenomenon I have in mind. In the novel Daniel Deronda, Eliot says the following about a character named Gwendolyn Harleth:
And on the whole, she wished to marry him. He suited her purpose; her prevailing, deliberate intention was, to accept him; But was she going to fulfill her deliberate intention? She began to be afraid of herself, and to find out a certain difficulty in doing as she liked. Already her assertion of independence in evading his advances had been carried farther than was necessary, and she was thinking with some anxiety what she might do next.
Many of our resolutions are like Gwendolyn’s deliberate intention: They involve no actual resolve. They are things we wish, on the whole, to do but fear we won’t do because we don’t always do as we like.
Leaving Gwendolyn to her predicament and coming back to the rest of us, the alternative here is to decide what we are going to do.
I do not wish to suggest that we needn’t use tricks and pull our own strings so as to go in the right direction: It is often a good idea to take steps to reduce friction and make it easier for ourselves to arrive at our destination. Some people find it helpful to delete apps from their phones to minimize distraction; others benefit from a regimented schedule worked out ahead of time. My point is simply that tricks and strategies are rarely enough by themselves. They are a bit like crutches helpful to a person attempting to walk but useless to someone who isn’t trying. Upon occasion, we are like a man who accumulates multiple aids and then proceeds to discard them one by one as each is found wanting, but where what is really happening is that the aids didn’t help because he did not use them. Why do we behave in this way?
Perhaps the main reason is that we can be puppets on strings. The view is not exactly false. Indeed, to be the playthings of our own impulses is our default state. The question is how to escape it.
It may seem, perhaps, that it all comes down to motivation. For, surely, if we are strongly motivated to achieve a goal, we will persevere in the face of obstacles! What of that?
It is true that when we are strongly motivated to achieve some end, we do not find it difficult to persist. I suspect, in fact, that one of the attractions of fiction is that fictional characters differ systematically from real people in just this way: They are strongly motivated. The protagonists of novels and films—and, indeed, the antagonists—feel driven. They don’t have to prod themselves and coax themselves into staying the course. A force inside them seems to work through them and propel them forward.
Interestingly, we find driven fictional characters highly relatable despite being fickle and indecisive ourselves. There is a chronic energy deficit that many of us experience. We have wishes, of course, and if we had a magic wand, we would make those true, but we have no magic, so the wishes don’t leave the realm of fantasy and enter that of planning.
There are exceptions, of course. Physicist Richard Feynman is said to have been almost compulsively driven to solve puzzles, and Picasso had a similarly strong impulse to paint. (It may be that many of the greatest human achievements are a result of a compulsion-like drive.) And all of us might acquire the relevant motivation in the face of mortal danger to us or loved ones or other force majeure circumstances. But, for the most part, powerful and persistent motivation is absent in us.
The good news is, however, that while we may not be able to will ourselves into a state of feeling driven like Picasso or Feynman, we can decide what to do and then do it, much the way Margaret did.
The key, I think, is to accept that success truly depends on us. Even in the absence of perfectly favorable circumstances, we can grant our own wishes. We need not fear what we might do, like Eliot’s Gwendolyn, since we can decide not to do what we fear we might.
I will end with an anecdote. I once asked a highly productive person I know whether he’d be willing to come and talk about productivity with my students and share any tips or strategies he may have. “I would come,” he said, “But I just don’t have very much to say. I have no tips.”
“What is your secret then?” I said.
“I just do my work.”
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