Every year around this time, people make New Year’s resolutions with the same confidence you hear right before someone says, “No, it’s fine, I know exactly where I’m going” and then immediately misses their exit
To get a sense of what we actually resolve to do (and never quite pull off) I asked people to share their recurring New Year’s resolutions.
What I got back was not a collection of goals so much as a support group transcript.
Take the respondent who has spent “probably a decade now” preparing to dunk a basketball.
“Every December for probably a decade now, I spend a couple of hours online reading about how to increase my vertical jump so I can slam dunk a basketball,” they wrote.
Not practicing. Not training. Reading. They can already touch the rim. They’re inches from greatness. And yet, year after year, the routine tops out at “buy a basketball” and “do one lower body workout” from a six-to-eight week program that never makes it to week two.
Still, the optimism remains intact.
“Maybe 2026 will be the year I take it all the way!” they said.
(And maybe this time the lottery ticket will hit.)
Another popular resolution: reading books. A timeless classic. One respondent explained:
“Having two kids 18 months apart killed my ability to focus on anything,” they said. “I always tell myself I am going to start reading again.”
“I never pick up a goddamn book because effort.”
This is the most honest literary criticism ever written. Not “lack of time.” Not “burnout.” Just: Effort. The books sit there, untouched, quietly judging while we scroll our phones and absorb fifteen half-articles we immediately forget.
Health and fitness also made a strong showing, particularly the kind that sounds impressive but collapses under mild scrutiny.
“I’ve had years where I succeeded at rock climbing at least once a week or doing hot yoga at least once a week, but I’ve never been able to get myself reliably outside for walks, which are very good for my brain.”
This person can scale walls and endure heat like a lizard, but stepping outdoors for a casual walk? Impossible. They once managed 10,000 steps a day, for months, before giving up, which is frankly more follow-through than most of us achieve.
They’ve tried everything to stay motivated including “a Fitbit, an Apple Watch, an Oura Ring…”
Unfortunately, they hit a snag. They wrote: “As the Department of Defense has started doing deals with these companies, I’m not quite sure how to track my own exercise responsibly anymore.”
A fair concern. You set out to improve your mental health and suddenly NORAD knows when you skipped leg day.
Some resolutions are less funny and more existential, like this person who wants to “try more seriously to learn how to talk to women and understand dating.”
They went on: “I never make any progress and always end up more confused and discouraged. No one seems to have any answers and I don’t think it’s possible for me to do this.”
This is not a resolution. This is a haunting short story.
Not all recurring resolutions are failures, though. One reader reframed theirs after years of falling short.
“For years, I made a resolution to read 52 books in a year,” they wrote, “even though I repeatedly failed to reach that goal, they were still the years where I read the most books.”
They landed around 30 books each time, which is objectively great, and wisely adopted a “shoot for the moon, land among the stars” philosophy, proving that sometimes failing consistently is still wildly better than not trying at all.
Then there are the aspirational personality upgrades.
“I tell myself to have more patience for too-slow walkers, people who stand on the wrong side of escalators, and parents who allow their children to run around being loud and obnoxious in fine art museums.”
A noble goal. Tragically, they included this postscript: “But I never quite get there ;)”
No one ever does. The second someone stops at the top of an escalator, all resolutions evaporate.
Other honorable mentions include promising to save for a drum kit and get back into playing (“never follow through”), getting back into “insert healthy activity” (the most versatile resolution of all), and this masterpiece of self-sabotage:
“I try to drink less but if I’m successful at it I reward myself by drinking.”
Which perfectly captures the New Year’s resolution experience: Set goal, almost achieve goal, immediately undermine goal to celebrate achievement.
If there’s a lesson here, it’s not that we should stop making resolutions. It’s that we should accept what they really are: annual check-ins with our better selves, followed by twelve months of doing our best under extremely predictable circumstances.
Will anyone dunk a basketball in 2026? Probably not.
Will we read more than zero books? Maybe.
Will we walk outside, learn dating, practice patience, save money, drink less, and finally buy that drum kit?
Also probably not.
But we’ll think about it. In December. For a couple of hours. And honestly? That might be enough.
