I suggest you plan four New Years this year!! Yes four! Ok, so if you are over the age of thirty-five, maybe don’t stay out until dawn, four times this year. Let me explain why I like to have more that one New Year, each year.

The New Year always feels fresh and full of possibilities. We like to dream about the year ahead. We set goals. We promise to exercise more, eat less and not waste time watching endless cat videos on Facebook. New Years’ resolutions allow us to picture ourselves achieving something great. At the same time, new routines save us time by allowing us to learn a task well and eliminating the time it takes to choose daily activities.

Unfortunately, we make New Year’s Resolutions… and then we forget about them. Some studies have shown that only 8% of people who make resolutions keep them. Why don’t we keep our New Year’s resolutions? Because in most cases a full year is too long for a deadline to be effective. Most of us will loose motivation over a one- year period or we find our routine becomes monotonous. Also, setting a one-year deadline is an invitation to procrastinate. Before we know it, the year will be over and the majority of people will not have reached their goals.

Four fresh starts through the year will:

  1. Allow you to have four shiny new routines. Four routines will give you the advantage of learning the activities within the routine while not repeating them so many times that the activities become stale.
  1. Create four “check-in” points for your New Year’s resolutions.   This will make procrastination less likely and increase the likelihood you will achieve your goals.  Four times per year you can evaluate whether you are achieving your goals, modify them or create new ones. Each New Year also presents an opportunity to break down your goals into achievable pieces and identify the next actionable steps.

As Canadian’s we are very lucky.   Mother nature provides us with four natural deadlines and fresh starts, each year.   Spring, summer, winter and fall are natural times to get a fresh start.   (Even if the weather is a little fresher than you would like it to be during some of these periods.) Use the changing seasons to your advantage this coming year.

I will likely spend New Year’s Eve playing a board game with my family and afterwards I might watch the ball drop in Times Square on TV.   No matter how you spend New Year’s Eve, I hope you will treat yourself to four New Years in 2015! Happy New YEARS!