Quit on new year goals? It's okay

Why not make imperfectionism your buzzword for 2025 instead of falling into the impossible trap of fresh-startism?

- Somak Ghoshal

If you have made it this far in the new year without slipping up on your resolutions, then well done! According to any number of studies, you are an elite member of a rapidly declining club of people who are still going strong with their quest for self-improvement in 2025. In contrast, the rest of us are regretting our newly acquired expensive gym memberships and reaching out for a glass of wine more times a week than we solemnly promised ourselves just a few weeks back.

Depending on the research you read, between 1 in 10 to nearly half of the world's population gives up on grand plans to reinvent themselves by the second week of January each year.

Yet, the temptation to become the "best version of yourself", as new-age motivational gurus urge us, is hard to resist. It's human nature to live in thrall to the myth of "fresh-startism", as Oliver Burkeman, a journalist-turned-writer of popular philosophical books, put it last year in a dispatch of his email newsletter, The Imperfectionist.

The term is ironic as well as filled with bathos, a reference to the impossibility of getting rid of the detritus of the past, no matter how desperate we are to make a clean break. Squeaky clean goals are as absurd as swearing to never let the thought of your ex ever cross your mind as you move into a new relationship. Or to wake up one fine day and give up caffeine, only to beat yourself up into a ball of misery for going cold turkey.

Instead of the false assurance of "a new year, new you", Burkeman urges us to face the facts, with calmness and selfcompassion. Let's face it, it is hard to shed the "old you" even though the morale of entering a new year may be high for some.