resolutions don’t survive january

Last January, my father made an announcement at dinner.

"This year, I'm getting fit. The doctor said my sugar is borderline. So I'm buying a treadmill."

My mother rolled her eyes. "You said the same thing in 2023. And 2022."

He ignored her. Within a week, a ₹45,000 treadmill arrived. He set it up in the spare bedroom. Changed into his new tracksuit. Walked for 20 minutes.

January 26th was his last workout.

The treadmill is now a clothes stand. My mother drapes sarees on it.

My father isn't lazy. He built a business from nothing. He wakes up at 5 AM and hasn't missed a puja in 30 years.

So why can't he walk on a treadmill for 20 minutes?

And then I realized, I'd done the exact same thing.

I joined a gym in 2025 on New Year's Day. ₹2,400 monthly. I went three times.

Then a work trip happened, followed by a work deadline.
Then I told myself I'd restart "next Monday."

Eleven months later, I'd paid ₹26,400 for three workouts.

That's ₹8,800 per visit.

Strava analyzed 800 million logged activities and found that the second Friday of January is when most people quit their resolutions. They call it "Quitter's Day."

I quit on January 17th. Right on schedule.

But what really got me was this: Both my father and I genuinely believed we'd changed when we started.

January 1st felt different.

Why does the new year create this feeling? And why does it disappear so fast?

In 2014, Hengchen Dai, Katherine Milkman, and Jason Riis at Wharton tracked Google searches for "diet" across 3,104 days.

Searches jumped 82.1% at the start of each year.
But also at the start of each week.
And after federal holidays.
And after birthdays.

They studied 11,912 university gym members. Attendance surged 47.1% at the start of each semester.

They called it the "Fresh Start Effect."

Your brain creates mental accounting periods.
When a new period (week, year or semester) begins, you psychologically distance yourself from past failures.

All those times you skipped the gym?
That was "last year's me."
This is the new me.

When researchers told people a date was the "First Day of Spring" versus the "Third Thursday of March," goal sign-ups increased 354%. 

My father didn't just decide to exercise on January 1st.
His brain told him he was a different person on January 1st.

That feeling is real but temporary.

Fresh starts can actually hurt you

The same researchers found something troubling.

They tracked baseball players who got traded mid-season. 

Players with below-average performance improved by 3.8% after the fresh start.
But players with above-average performance dropped 5%.

The fresh start helped strugglers reset, and it disrupted people who already had momentum.

I thought about my cousin Neha. She had been at gym since October. Then January came. 

The New Year's resolution crowd flooded. She couldn't get her regular machines.

Her routine broke.
By February, she'd stopped going.

The Fresh Start Effect erases all context. Including what was working before.

A YouGov survey of 18,000 people across 17 countries found that 65% of Indians planned to improve their physical health in 2025. That's tied with Indonesia for the highest globally. 

The world average is 52%.

68% of Indians claim to have stuck to their previous resolutions.

Now see what we actually do.

India's gym membership penetration is 0.8%. 
Sweden and Norway are at 22%.

We're 27 times less likely to belong to a gym than Scandinavians.
But we're more likely to claim we're sticking to fitness goals.

Something doesn't add up.

Research shows Indians exhibit what psychologists call "vertical collectivism". Family opinions strongly shape individual behavior. Admitting failure reflects on your entire family.

Studies found Indians show greater proneness to shame than Western counterparts. So we hide failure instead of processing it.

My father doesn't talk about the treadmill anymore.
It's easier to pretend it doesn't exist than to admit the resolution failed.

This is why the Fresh Start Effect is dangerous for us specifically.

We make ambitious public declarations, feel the psychological high of "new year, new me."

Then we fail quietly, hide the failure, and repeat the cycle next January.

Everyone's heard habits take 21 days to form. That number comes from plastic surgeon Maxwell Maltz observing patients adjusting to new faces in the 1960s.

That's habituation to change. Not habit formation.

The actual research tracked 96 volunteers performing daily health behaviors. Average time to automaticity: 66 days. Range: 18 to 254 days.

But here's the finding that changed how I think about this: missing one day did not significantly affect habit formation. Missing most days did.

One slip doesn't break a habit. Believing one slip breaks a habit breaks the habit.

What I told my father to do with that treadmill

Two months ago, I visited home and tried something different.

I didn't tell him to "get back on the treadmill." I didn't lecture him about health. I asked him one question.

"Papa, can you just stand on it for two minutes while the chai is brewing?"

He laughed. "That's not exercise."

"I know. Just stand on it."

He did. The next morning, he stood on it again. On day three, he walked slowly for five minutes.

BJ Fogg's research at Stanford shows that making habits tiny removes dependence on motivation. Under two minutes. No willpower required.

My father just needs a habit so small it doesn't feel like a commitment.

He now walks for 15 minutes every morning. Just because standing on a treadmill while chai brews has became automatic now.

The treadmill still has sarees. But he moves them aside every morning.

The Fresh Start Effect creates motivation through psychological disconnection from your past self.

That disconnection is a trick. You're the same person on January 2nd that you were on December 31st.

The "new year, new me" feeling is real but temporary.

I'm not making resolutions on January 1st, 2026.
I'm making them on random Tuesdays when something needs to change.

My father's treadmill cost ₹45,000. It sat unused for 10 months. The intervention that worked cost nothing. Just a question: "Can you stand on it for two minutes?"

That's it.

What resolution are you already quietly letting slip? And what would happen if you made it so small it felt embarrassing?

Hit reply and tell me. I read every email.

Until next week, 
Ritesh

P.S. I finally canceled that gym membership. ₹26,400 for three visits. Now I run outside. It's free. And there's no January crowd.