An Effortless New Year’s Resolution.

An Effortless New Year’s Resolution . One simple question that will change your future. New year’s resolutions don’t work. All the studies on them reveal this same finding. Yet every January 1st, millions of people make them. Again. Knowing that they’ve never worked before. In fact, the only thing that works about a new year’s resolution is its ability to make people feel bad about themselves. Because when they inevitably fail, they need a way to numb that pain. And whatever that involves, it usually ends up with them in a worse state than they were in before they started. One step forward, two steps back. If new year’s resolutions work for you, great. Keep on keeping on! If they don’t, though, then this essay is for you. I’m offering a completely different approach. And the best thing of all is that it requires no effort. So have you ever picked up your phone for a quick scroll, and then after what seems like a few minutes, you look at the time and realise you’ve been scrolling for an hour? This is what happens when we stop being aware. We shift into autopilot. There are many techniques available to help with this problem. But once we’re on autopilot it’s already too late, because even if we can become aware, it requires a huge amount of will power to snap ourselves out of this type of trance state. A far easier way, which requires no will power, is to simply ask yourself this one question before you begin any activity: What is the opportunity cost of doing this?

You can listen to An Effortless New Year’s Resolution. online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

An Effortless New Year’s Resolution. is an episode from Hack Music Theory by Ray Harmony.

This episode is 6:06 long.

This episode was published on Jan 3, 2026.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Hack Music Theory when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.