There’s One Perfect Day to Start Your New Year’s Resolution. It’s Not Jan. 1. (2024)

Imagine it now: Your alarm goes off early on the morning of Jan. 1. You’re groggy and unbearably hungover, laid to waste by last night’s festivities. Maybe your sugar-addled children kept you awake way past their bedtimes to watch the ball drop. Maybe you went to too many parties. Maybe you even stayed up all night and never went to sleep in the first place.

Whatever the case, the last thing you probably want to do is hit the gym, journal, go for a run, do some sun salutations, sit down to meditate, quit caffeine, or [insert this year’s trendy New Year’s resolution here]. And once you skip that resolution on Jan. 1, what’s to keep you from skipping it on Jan. 2, too? Oh, so you’ll start the next week, you say! Nice try: If you skip the first week, you’ll likely skip the second, and the third. Before you know it, it’s February, and you haven’t changed your habits one little bit.

That’s totally fine … if you don’t want to change. But if you really want to start a new habit—whether for your physical, mental, or emotional health—repetition is key. And falling out of habit on that very first day of the new year isn’t a great start.

That’s why I propose a better way: Instead of vowing to begin your New Year’s resolution on Jan. 1, start on Dec. 1.

Unlike New Year’s Day, Dec. 1 is just a regular set of 24 hours, the perfect canvas for a new endeavor. There’s nothing special to compete with on the first day of December, and it will be much more representative of your life’s normal routines—going to work, dropping your kids off at school, whatever a typical weekday entails. It’ll be much easier to see how your new habit fits into your daily grind.

Plus, starting at the beginning of December gives you a one-month runway to test out your resolution and adjust accordingly. Maybe your goal of meditating five minutes a day, seven days a week just isn’t realistic, and one minute a day, five days a week works better. Or maybe you realize you hate running and spin classes would be a better choice. Treat the month of December as a trial period where you refine your vision of your better self. You could even test out the “don’t skip twice” rule during this liminal month: If you have to miss your habit for a day, just make sure you don’t miss it the next day, too. Successful habits start small and keep building.

By the end of December, as you are hopefully seeing benefits from whatever you have resolved to do (or not do), you won’t want to quit, even if it gets hard. Yes, you will still have to do that thing you maybe won’t want to do on New Year’s Day (and through Hanukkah and your office holiday party and Christmas Eve and Christmas and New Year’s Eve, too!), but by then, the momentum of your habit should propel you forward.

I confess that I’m giving this advice as a resolution skeptic. I rarely make New Year’s resolutions, but I do appreciate that this time of year gives many people an arbitrary deadline to set new goals for self-improvement. And in the interest of journalistic integrity, I’m going to give my own recommendation a try this year. So, catch me out here on Friday starting a new daily pushup regimen, and check back in on New Year’s Day, when I already have some impressive guns—and the makings of a successful New Year’s resolution.