Welcome to Week two of the New Year’s Resolutions Challenge, where each week we lose one contestant trying to complete their resolution through January. Week one’s piece can be found here. This week, runaway Pat.
When we agreed to do this study, I assumed that the “working out challenge” would be the easiest to navigate. But you don’t know Pat. I didn’t actually know Pat either, and there are some questions about the authenticity of this person’s existence. However, putting that aside, here’s what happened:
After spending some time trying to figure out what it is Pat wants, I lost Pat.
Pat’s New Year’s declaration was to work out more. Unlike last week’s failure Ricard—trying to do too much—the formula for this declaration seemed simple. Pat wanted to workout more this year than last year.
Pat didn’t work out much in the exercise category last year. So it’s surprising that Pat didn’t work out for this study in any fashion. Five days into the New Year, Pat’s out of the contest.
When Pat resigned, I couldn’t figure out the issue because Pat wasn’t exercising last year. Surely, we could start small and try different experiments. On January first, Pat did go for a run, but it was in the car. Pat’s the kind of person who metaphorically “runs” out to get things.
After this run and my slight exasperation, Pat completely disappeared.
I did receive an anonymous note in my mailbox that said the following. “Why would I want to be accountable to you?”
I can only assume this was Pat.
In any declaration, experiment and ultimately resolution, you have to know what accountability works for you. You can’t just have some vague notion of an idea—you have to be accountable to yourself, someone else or an ideal.
When we’re in a lab, the hook is in how we run the experiment. We don’t wing it. We need to have a hypothesis, then test the hypothesis over time to see if we were right or wrong.
Perhaps Pat thought that being part of a prestigious study held by a relatively unknown website (because its audience doesn’t seem to want to tell anyone about it) would lead to accountability.
That was my hypothesis. It turns out the hypothesis was wrong. Pat ran away from the study. Now Pat is accountable to no one.
The problem with a lack of accountability or hypothesis is that we’re relying purely on willpower. Strength of will can only get us through a short period of time. It takes a ton of energy because we’re grinding our way through. Exercise goals based purely on willpower will usually fall off the track fast (hopefully, it’s not one of those elevated tracks at a gym on the second floor of a basketball court).
For Pat, the next step is finding what kind of accountability works for the journey. We can now forget about Pat.
Let’s look at our remaining contestants:
June—Write a Children’s Book
Mario—Play the Guitar
Mr. Jones—Start Writing Daily
Ricard’s Six Resolutions—Eliminated
Pat—Workout More- Eliminated