How to make your resolution stick.

One goal, 365 days. Science says you’ve got this.

You know the old goal-setting adage: don’t bite off more than you can chew. But if that were all it took, you’d have nailed last year’s plan and the year before last’s. New research is refining the art of goal-setting. Offering some fresher less insight to finally do it.

1. Start now 

   The new year tricks us into seeing our big-picture selves, our slates wiped clean. Take advantage of it to point people commit to their goals or her asleep after a major benchmark like New Year’s day.  Missed the 1st? Wait for a Monday. It is the most popular day of the week for starting diets and stopping smoking studies show.

2. Make a plan

   How is this for a terrible irony: the more you want to goal, the less you are likely to plan for it, that’s because we tend to think good intentions are enough, but the actual plan prevents procrastination, people with plans that stick to their goals way more often than those who wing it.

3. Don’t have a backup plan

   Back up plans may backfire by zapping your desired to chase your main goal. In a series of new studies, people were told to think up a plan B were less likely to attain their main objective. Researchers suspect that having backup goals may make failure feel somehow more acceptable.

4. Raise the stakes in

    a 2008 study, the most effective weight-loss plan was one in which people had to fork cash over if they did not meet their goal after 16 weeks, those with financial incentives lost 14 pounds more than those whose just weighed in.

5. Chop it up

   You know how good it feels to tick off an item from your to-do list. Put that to work by hacking and massive goal into parts. It is more gratifying than working away at one big goal.

6. Conserve your will power

   Think of willpower is your greatest natural resource, but know that it is also a finite one, some experts say. Every time you engage your willpower for one task  -saying no to a glass of wine, passing up the free cookies at work – you have less to resist other temptations. Since willpower is the secret ingredient to meeting your goals use it wisely.