218: Afraid to Fail Again – Better Resolutions for Your ADHD Brain!

Never Start on January 1st: How to Actually Use Your Fresh Start Energy

It’s that time of year when “new year, new you” content is everywhere, and somewhere in the back of your mind you already suspect you’re going to fail again, maybe with well-meaning loved ones adding, why do you keep setting yourself up like this, you’re never consistent. That’s genuinely frustrating, because the excitement of a fresh start is real and worth using. We just need to use it the right way.

Gretchen Rubin and the myth of one-size-fits-all

I talk often about Gretchen Rubin, host of the Happier podcast and author of several books, because she’s one of the few voices I’ve found who fully accepts that there’s no universal plan that works for everyone. Her Four Tendencies framework asks you to figure out how you personally respond to expectations, then lean into your own strengths rather than forcing yourself into someone else’s system. Her book “Better Than Before” studied a full year of habit-change strategies and narrowed them down to 21 different approaches, precisely because if the first one doesn’t fit you, you need other real options, not just more willpower.

One of the strategies she identifies as genuinely powerful is what she calls the fresh start effect, the boost we feel from a new job, a new city, a new house, a new chapter of any kind. The turn of a new year is one of those built-in fresh start moments. It’s not a coincidence we all feel the pull to start something new right then. The fresh start feeling is worth harnessing. We just need to stop routing it straight into all-or-nothing thinking, the kind where missing day one, or day six, or day twenty-three means giving up on the whole idea for the rest of the year.

Why January 1st is actually the worst day to start

Here’s my strong recommendation: never start anything on January 1st. That sounds like it contradicts leaning into fresh-start energy, but January 1st never actually feels like a beginning. It still feels like the tail end of the previous year. Kids are still home, spouses might not be back at work, leftover holiday treats and decorations are still everywhere, gifts haven’t found homes yet. Trying to spark new momentum in the middle of that is like trying to light a fire in a rainstorm. Even if you power through and do all the things on January 1st, by the time real life resumes, school starts back, errands pile up, you haven’t actually figured out how the new habit fits into your actual day-to-day life, and it ends up feeling like starting over anyway.

This isn’t an argument against starting something new this year. It’s an argument for waiting just long enough for normal life’s rhythm to actually kick back in, whether that’s the first Monday of the month or whenever your specific household resets. Pick whatever day genuinely marks the return of your normal routine, and start there instead.

Use the runway, don’t just wait through it

So what do you do with all that fresh-start energy in the meantime? Use those in-between days as a planning runway. Instead of jumping in on day one without a real plan and just throwing spaghetti at the wall, as many of us tend to do, spend the lead-up days thinking through what you actually want to accomplish and how, before the pressure of daily execution begins. Working out the details ahead of time, rather than mid-stream, isn’t naturally our strong suit, so give it deliberate space.

Concrete goals over vague consistency: the 25 for 25 list

Rather than resolutions built on perfect daily consistency, like walking 10,000 steps every single day of the year, Gretchen Rubin suggests something she’s done for years: a list of 25 concrete, finite things to accomplish sometime during the year, things you can genuinely check off as done. Paint the guest bedroom. Finally try a capsule wardrobe. Whatever you choose, the appeal is that each item is a discrete, completable task rather than an unbroken streak. She also suggests including at least one item that’s genuinely easy to knock out in the first couple weeks of January, just to bank an early win.

If you want more on this, her podcast episodes on choosing a one-word theme for the year, reviewing how a past year’s version of this challenge actually went, and introducing that year’s new list are all worth a listen for anyone wanting to dig deeper before committing to their own version.

Your practical, actionable step

Instead of trying to start something new today, use the next few days as a planning runway. Pick the day your normal routine actually resumes, and build your list of concrete, one-off goals for the year before that day arrives, not during it.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.