- GRATITUDE DRIVEN
- Posts
- Why You Can't Stick To Your Goals
Why You Can't Stick To Your Goals
And how to fix it, based on your personality.
Marina Wyss
January 09, 2025
Welcome to Gratitude Driven, a weekly newsletter where I share practical ideas and insights across personal growth, professional development, and the world of AI and data science.
In This Newsletter
Why You Can’t Stick to Your Goals, Based on Your Personality
We're a week and a half into January, and if you're already struggling with your New Year's resolutions, you're not alone. But honestly, it might not be a lack of willpower that's holding you back. The real problem could be that you're following advice that just doesn't match your personality.
Psychologists use the "Big Five" personality traits - Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (OCEAN) - to understand how different people approach challenges and goals. These traits explain why some strategies that work super well for your friends might feel impossible (or even counterproductive) for you, and vice versa.
Take standard advice like "time-block your calendar" or "join a group challenge." These strategies might backfire for someone high in neuroticism, who gets paralyzed by detailed planning, or an introvert who finds group activities draining rather than motivating. Those high in openness often struggle not from lack of commitment, but from getting bored with repetitive routines. And while highly conscientious people might need to guard against perfectionism, those lower in conscientiousness benefit more from external structure and accountability.
The most successful goal-setters aren't necessarily the most disciplined - they're the ones who understand their natural tendencies and work with them, instead of against them. Success comes from matching your approach to your personality: breaking goals into tiny steps if you're prone to getting overwhelmed, building in variety if you get bored easily, or finding the right balance of social support that energizes rather than drains you.
Want to discover your personality profile and learn specific strategies that will work for you? Check out my latest YouTube video where I break down each of the Big Five traits, and provide targeted approaches for making your resolutions stick (or really, achieving any goal). So that in 2025, this time it really will be different.
Your Complaints Show Where Your Mental Model Fails
Are you frequently frustrated that things aren't going according to plan? I find the more someone complains about life's challenges, the more it reveals how inaccurate their mental model of reality is. Frequent complaints like "this shouldn't be happening" or "why does this always go wrong?" aren't just expressions of frustration, but rather signals that your expectations are consistently misaligned with how the world actually works.
Think of complaints as data points. Each complaint is essentially saying, "The world isn't behaving the way I expect it to." It's like a machine learning model that keeps making incorrect predictions - when this happens repeatedly, the problem isn't with the ground truth data, it's that the model itself needs work. Similarly, when you keep being surprised by life's challenges, the problem isn't with the world - it's that your model of it is wrong. The more you find yourself complaining, the more it suggests your understanding of how things work needs updating.
The key isn't to eliminate problems (that's impossible), or to blindly accept negative things in life, but to build more realistic expectations that account for these inevitabilities. This isn't about passive acceptance - you should absolutely work to improve things that aren't working in your life. But approaching these challenges from a place of surprise and frustration suggests you're operating with an unrealistic mental model. Problems, delays, and complications aren't exceptions to the rule; they are the rule. The most effective people aren't those who face fewer problems - they're the ones who expect and plan for them while taking action to address them.
So the next time you catch yourself complaining, use it as an opportunity to adjust your mental model. Your complaints aren't telling you about the world's shortcomings - they're highlighting the gaps in your understanding of it. By building a more accurate model of reality, you'll be better equipped to actually solve problems, rather than just being surprised by them.
In Case You Missed It
Last week, I shared a video about how I learned math for machine learning with zero math background. Check it out for advice and resources to making learning math less stressful, more efficient, and more fun.
Forwarded this email? Sign up here.