As the summer of the year under the Ethiopic calendar draws to a close in less than two months, I cannot help but wonder about the New Year's resolutions I made when it began.

Like many people, I started the year convinced the months ahead would unfold differently. The goals felt achievable, the plans realistic, the motivation endless. Yet as the calendar moved forward, most of those promises faded into the background of everyday life, replaced by routine, responsibility, distraction, and the quiet belief that tomorrow would always be a better day to begin again.

I cannot say exactly when they stopped feeling urgent. They did, one ordinary day after another.

The turn of a calendar year marks a moment of new beginnings around the world. Here, it arrives as “Enkutatash”, a holiday that gathers up so many of the hopes and transitions a fresh year carries. It signals the end of the long rains, as fields across the countryside and the busy edges of the city burst into the bright yellow of “Adey Abeba” flowers.

Children head back to school, families gather at the kitchen table to plan, businesses weigh the targets ahead, and, above all, people dare to dream of a "New Year, New Me." The season almost invites reinvention. For a few weeks, the whole calendar feels like a clean page waiting to be written on.

It is hard not to believe that something might change. Yet by the time the rains have become a distant memory, many of those carefully thought, perhaps written, resolutions have already slipped away.

The habit is hardly ours alone. Around the world, New Year's resolutions have become an annual ritual built on hope that rarely survives the realities of everyday life. Studies consistently show that only about nine percent of people keep their resolutions through the year. The rest abandon them within weeks, sometimes days.

Diaries go untouched, gym memberships go unused, books stay unopened, and money goals are quietly postponed. What begins in excitement often ends in quiet disappointment.

The research also shows that while men and women make resolutions at similar rates, the goals differ.

According to YouGov's survey released in 2026, women are more likely to resolve to lose weight, at 21pc against 13pc of men, and more likely to focus on happiness, at 26pc against 20pc. Men lean slightly more toward money and career, reflecting different motivations and social expectations.

Goals driven by outside expectation rather than genuine desire are far less likely to hold. When people chase change simply because friends, family, colleagues, or society expect it, commitment weakens once the excitement of the season fades. According to Drive Research, 62pc of people who make resolutions feel pressured to set them. Motivation rooted in obligation rarely survives ordinary life.

Most people follow almost the same timeline of abandonment. Fitness apps that track millions of users point to the second Friday of January, which they call "Quitters' Day," as the moment motivation sharply declines and people begin to let their targets slip.

By the end of the year, more than 90pc will likely no longer keep any new habit at all. The date is oddly precise for something so personal, yet the pattern is so familiar it has almost become part of the tradition itself.

The question is why. Psychologists point to a few recurring reasons behind that stubborn nine percent. Many people set goals too ambitious, too vague, or impossible to measure. Others try to change several parts of their lives at once, building expectations that quickly become overwhelming.