Determination Day: How Small Habits can Lead to Lasting Change

Blog post written by Darian Cope

Have you ever set a New Year’s resolution that seems to lose momentum early in the year? Research shows that, although close to 40% of Americans report making a New Year’s resolution, only about 9% achieve the goals they have set.

How can we set ourselves up for success when it comes to implementing changes and adopting new day-to-day habits? Rather than monumental shifts in the way we live, author James Clear provides some specific, realistic steps in his book Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones to create habits that better align with how we would like to live our lives.

Creating Awareness and Habit Stacking

The first step to change is developing awareness of our habits and identifying the behaviors we would like to change or implement. We can do this in many ways, the simplest of which is making a list of things we do each day. From this list, we can identify the habits we would like to continue and those we would like to stop. This is where the idea of habit stacking comes into play: stacking a new behavior on top of a habit that you already regularly engage in. What would this look like? James Clear has created a simple formula for habit stacking: “After/Before [current habit], I will [new habit].”. So maybe you would like to practice more gratitude throughout the day. You can say “After/Before I wash my hands, I will say something I’m grateful for and why.”.  This gives you a definitive trigger to pair your gratitude with as opposed to thinking “I want to be more grateful.”.

Who Do You Want to Become?

Our habits reflect who we believe we are, yet when it comes to change, we often focus more on what we want to achieve than who we want to become. When we approach change in this way, it is easy to try to engage in new habits that do not align with who we are, or to set goals that are difficult for us to achieve. What can we do instead? James Clear writes that you can identify what type of person you would like to be, and follow that with engaging in small behaviors that “prove” this identity to yourself. Sticking with the gratitude example, if you would like to be someone who focuses on gratitude rather than sitting in discontent, you could start with the small behavior of identifying one thing you are grateful for each day. As this behavior becomes a habit, you can build on it to work towards your identity of focusing on gratitude.

Recap

To summarize, change can be easy when approached with concrete, manageable steps. Habit stacking can be a way to identify a specific time to trigger a new behavior, and creating goals around our new identity can ensure that the habits we engage in are a reflection of who we would like to be. Author James Clear expands on these steps and more in an approachable way in his book Atomic Habits.

What does any of this have to do with Determination Day? This is a concept often discussed by author and blogger Gretchen Rubin that represents the end of February, a checkpoint to re-evaluate what is working for us, what we are struggling with, and how we would like to move forward into the rest of the year. We can evaluate ourselves and our habits at any point of the year, but having a specific checkpoint–like New Years, Determination Day, or your birthday–can offer a built-in opportunity to pause, reflect, and reset. What small habit could you begin today that reflects who you would like to become this year?

References

Clear, J. (2018). Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones.

Rubin, G. (2026) How to Use Determination Day to Get Failed Resolutions Back on Track. Gretchen Rubin.  https://gretchenrubin.com/articles/slowing-down-on-your-resolutions-use-determination-day-to-re-evaluate/.