Each year as December comes to a close, people gather together and celebrate New Year’s Eve on December 31st. Here, they reminisce about the year, have fun, and wait for the ball to drop. One of the most common tradition is the making of new year’s resolutions.

On the surface, new year’s resolutions are good. They help make a clear outline of where you want to the year to go and how you are going to get there. Yet, as the year continues you’re left realizing all the things you didn’t accomplish.

According to the Journal of Clinical Psychology at the University of Scranton, the most popular resolutions are to: lose weight, get organized, spend less, save more, enjoy life to the fullest, stay fit and healthy.

Whatever the resolution may be, in general, positive resolutions are meant to be good changes to one’s life. But what’s really preventing you from accomplishing those goals earlier?

According to Forbes, about 40 percent of Americans make new year’s resolutions and 92 percent fail at keeping them throughout the year.

A main reason many people can’t keep resolutions is that they make them too specific. Being too specific isn’t helpful at all. It’s hard to tell what will come of a year, giving yourself strict rules to follow. Not taking into account the daily challenges makes resolutions unrealistic.

People don’t tend to look at the context of the situation when making resolutions. It’s not easy to just start working out five days a week. It’s not easy to completely change a lifestyle completely, yet we expect it of ourselves because it’s a new year.

The ‘new year, new me’ motto may be the culprit. The new year and its fresh beginning is something that has a strong positive perception. There is a pressure or a type of hype around new year that makes people feel like they need to set a resolution.

“No resolutions for me this year. There’s a lot of things I want to do, but I’m going to take it one day at a time and make sure I’m enjoying this year more without worrying about resolutions to accomplish,” said Michaela Stork (11).

If you really want something do it now, don’t wait to do it later. Chances are, if you wait until the new year, it will be easier to drop it later. Consider, do you really want to reality reach this goal or do you just need something to tell your friends is your resolution?

So, to make 2018 the best year yet, drop the resolutions, take the pressure of success off and you’re likely going to do everything you want to, just one day at a time.