The perfect New Years resolution is imperfect action

January is often a time where we use the fresh start to set ourselves up well for the year ahead. Lots of us make New Years resolutions to sign up to the gym and go three times a week, give up sugar or alcohol, get 10,000 steps a day, or take up running. Whilst fully I'm on board for thinking about and planning your year ahead, I think many of us could do with thinking about it a bit differently. This is where imperfect action comes in.

What is imperfect action?

What it doesn't mean is not trying your best, not being conscientious and committed, or not being aware or caring about your goals and habits.

It’s about taking small steps towards your goals even if those actions aren't what you would call ‘perfect’, and accepting that you are probably not going to get it right all of the time.

Of course it would be great to be able to swap all of our bad habits for good ones from day one, and achieve our goals with no setbacks or mistakes. Unfortunately life doesn't always go to plan and if you plan to be perfect, what happens when you're not? 

What's wrong with trying to be perfect?

Perhaps you decide to not eat chocolate for a month but after a couple of weeks you’ve had a stressful day at work and someone brings chocolates to the office. In the moment you tell yourself you don't care about your goals and you ‘deserve’ chocolate. You eat one which with the strict boundaries you’ve set means you’ve blown it. So you eat five, order a takeaway for dinner, tell yourself you’ve failed and decide to quit trying to be healthy. Until next month when the cycle repeats, and the feeling of being a failure is greater each time, and the image of you living a healthy lifestyle seems even further away.  

Or perhaps you haven't started to work towards their goals because you are waiting for the ‘perfect’ time: when life is less busy, when work is less stressful, when you have more money, when your kids are older, when you have made more space in your house to workout. The reality is that once you realise that conditions are rarely perfect, you can start looking at the quick wins or easier habits to get you started, which will lead to bigger change.

What is the evidence that imperfect action works?

Precision Nutrition studied 1,000 clients over 12 months, and collected over 1 million data points, to answer one question: 

‘What does it really take to lose fat, get healthy, and change your body?’

The results may surprise you. Check out the graph below from Precision Nutrition that shows the results in weight and inches lost by sticking to a nutrition and exercise program just 50 to 79 percent of the time:

They even found that those who were least consistent (only 10-49 percent consistent!) still ended up losing between 5-6 percent of their body weight. 

This is a clinically significant amount of weight lost that is linked to lower risk of heart and metabolic disease. 

How can you start being perfectly imperfect?

Imperfect action involves planning and making decisions, but having the capacity to be flexible when the goal is out of reach right now, or things don't quite go to plan.

Take a look at the below table for examples of how to take imperfect action and make for real change long term.

‘Perfect’ goal	Current	Imperfect action	Progress
Workout 3 times per week for 45 minutes	None	Workout once per week for 15 minutes	Workout 2 x per week for 20 minutes
10,000 steps per day	Don’t currently track	Start tracking	Aim to increase 1000 per week
5 fruits and vegetables per day	1-3 per day	Eat fruits or vegetables with every meal	Eat 2 x fruits or vegetables with every meal
2 litres of water per day	Don’t currently track	Start tracking	Aim to increase 1 glass per week
Reduce alcohol to once a week	2-4 times per week	Reduce to twice per week, and track units	Reduce to once per week, and track units

The ‘imperfect action’ won’t be your idea of ‘perfect’, but it will be a step towards that ideal healthy lifestyle you are aiming for. Stop planning and trying to be perfect and aim for a little bit of progress instead.

How has this helped my clients?

This shift in mindset is something that can really benefit those I work with, like Fiona:

“Sophie has really helped me to start to build a growth mindset, aiming for progress not perfection- which has enabled me to focus more on my goals and minimise setbacks. “

By focusing imperfect action Fiona was successful in significantly improving all of her fitness test results in just 6 weeks. This includes a cardio test, a flexibility test, and three strength tests.

Whilst she didn't always hit her step target, each week we would review the target based on what she had coming up and she would try again. When she wasn't able to attend a PT session due to working late, she did some squats at work.

She made significant changes with her food too, for example: when eating out she looked at the menu in advance which meant she could eat in alignment with her goals whilst enjoying going out, and she has identified some Plan B meals when Plan A (the perfect home cooked meal) isn’t possible.

Why is now a good time to try it?

New Year can be a good time to reflect on what you want to get out of this upcoming year (or this life!) to ensure you don’t plod along through life with no direction and get to the end and wonder what you did with all your time.

What's the solution to your New Years Resolution? 

Plan to do the best that you can in the situation you are in, rather than plant to be perfect and fail or not do anything at all!

Guess what? This blog isn't perfect, but it's better that I share some knowledge than none.

Reference:

Precision Nutrition: https://www.precisionnutrition.com/body-transformation-research