If you have ever gone into a room and forgotten why you came in, you have experienced “the doorway effect”: an observed psychological phenomenon where a person’s short-term memory goes blank passing through a boundary. The theory is that memory is stored around specific events and episodes, organized around the patterns of life for the most convenient accessibility. It’s not just physical boundaries either – research has observed empathy gaps (less prosocial behaviors) exhibited between individuals entering a space from a boundary and those who do not.
What better example of a boundary is the new year? A clean slate, a beginning and ending to acknowledge, even celebrate. A ceremony of transition, such as a new year’s resolution, helps individuals and societies to mark and move through “doorways” of time – and in the same vein, it’s not uncommon to forget why you came in. New Year’s Resolutions can burn you out, make you feel incapable, or even worse, make you feel like you are making less progress towards your goals than when you started. How do we set up expectations for the new year that feels like genuine progress? Psychology offers us some potential clues.
Many therapists use the anagram S.M.A.R.T. to develop practical goals with their clients. SMART stands for:
- Specific: What will be accomplished? What actions will you take?
- Measurable: What data will measure the goal? (How much? How well?
- Achievable: Is the goal doable? Do you have the necessary skills and resources?
- Relevant: How does the goal align with broader goals? Why is the result important?
- Time-Bound: What is the time frame for accomplishing the goal?
These definitions of goals are intended to address responsibilities and create a communal dialogue around changes that one hopes to make in their life. Notice that these features ask for specificity in goal-making: what is the definition of success? What is the definition of progress? What is the definition of work? SMART goals ask us to connect our behavior today with our dreams for the future. They are not, however, asking us to start over from scratch.
SMART goals are set up with context in mind. Strengths, weaknesses, relationships, environment, and history all impact how we define success. If you truly know yourself, then a goal is not a wish or a hope – it’s a calculation. We are constantly evolving, and navigating that evolution while honoring the self means diligence on the days you can and acceptance on the days you can’t. Honor is the reward of virtue.
Research suggests one method of avoiding the doorway effect is to carry something – an object, or a symbol – in between thresholds to remind you of your goal. The same is true for good new year’s resolutions: to effectively track growth, we must honor our past selves, who made the decision to grow in the first place. You cannot hate or shame yourself into eliciting change. The only way to change is to heal. The only way to heal is to love yourself for its strengths and its weaknesses.
As we cross the threshold between the old year and the new, remember not just to honor and even mourn for the person you are leaving behind. Before you depart 2023, take a part of them with you so you can remember why you left in the first place.
