How The Quantified Life Can Help You Achieve Your New Year’s Resolutions

New Year’s wellness resolutions are like prom night: a lot of hype, even more promises, and a disappointing follow-through. A paltry 19 percent of wannabe health nuts follow through with their annual resolutions, according to University of Scranton Professor John Norcross. The quickest way to dissolve your hardened commitments into a bowl of disappointed Jell-O is to set a course without clear goals and constant improvement. This is where technology and a dash of the scientific method can help. Instead of relying on fragmented web advice and our own fragile intuition, “quantified self” is all about treating self-improvement with the rigor of an academic laboratory: make singular adjustments, chart progress, and cumulate learnings. Quantified self can get sort of extreme; I’ve done things with my body that should neither see sunlight nor be talked about in public. Fortunately, cheaper gadgets, diagnosis startups, and web tools have opened up the “quantified self” movement to everyday consumers who just want to save time and feel a little sexier in front of the mirror. So, here’s how to super-charge your New Year’s resolutions with science.