Fixing New Years Resolutions with 2025 BINGO

It has been 2025 for just over two weeks, and already the number of New Year's Resolutions that have been broken is incalculable. That is a fact.

It isn't that New Year's Resolutions are impossible to keep, nor that people are incapable of following through on the goals that they set for themselves. Instead, it is the fact that a New Year's Resolution is little more than a vague promise that a person makes to themselves, and people are already bad at keeping promises they make to others. At that rate, it is only a matter of time before most people break their diet, start smoking again, or make whatever minor misstep it takes to derail an entire twelve months' worth of future motivation.

Worse than the guilt of breaking a New Year's Resolution is the apathy that will ultimately ensue. This is especially true for people who consistently break their New Year's Resolutions, as the years of falling short of their ambitions will eventually dull their sense of motivation to the point that they stop making such promises to themselves altogether. At a certain point, New Year's Resolutions stop being fun, exciting, and challenging and start being a reminder of all our past failures, which is something that none of us need more of than we already have.

But we are people, and people are creative and resilient in the face of all odds, even those defined by questionable traditions and arbitrary choices made by an overtly uncertain individual. As such, we can find ways to overcome, to save ourselves, to beat the system... Or rather to gamify it.

Enter 2025 BINGO!

I'm not going to pretend like gamifying every aspect of the human existence is healthy, but it works. Study after study has shown that turning things into games makes people more likely to do those things. It doesn't matter if it's learning a new language or taking care of one's own mental health, there is absolutely an app that will turn any situation into a game of some sort. Like New Year's Resolutions, most people will give up on these kinds of long-term endeavors, and there is plenty of reason to think that the extended nature of such personal quests is a big part of why that is. That is also exactly where 2025 BINGO rises above more traditional New Year's Resolutions.

2025 BINGO plays out more or less like an ordinary game of BINGO, except that instead of trying to make a complete line of matching letters and numbers, players try to complete lines with whatever achievements they set out for themselves for the new year. On the surface, this might not be a whole lot better than an ordinary New Year's Resolution, as it is all too easy for someone to set themselves up for failure by going too big with what they expect to accomplish with the next twelve months. Fortunately, this is also one of the pratfalls of a regular New Year's Resolution, and that means we can avoid it from the start.

The first step to a successful 2025 BINGO card is to be realistic when it comes to expectations. Of course, this is what almost everyone says about New Year's Resolutions, so it doesn't sound like particularly useful advice at first. Simply put, most people have trouble being realistic about what being realistic means. To combat the counterintuitive process that is self-evaluation, we really have to start small. Really small. As in things that take little-to-no effort whatsoever, small.

2025 BINGO doesn't have to be about reinventing yourself as a person. To be blunt, it shouldn't be. So many New Year's Resolutions are made in the hopes that sticking to one single idealized promise will completely remake who someone is as a person, and neither resolutions nor life work that way. The idea that they do or should only serves to compound the frustration and guilt that come along with breaking a New Year's Resolution, and so it should be avoided when it comes to 2025 BINGO just as long-term goals should be.

With absolutely no regard for what strangers on the internet think of me, here's my 2025 BINGO card for reference:

Let's start with B1 up in the top left corner. "Grade some comics" is small, easy, and will effectively cost me nothing. I have an extensive collection of comics, and I have been putting off sending in some boxes to have graded. This makes it a perfect starting point for 2025 BINGO, as it is something I was already going to do, but just haven't as of yet. This is what I mean by small. Your 2025 BINGO card doesn't have to be filled with challenging tasks or major achievements, it just needs to be filled with things you can realistically do.

That being said, your 2025 BINGO card shouldn't just be minor tasks or accomplishments. Looking back at my own, it is a mix of personal and professional goals interspersed with a few entries that simply sound fun and will make me happy. "See a new city" is easy when there are so many cities around the world, and so is "Build something" when that something could range from a new patio to an old Lego set. By including such basic goals, your 2025 BINGO card is all but assured to start filling up within just a few months of the new year being rung in.

From there, things can get more difficult, and increments can be used to both fill up space and push yourself in the same direction as a New Year's Resolution. "Curl 35 pounds" is not something I will struggle with, but getting myself back up to 50 pounds certainly will be after years of only working out lightly at home and lifting children. In the same vein, "Finish a painting" won't be an issue for this college dropout, but writing an entire novel, film, comic, or a children's book is not going to be easy. Even publishing 50 articles here on Vocal is one of the most daunting entries on my 2025 BINGO card considering how little I write on this platform, whereas writing 2,500 for my day job at CBR will be a medium-sized hurdle at the very least.

Still, these are all things that I know full well I can genuinely accomplish in 2025 if I pace myself and don't fall too far behind. Other entries, such as having a successful treasure hunt or finding the time and space to take apart and repair an antique pocket watch or automatic time piece, will be a bit more up to chance, but they aren't impossible by any means. If anything, these kinds of entries are there to not just spurn me on to actually do them, but to remind me that I need to take the time to do the things I want instead of telling myself that I'll get to them after the umpteenth day of working without a break.

On top of everything else, there is one all important aspect of 2025 BINGO that many if not most people will forget, and that is that the game is not meant to be a list of things to do in the new year. This isn't a checklist or a series of requirements to be beholden to. This is a game. This is BINGO, and it should be fun. Instead of trying to run down the list of entries on purpose, let them be crossed off organically over first half of the year, then circle back to the game and see what lines are beginning to form. The whole point of 2025 BINGO isn't to try and trick yourself into doing everything, but rather to let the game play out naturally until the winning lines make themselves apparent. That is where the extra motivation comes from. That is where the competitive spirit is derived from. And that is where 2025 BINGO shines.

Instead of the game looming overhead like a New Year's Resolution, it can and likely should be forgotten about for months at a time. This means that, rather than dreading another six months without carbs or alcohol, players can start honing in on the specific accomplishments they need to make in order to secure a BINGO by the end of the year. In that way, 2025 BINGO players are more likely to actually follow through with trying to play the game and, subsequently, trying to follow through with the mini-resolutions they made when filling out their card at the start. Even if there is no winning line at the end, the fact that a person took part an active in the game in the first place makes them that much more likely to give it another go the following year, let alone that much more likely to succeed. And, if there is anything we could all use a little more of in our lives, it's those little wins that matter even when nobody else knows they happened.