Our cover story last week was on – surprise, surprise – New Year resolutions.

Well, actually, it was mostly on the problem with New Year resolutions, and why they never ever seem to work.

The professional life coach we interviewed gave us a few good reasons why, but the main one was that young people are simply too dynamic to be tied down to a specific year-long resolution these days.

Things change so quickly in their world, that if their resolutions aren’t wide and flexible enough, they’ll most likely find them irrelevant after a few months; and that failure to see out those resolutions causes them to get frustrated and give up on any kind of goal-setting.

So the first thing we wanted to find out was if that’s actually the case among young people today – do you guys ever stick to your New Year #Resolutions?

The answer from @NathalieTXL was a definite no.

When we asked our Tweeps if they had made any resolutions, she replied: “errrr not really. Haha I find that I achieve more when I DON’T have resolutions!”

Regular #RAGEchat contributor @joonsunn even gave a projected timeline for the failure of New Year resolutions, saying: “Gave up making one since few yrs ago. They are usually forgotten after Feb (or CNY, whichever comes 1st).”

@NatashaAmalina has been making the same New Year resolution for a few years now, but it has never worked for her either.

Responding to the same question on whether any of you had made any resolutions, she tweeted: “The same one I make every year, of course: To exercise on a daily basis! Hope it ‘works out’ this time. Pun intended. 😛

And when we asked why our Tweeps feel they can’t stick to their resolutions, she replied: “I could give u a whole bunch of reasons, but that’d make me sound really lame 🙁 main reason would be cos of spm I guess :P”

The second part of our cover story was on how to make better, more effective resolutions.

We got a few useful ideas from our life coach and the folks who run the Chief’s Original Bootcamp, and they included stuff like keeping your resolutions generic and “state-based” (a resolution that is about who you are, not what you do), make sure they are realistic and have a measurable outcome, and have a series of short and long-term goals to keep you motivated.

We opened up the same topic to our Tweeps as well, asking them for ideas on how to make their resolutions stick, and here’s what we got:

@iarrod: made new year #resolutions every year, failing them, so I’m making new year #habits #ragechat

@therealcheez: long term * short term goals. they keep you on your feet way better than #resolutions #ragechat

@PepperAndEggs: I set many New Year #resolutions so that I can achieve at least a few of them. #RAGEchat

@hooihooi: @thestar rage Realistic ones = good, but I think having goals which are rly big, verging-on-ridiculous-but-not-entirely-impossible, is fun =p

Of course, there is no fail-safe method of making a New Year resolution because at the end of the day, it’s about the motivations of each individual – unless you’re like @keeshchaos, who said: I did achieve mine for this year already! My new year resolution was to have a resolution! and I have one! #RAGEchat

All we can say is: *FACE PALM*.

– Compiled by Ian Yee