NEW Year’s, the holiday all about making a fresh start, rolling in the next year, and watching the clocks change. For a lot of people, this means starting over and making resolutions for next year.

Except for me, starting the year off with a range of goals that are certainly too ambitious, and that I won’t achieve is not in the spirit of making the next year better.

For example, I could resolve to go to the gym five days a week and be disappointed when I end up at the cinema instead, but I’d rather save myself the trouble.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with setting New Year’s Resolutions, it’s more so that the general concept encourages people to set the bar too high.

I prefer to set tangible goals, like starting sports once a week, rather than sticking with something for two weeks in January, then dropping it and feeling awful about doing so.

The science is not on our side either, a study conducted by the language app Duolingo with 2,000 Brits shows that a third of people will throw in the towel by the end of the second week in January.

The concept of New Year’s Resolutions is by no means a modern thing, the first recorded people to set a pledge to carry them into the next year were the Babylonians over 4,000 years ago, a trend which the Romans adopted.

Granted, the Babylonian New Year, which did not take place on January 1, involved returning borrowed farm equipment, crowning their king, and paying debts rather than going vegan for a month, but the idea is the same.

The month of January itself is named after this concept of new beginnings, January comes from Janus, the two-faced Roman God of beginnings and endings.

All in all, be kind to yourself this New Year, whether you set New Year’s Resolutions or not.