Secret vow or public proclamation

Are you more likely to stick with your resolutions if keep them secret or if you tell everyone about them? Obviously people keep some resolutions to themselves because they're about private things, like sexuality, health, or religious beliefs. There might be other practical reasons to keep a resolution secret if it's about something subversive or dangerous, something that other people could interfere with if they knew. I'm not really talking about things like that.

I'm talking about the kind of resolutions that some people share and that aren't inherently private or dangerous, but that some people keep to themselves. Something like resolving to make art every week or give up coffee.

Personally, I tend to keep my resolutions private because I usually fail at them and then I feel sheepish if I've talked a big game about them. If the resolutions are audacious, I feel kind of embarrassed admitting that I'm going for them. I also think some resolutions are a bit nebulous and strange to talk about. Talking about the nebulous ones too much (or even at all) somehow takes the energy out of them by forcing them to become concrete too early. To borrow a metaphor from some Buddhist teaching, they're like bread that's still baking in the oven. If you take it out to check on it mid-process you ruin it. So some resolutions are self-secret like that. They're formed enough that I can decide to do them, but too unformed to show others.

A friend also told me to be careful about talking too much about a project in progress because it can give you a feeling of accomplishment and reduce your motivation to actually work. I think that does happen, certainly it happens to me, so it's another reason to stick to secret.

And yet there are whole traditions and business practices of publicly declaring your goals and being quite audacious about what you say you'll do. No, I'm not talking about OKRs again.

By Odin's beard! #

A long time ago, I went to an Asatru blot, a pre-Christian Norse religious ceremony, in Central Park^[1]. At first it was pretty typical for a neopagan ceremony. People stand in a circle, say things about the Gods they want to honor, drink and pour out libations. Like, sure, they use a hammer instead of an athame and they drink out of a big horn instead of a chalice, and drink mead instead of wine or water, but fundamentally it's not that different from the Wicca and Wicca-inspired neopaganism everyone knows^[2].

Then comes the boasting. After a few rounds of mead toasting the gods and mythic heroes, the participants can toast each other, or boast about things they've done, or brag about things they're going to do.

If I recall correctly, the future boasts are a mix of oath and prayer. By stating what they intended to do out loud in the presence of the assembly and the Gods, the participants commit to it and ask for divine help.

When you tell everyone in your tightly knit community that you're going to do some great deed, you had better do it if you don't want to lose your reputation. So if your reputation matters to you and you find the fear of shame motivating, a public oath might be just the ticket.

Of course, if you're just visiting a public blot in a city of 8 million people, and you'll never see them again, there's probably not much power in bragging.

Community accountability #

Maybe talking about your resolutions is helpful when you tell some people but not everyone. You want people who will remember your oath and help you keep it. You also want people who wish you well and won't try to undermine you. Social media (and even blogging) is weird because by default whatever you write is totally public. Even if only a very few people read what you write, the fact that millions could changes it somehow.

I started off writing about completely secret vs completely public resolutions, but those aren't the only options. There's secret, shared with a few, and public. And I'm still not sure which is better.

Photo credit #

The header photo is a cropped image from the National Archives at College Park, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. See the full photo "Getting em up" at U.S.Naval Training Camp, Seattle, Washington. Webster & Stevens. - NARA - 533698.