Welcome to the first “official” workday of the new year. Around half of Americans make resolutions to start a new year, and of those, fewer than 10% will follow through and succeed at their newfound resolve. Of the other 90+ percent, most will quit this week. This.Week. Ouch!

Before you get all bummed out about the looming mass failure, let’s step back a bit and examine why the failure rate is so high. There’s interesting brain science involved, and I’ll make sure you’ll understand it perfectly.

The brain loves patterns. Humans can learn as fast and as much as we do because brains look for patterns, connect the dots, and voila! A new pattern is formed around the new information. That’s where language skills come from, math skills, driving skills…all the skills start out as a basic pattern the brain forms. If you’ve ever driven somewhere and realized that you don’t really remember driving because you were preoccupied with...