On the first of every year, millions of Americans make a New Year's resolution (or two or three) that they won't keep. Still, despite the ritual's repeated failings, we keep trying. This yearly tradition, which dates as far back as Ancient Rome, is a reminder that humans can't stop believing in new beginnings. Why we keep making resolutions—and why they're so hard to follow—comes down to the way our brains work. And a better understanding of the inner-workings of your noggin can help you follow through on your goals for 2017.

There's one obvious reason why most resolutions fail: We usually focus on goals or tasks that we haven't been able to achieve over the past year. "You are making it your New Year's goal because you keep failing at it," says Tim Pychyl, a psychologist at Carleton University in Ottawa. The other terrible thing about New Year's resolutions, he says, is that making them requires no action. The simple thought—the idea that we intend to lose weight or exercise more—satisfies our instant gratification: In the moment, just thinking about losing weight makes us feel good, and we don't actually have to go out and do the tasks necessary to achieve that goal.