New Year's Resolution: Quit something good
What bacteria and business teach us about resisting The Adding Habit.
Most New Year’s resolutions involve starting something good or quitting something bad. We start going to the gym, we quit smoking. We start practicing the piano, we stop doomscrolling.
But this New Year’s resolution season, I hope you will quit something good. To explain why, let me tell you about a brainless, single-celled organism that can teach something to us all.
How bacteria discards DNA that doesn’t help it thrive
I’m talking about a bacteria named Caulobacter crescentus. A few years ago, a University of South Carolina biologist named Bert Ely was looking at a mutation in a strain of this bacteria when he realized it wasn’t a mutation.
“What I found out is that the strain is a hybrid of two strains that were in the lab,” he told me.1
It’s normal for bacteria to pick up strands of DNA from the environment and stitch them into their genomes. It helps these microscopic organisms gain new abilities that could be useful for survival.
As Ely compared the genomes of the different Caulobacter strains, he discovered that when the bacteria picked up a new piece of DNA, it swapped out another piece of DNA that it had previously picked up2. This protected the cell’s essential genes by keeping the genome from becoming too large to manage.
It’s like the card game rummy, Ely said, where you get rid of the cards that don’t help you complete the set or run that is your current goal.
You could say that Caulobacter crescentus was playing “gene rummy.” It picked up a new strand of DNA. If the DNA did not help it reach its survival goals, it discarded.
We should do the same thing.
The curse of ‘too many projects’
Companies often pile on new projects without shedding old ones. A Harvard Business Review article titled "Too Many Projects," shares how one retail chain noticed that its store managers struggled to keep up with essential responsibilities.
It turned out that the company had launched 90 new initiatives in six months. That’s an average of three new initiatives each week―one new initiative every other day. Who could keep up with that pace?
But I remember doing something like that to myself. One December, trying to justify (to myself) a promotion I’d already received, I made a list of new projects to tackle in the coming year. I tried them. One by one, the projects floundered or had to be scaled back. But the worst part was: the most important parts of my job suffered.
“We have to choose between
what is important and what is not,
what is meaningful and what is not.
We have to become selective.”
—Victor Frankl
The Adding Habit
What the retail chain and I have in common is the tendency to add new projects, goals and time commitments, especially when they are good. I call it The Adding Habit.
This habit is pervasive. Scholars at the University of Virginia found that people default toward adding something—such as, adding Lego blocks to strengthen a tower—even when subtracting something would be more efficient.
As the researchers told Science Alert, the Adding Habit might become ingrained because we most often see solutions that add something. Or maybe it’s because solutions that involve stopping or canceling an existing project might seem less creative or popular.
Technology encourages The Adding Habit, too. New inventions help us be more productive, but usually as a way to do more, not to cut back on effort. Our social newsfeeds and email inboxes overflow with opportunities to read more articles, play games, learn new skills, laugh at more cats.
When we take on new opportunities, it’s like we’re picking up a new piece of DNA that defines us. But just like bacteria can’t extend their DNA infinitely, we can’t add new time commitments, hobbies, or habits without giving up time, focus or energy for other activities—including those that may be more important.
So what do we do?
One quick way to fight The Adding Habit
In the early days of the internet, the psychologist Victor Frankl pointed out that the “information explosion” could distract us from the most meaningful parts of our lives.
He offered this solution: “We have to choose between what is important and what is not, what is meaningful and what is not. We have to become selective.”
Fending off The Adding Habit begins with recognizing that we have a choice. We can be selective. In the UVA experiments mentioned earlier, the temptation to add diminished if study participants were reminded that they could take something away.
The retail chain with too many projects created a job with the specific charge to protect managers from new initiatives. “This change allowed store managers to focus; doing less yielded better results on the key initiatives and priorities,” the HBR article says.
As for me, my year of distraction by minor projects taught me to be more strategic about what I take on. In my current job, I’ve canceled an annual magazine, advertising campaigns and other projects that weren’t accomplishing much so my team could focus on more effective work.
Personally, I quit DuoLingo in 2023 because I realized it was interrupting me just as much as a social media app, without truly improving my Spanish. DuoLingo is good, but good isn’t the point.
We should quit good things when they keep us from great things.
The Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard summarized it like this: “Simplifying our lives [means] getting rid of the most subtle aspect of laziness: the one which makes us take on thousands of less important activities.”
New Year’s Resolution: Quit something good
These lessons from bacterial genetics, business strategy, psychology and philosophy all reveal the wisdom of a new kind of New Year’s resolution. While most people are adding more good things to their already crowded schedules, or only quitting activities that are objectively bad, consider cutting back on somthing that is good, but less important.
You can sequence your DNA by keeping track of what you do with your time3. Ask yourself which activities help you thrive and work toward meaningful goals, and which ones do not4. Decide what’s essential, and what should be discarded.
Pick something good to stop doing. Choose something else that’s essential to keep. If you must add something, quit two good things that could prevent you from succeeding.
This process changes the DNA of your habits, and this literally changes how you function. It defines your life the way you choose. That may be the most worthwhile activity of all.
He was one of the first people I interviewed when I began working at USC. Read more here.
See his paper on the subject: Recombination and gene loss occur simultaneously during bacterial horizontal gene transfer.
See Nir Eyal’s article, ’Tis the Season for Reexamining Your Values for ideas on how to turn your values into time.
You might have an activity with long-term payout but short-term pain. Keep that one. In fact, these are the meaningful activities that most often get crowded out by good activities with short-term payout.