Last week was Quitters Day.
You probably didn't celebrate it (who would?), but statistically, January 9th is when 80% of people abandon their New Year's resolutions. By the second week of January, most goals are already collecting dust. And next Monday? That's Blue Monday, the so-called "most depressing day of the year." (Spoiler: it was invented by a travel company to sell vacations. The science is fake, but the feeling is real.)
So here we are. Sandwiched between the day most people quit and the day everyone supposedly feels worst.
Perfect time to talk about why you haven't quit yet.
You're filtering right now
Picture yourself at a crowded party. Music playing, dozens of conversations happening at once, glasses clinking. It's all just noise. You're not tracking any of it.
Then someone across the room says your name.
Suddenly you hear it, clear as day, cutting through everything else. Your ears didn't get better. Your brain just decided that word — your name — mattered.
This is called the cocktail party effect, and it reveals something wild about how your brain works: you're filtering constantly. Every second of every day. Not sometimes. Always.
Your brain receives somewhere between 11 million and 400 billion bits of information every second (scientists argue about the exact number, but everyone agrees: it's a lot). You can consciously process maybe 50. So your brain has to choose.
The system doing the choosing? Your Reticular Activating System. The RAS is a tiny bundle of neurons at the base of your brain, about the size of a pencil. Its entire job is deciding what gets through and what gets ignored.
This filtering isn't optional. It's survival. A 2025 meta-analysis found that kids in noisy schools (near busy roads, playgrounds, traffic) showed significantly worse focus, memory, and learning. The noise wasn't just annoying — it was overwhelming their filters. Their brains couldn't sort signal from noise.
We think we're seeing reality. We're seeing what our brain lets through.
The car you never noticed
Here's the classic example: Ever bought a new car and suddenly start seeing that exact model everywhere?
Before you bought it, you never remember ever seeing it. Now they're on every street, in every parking lot, multiplying like rabbits.
The cars didn't suddenly appear. Your brain just started paying attention.
Your RAS filters based on what you tell it matters.
When you bought that car, you told your brain "Honda CR-V = important." So it started flagging every CR-V in your environment. The cars were always there. Your brain just started letting them through.
Your name at a party. Your car on the road. Same mechanism. Your brain surfaces what you've told it to look for.
This is why we designed the Self Journal to make you write your goals every single day.
Before I ever created the journal, I tested this on myself. Every goal I wrote down daily using a 13-week method came true. Not most of them. All of them.
$323,000 raised on Kickstarter when my goal was $200,000. Winning the Shopify Build a Business Competition. Moving to New York with only $800 to my name. I can't explain it any other way — the repetition changed what I noticed, who I met, which opportunities I actually saw.
When you write your goals repeatedly, you're not just "staying motivated." You're programming your brain's filter. The opportunities were always there. My brain just wasn't letting them through until I told it what to look for.
The opportunities were always there. Your brain just wasn't letting them through. This is why researchers found that people who believe friendship happens by effort (not luck) end up less lonely. It's not magic thinking. It's RAS training. Focus on building friendships, and your brain starts surfacing friendship opportunities. Focus on "I'm just unlucky," and your brain filters those same opportunities right out.
The difference between people who quit and people who don't
Strava analyzed 800 million activities to pinpoint why January 9th became the quitting day. The pattern was clear: people set goals, felt motivated for about a week, then stopped when results didn't appear immediately.
Here's what the RAS research suggests: they were waiting for motivation to hand them opportunities on a silver platter. But that's not how your brain works.
Your RAS doesn't care if you "feel motivated." It cares about what you've told it to look for. And you tell it through repetition, not inspiration.
The person who writes "exercise more" once and waits to feel motivated? Their RAS never got the memo.
The person who writes "go to the gym at 6am" every single day? Their brain starts flagging the alarm clock differently. The gym bag by the door. The playlist that gets them moving. The parking spot closest to the entrance.
Same goal. Completely different brain programming.
Try this this week
If you abandoned a resolution (or never made one), try this: write one specific goal at the top of your page every morning this week. Not "get healthy."
Something your brain can actually search for: "Walk for 20 minutes after lunch" or "Text one friend to make plans."
Watch what your brain starts noticing. The opportunities were always there. You're just teaching your filter what to look for.
Further reading: Tobias van Schneider's piece "If you want it, you might get it" explains the RAS basics well without getting too neuroscience-heavy.
Here's to training your brain to see what's already there. 🥂
— Cat
