DR. WALLACE: I feel like a loser because I spent a lot of time writing out a list of 10 New Year's resolutions that I wanted to accomplish here in 2026. I'm sorry to report that we are heading now to the middle of March and I've only made a teeny bit of progress on two out of the 10 and the other eight have been an entire miss to this point.

I had planned to work out a fixed number of times per week, study regularly on set hours and structure my social life to be more regular rather than being impulsive and running off to do things that seem fun in the moment rather than sticking to my schedule and the responsibilities I know I need to take care of.

What can I do about this? Should I try to reset my list of New Year's resolutions and maybe whittle it down to five or seven items instead of 10? I look at my list every week and it's beyond depressing at this point. — My Resolutions Remain Unresolved, via email

MY RESOLUTIONS REMAIN UNRESOLVED: First of all, my advice is to not be so hard on yourself. It's great that you put time and planning into developing a list of 10 resolutions you wanted to accomplish in 2026, but that seems like a tall order from my perspective.

Most people who stick to New Year's resolutions limit them to one, two or perhaps three resolutions only. This allows time to focus, time to build new habits, and an opportunity to ease into some new behaviors rather than feeling like you have to make wholesale changes up and down your life immediately.

The next time you pull out your New Year's resolution list, select just the top item that you feel is the most important and don't worry about the other nine, and work to see if you can make progress on that one item. If and when you develop some good habits and start to make progress, then and only then should you consider adding another item gradually.

And so you don't feel too bad about leaving many unresolved resolutions on the cutting room floor, I suggest that you make a mental note to think every morning once you awake and before you eat breakfast or head off to school, try to think about 10 things in your life that you are grateful for. If you actually do this, it won't take too long before you can come up with 10 of these and that would be a very positive way for you to start every day and put you in an even better mood to work on that one big resolution you want to tackle first.

I ACHIEVE A LOT BUT AM REGULARLY LAZY INBETWEEN

DR. WALLACE: I'm a very busy 19-year-old college student and even though I generally have a lot of energy and can keep up a very busy schedule every day, I'll admit that there are times several days a week when I feel that I'll impulsively just become intentionally lazy for an hour or two.

Later, I'll get back into the swing of things and try to get as much done as I can the rest of the day, but I always seem to feel guilty about taking an hour to two hours off from my life three to four times per week. This has been occurring pretty consistently throughout this entire school year. Is this normal? I always strive to be a high achiever and sometimes I sit and wonder about what all I could've accomplished during the hours I seem to fritter away each week. — There Are Times I Just Shut Down, via email

THERE ARE TIMES I JUST SHUT DOWN: It sounds to me that you are perhaps confusing physical and mental breaks and rest with laziness. A fast-moving person with a very busy life, who needs to take a breather for an hour to two several times a week, does not sound unusual to me at all.

Instead of being hard on yourself, congratulate yourself for listening to your body and mind as feeling physically or mentally tired is not a sign of weakness at all. Rather, it's a signal from Mother Nature herself to allow you to reset and recharge yourself intermittently before you dive back into the kinetic life you are living.

Dr. Robert Wallace welcomes questions from readers. Although he is unable to reply to all of them individually, he will answer as many as possible in this column. Email him at [email protected]. To find out more about Dr. Robert Wallace and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Tim Mossholder at Unsplash