If you’re like most people, you’ve made a few New Year’s resolutions for 2011. Unfortunately, if you’re like most people, you may find it hard to stick to those resolutions. In general, fewer than half of the people who say they’ve made a resolution will still be working towards their goals by June, and by the end of the year, only one in ten people will have maintained their commitment to improve themselves in some way. Here at Ultimate Vocabulary, we want to do everything we can to help you keep your resolutions – at least the ones related to English vocabulary study – and have some tips to share with you today on how to design and stick to a study program.

Focus on the first month. It takes between three and four weeks to get into the habit of doing something new. While it might be difficult to adjust to the new routine during that first month, once you’ve devoted the energy to setting up and following your new schedule, you’ll find that it truly does become a habit, and not something you need to force yourself to do. If your goal is to devote 15 minutes of each day to concentrated English vocabulary study, then identify a time period in which you know you can focus only on that (for many people, very early in the morning, late at night, or during a lunch break work well) and make sure that during that time period, every single day, that’s what you’re working on. Set your watch or cell phone to beep a reminder to you if necessary, but don’t skip a single day. By the end of the month, your good study habit should be firmly in place.

Create a regimen for your routine. A regimen (from the Latin root rego, meaning “I direct”) is a set of rules or a system that is designed to gradually bring about improvements. The word gradual is key here: don’t try to do everything at once, and don’t try to do too much at one time. Especially in the beginning, when you’re focused on creating your new study habit, you don’t want to be overwhelmed with too much to do. Set small goals for yourself, and meet them every day. This feeling of success will encourage you to continue in your study habits.

Stay interested in the process. While you may have specific goals for the year, such as learning a set list of words, remember to vary your study methods. You’ll achieve two things by doing this: first, you’ll keep things interesting for yourself, with a combination of reading, writing, spelling quizzes, word-origin research, and conversation practice. Second, as we’ve said before, the more ways you approach the learning process, the more your brain will be involved, and you’ll have more success in learning things quickly and remembering them later.

Do you have a helpful tip on how to keep your study resolutions? Leave it in the comments and we’ll share it with the other readers.