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On Jan 1, people in Western countries traditionally make a New Year’s resolution, which is a promise to yourself to get something done–to finish a long-delayed task, start a positive habit or repair a damaged relationship, for example.

The New Year offers the chance to re-invent oneself, and resolutions make that progress more concrete. They say, “I will change, and this is how I will do it.”

So at the beginning of January, gym owners can expect their profits to go way up, as people crowd around exercise machines trying to keep their weight loss resolutions. Meanwhile, bookstores and libraries see self-help books fly off the shelves after having sat there, untouched, for many months. McDonald’s and KFC–along with many different alcohol, cigarette and video game companies–might lose some money, causing their CEOs to panic.

But the sad truth is that humans are usually weak. Several months later, people’s waistlines will go back to where they were; their weekly calls with their mothers will stay at once a month; they’ll start smoking again. Richard Wiseman, a famous UK psychologist, did a study in 2014 and found that 52 percent of people making New Year’s resolutions were confident they would stick with them, but only 12 percent really did.

Then why bother? Well, New Year’s resolutions are, as UK author Samuel Johnson wrote, “a victory of hope over experience”. They are a way to show what we wish for ourselves. They’re a way to make a note of what we’re not satisfied with ourselves. And, perhaps most importantly, they’re a method of erasing the errors of the past year.