As South Africans head into 2026 with the usual “new year, new me” pressure, the same pattern repeats: ambitious resolutions, a strong first week, then a quiet collapse by February.
The story is often framed as willpower or discipline, but there is a more useful explanation that makes for a practical, audience-friendly interview: most resolutions fail because the goal is right, but the method is poorly designed for real life.
Gadija Petersen, a Programme Lead at the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at UCT, can unpack a human-centred approach to behaviour change that treats setbacks as feedback, and replaces rigid routines with small experiments that are easier to sustain.
