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The real quest every time a new year rolls around is not for world peace. It's for ways to minimise the impact of resolutions on our lives.

There's too much advice out there already, from how to make them, through how to keep them, and how it's okay to break them.

In this short clip released by Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver tells us how to keep it real. Calling new year's resolutions that perfect grey area between "lying to yourself and lying to others", he says we can always innovate.

For instance since exercise is hard, contends Oliver, we can find other ways to increase our heart rate, "like waking up late for work, or taking a pregnancy test."

The show resurfaced briefly just to take a dig at the idea of resolutions. It will be back again only from February 14.

The idea of resolutions is fodder for many comics and writers. American author and humorist Mark Twain famously tore down new years with his scathing wit. In the January 1, 1863 edition of the Territorial Enterprise, the Virginia City, Nevada newspaper where Twain worked for a time he wrote:

"Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient short comings considerably shorter than ever. We shall also reflect pleasantly upon how we did the same old thing last year about this time. However, go in, community. New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion."