How to make your New Year Resolutions work
New Year is my most favorite time of the year.
On Dec 31, as my partner and I demolished burgers, brownies and debated whether to open our next bottle of wine — He told me this was our “Last dance”, and we might as well go all out. (Yup we binge-watched Last Dance during Dec hols, please watch it asap.)
But on Jan 1, we did HIIT, drank spinach smoothie, ate avocado toast, and ticked off the to-do list in our new planners with stellar self-discipline.
As Jan 1 approaches every year, I get ready to bid goodbye to my demotivated, time-wasting, late rising, cheese cake-loving self of the previous year and turn over a new leaf. This radical change from zero to hero, when the clock strikes 12 every New Year, I learnt recently, is due to The Fresh Start Effect.
The Fresh Start Effect says that ‘significant events or landmarks’ create a perceivable divide in time. Our brains use this divide in time, to create a mental rift between the past and present self — to the extent where the new self feels superior, powerful, and more focussed than the old self.
This ‘significant event’ also causes a much-needed distraction from our daily tunnel vision and helps us focus on big picture changes in our lives.
That’s the reason why most of us are positively motivated to start working on big goals (eating healthy, drinking less, exercising more, investing more, studying hard, etc) when we hit significant events like new year, birthdays, the start of a new month, the start of a semester, etc.
However, based on research and personal experience, the motivation does die down as you move further away from the ‘event’ and that’s the cue I’ve personally taken to look for / create the next fresh starts for me.
The mind perceives personal events as fresh starts too and I’ve been so lucky over the past year to have a lot of fresh starts. Moving to a new country, new house, new job, getting married, a big vacation, the death of close family, the gain of new friends, and the king of all fresh starts — a new haircut. Every single fresh start gives your brain the power and motivation that your current self is better than the previous self and you can achieve your goals better.
Over 2020–21, each of my fresh starts has helped create temporary waves and bursts of motivation, and I rode them without knowing the transformational power of transitions or just letting your old self go.
If you’ve made it till this point, a very happy new year and a happy fresh start to you. Go get your new planner for the year, create new year resolutions, and trust me — you will work towards them better now. When you feel motivation running low, create your next “significant event” and ride the Fresh Start wave.
Original research paper on the Fresh Start effect -
Hengchen Dai, Katherine L. Milkman, Jason Riis (2014) The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior. Management Science
