I have to read again starting tomorrow
I’m signing up for the course… I sure will.
Starting tomorrow, that’s it… I signed up for the gym.
Next week I have to start…
Known or recognized variants. Goal setting is easy and even enjoyable. We feel ready to blow into the sails. Achieving, however, tends to be much more difficult.
Why are we procrastinating?
Research conducted in 2013-2014 suggests that we are more likely to successfully pursue our goals if we start on a day that is meaningful to us.
Psychological researchers Hengchen Dai (Washington University in St. Louis), Katherine Milkman (University of Pennsylvania) and Jason Riis (University of Pennsylvania) found that people are more motivated to achieve their goals if they correlate them with certain data.
Significant days – such as the beginning of a financial week or quarter, a birthday or a holiday – symbolize the beginning, the start, the excitement of the new.
These “temporal landmarks” facilitate psychic separation from past imperfections and failures.
Essentially, we are more motivated to pursue our goals when we feel that our past failures have been left behind and future success is smiling upon us. It’s a phenomenon that researchers call the “fresh start effect.”
165 survey participants were asked to describe a personal goal they intended to pursue in the near future. They were then offered support which consisted of receiving a personalized email to help them remember their goal.
Participants could choose the date they wanted to receive this helpful reminder. From March 18, a Tuesday to March 24, Monday. They were then assigned to one of two experimental conditions: the “restart condition” and the “control condition”.
For the state of new beginning, March 20 was described to the participants as “the first day of spring”. In the control condition, March 20 was simply described as an ordinary Thursday: “March 20, 2014.”
Participants in the fresh-start condition chose March 20 as a useful reminder date at a rate 3.5 times higher than those in the control condition (26% vs. 7%).
A separate survey of 141 participants confirmed that most people think of the first day of spring as a new beginning, but the third Thursday in March says nothing to them.
Data reported by Dai, Milkman, and Riis in the journal Management Science suggests that the fresh start effect can have a powerful impact on people’s behavior.
Diet and fitness
The researchers analyzed Google searches for the word “diet.” Not only that people search for advice around the New Year, but searches peaked at the beginning of the week, the beginning of the month and the day after a national holiday.
They also analyzed the behavior of students in a fitness center. Data collected from gym card machines showed that visits increased dramatically around the time milestones. Students were more likely to exercise at the beginning of a week, at the beginning of the semester, or right after their birthday.
Organizations looking to start motivating employees might want to consider when they start doing it. Simply waiting until after a holiday or the first of the month has the potential to improve people’s motivation to continue their professional development, new projects, or even invest in their retirement savings.
The abundance of startup opportunities throughout the year provides repeated chances for people to find motivation. Even if they fail on the first try, they can reset their goals with increased motivation afterward.
If today were Monday, the beginning of the week, what would you propose to start/change/improve?
