Use Fresh Start to achieve your goals

Ashley Vinil
2 min readJan 15, 2022

Want to #achieve goals with fresh #excitement this #year?

Then it’s time to use the Fresh Start #effect with the Start #template.

Well a study was done with 2 groups of volunteers to understand their effectiveness in tackling goals and staying motivated enough to accomplish it.

The participants were asked to pick up dates they liked from a set of dates to receive reminder emails in late March that will describe their goal, their plan for accomplishing it, with a motivating message they could customise.

Well, they did it.

Then something interesting was done.

The researcher sent to group 1 the dates in this style, “March 20, 2014 (Thursday; The Third Thursday in March 2014).”

Whereas for group 2 it was mentioned as,“March 20, 2014 (Thursday; The First Day of Spring 2014).”

Spotted any difference?

Well, this simple change had a powerful impact!

When Katherine Milkman and her coauthors added to March 20, 2014 the description – the first day of spring, signups in group 2, increased by 354%.

Wow! Isn’t it?

Why do you think this happened?

Because we are more likely to take action towards our goals after days that mark the start of a new time period and represent new beginnings.

This, according to Katherine Milkman, is known as the “#freshstarteffect” and it is about Temporal Landmarks Motivating Aspirational Behavior.

The work found that “fresh starts” on specific event dates – like a birthday, an anniversary or the beginning of a school semester – can enable people to be more effective at setting and achieving behavioral-changing goals. The authors call such events “#temporallandmarks” and say they cause many people to evaluate their lives and more seriously consider new directions. Thus, these milestone events provide potential pivots for “nudging” or influencing an individual’s behavior.

For example, in a study on students and exercise it was found:

7% of people are more likely to exercise after a birthday

33% at the beginning of the week

14% at the beginning of the month

11% at the beginning of the year

47% at the beginning of the semester

We can apply the same principles to any goal be it personal, work, or community.

So if you have a #goal, use the power of temporal landmarks to make a fresh start.

You can use and reuse this simple #START template for this purpose!

S – set SMART goals

T – create a timeline with highs and lows

A – address the possible challenges & temptations that can derail the progress

R – rally your support – people & provisions

T – travel on the timeline it by labelling dates as temporal landmarks to get a #freshstart each time.

To you, to achieving goals with fresh excitement this year, my congrats!

#storypreso #ashleyvinil #leadership #goalsetting #success

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Ashley Vinil

A sense-maker on a mission to transform the way leaders create, communicate & collaborate using storytelling & sketchualizing