What do September, January, and your birthday have in common? They can all make change feel easier.
Psychologists call this the fresh start effect: the tendency to feel more motivated at a meaningful point in time. These moments can create optimism, increase confidence, and make past failures feel less important.
The fresh start effect is closely linked to temporal landmarks – dates or events that divide our lives into distinct periods and give us a sense of before and after. Some are shared, such as the beginning of a week, month, year, or school term. Others are personal, such as a birthday, moving house, starting a new job, or returning from a holiday.
Researchers found that people were more likely to engage in goal-directed behaviour after temporal landmarks. Google searches for “diet” increased at the beginning of weeks, months, and years, while gym attendance rose after events such as birthdays and the start of a new semester.
Their explanation was that temporal boundaries make it easier to separate our current self from what they called our “past imperfect self”, while also prompting us to think about our lives at a broader level.
This helps explain why September can feel unusually energizing even when you’ve not been in school for years. It’s a culturally familiar transition point, associated with returning to work and beginning a new season.
That shift can be useful: fresh starts can provide a temporary boost in motivation, making it easier to begin something you’ve been avoiding, and can create an opportunity to reconsider priorities, such as which projects deserve more attention and which habits still make sense.
But the same optimism can also make us overestimate how much we can change at once. A new season arrives and suddenly the plan is to exercise every morning, cook every meal, read more, reorganise our work, sleep eight hours, and finally learn a language.
Over time, this can create a reset cycle where we repeatedly redesign our routines at the start of a month, season, or year, but rarely stick with one approach long enough to learn from it.
So, how can you make the most of the fresh start effect without falling prey to its pitfalls?
1. Run tiny experiments
Use a fresh start to test a small change rather than commit to a big transformation. “I need to get organised” can be overwhelming, but “For the next two weeks, I’ll do a weekly review every Sunday afternoon” gives you manageable data you can actually evaluate.
2. Make space for reflection
Before deciding what to change, ask what is already working, what is not, and what you have learned. You may discover that the problem is not your entire routine but one part of it, or that a habit you were about to replace is actually worth keeping.
3. Create your own fresh starts
You don’t have to wait for your birthday or the new year. A Monday, the end of a project, or a return from holiday, can create a sense of transition. What matters is that the moment feels distinct enough to mark a boundary you can leverage to start a new season.
The problem with the fresh start effect isn’t ambition. It’s implementing big changes designed for a highly motivated version of yourself and expecting an ordinary version of yourself to maintain it.
Instead, use temporal landmarks as a useful moment to ask: what should I keep, what should I stop, and what is worth experimenting with next?