A new month is not just a date
Today is the first of October and the start of a new quarter. That matters more than it sounds. In a 2014 paper, Hengchen Dai, Katherine Milkman and Jason Riis showed that people are more likely to act on aspirations just after temporal landmarks — the start of a week, a month, a year, a birthday, a public holiday.
They saw it in Google searches about dieting, in university gym attendance and in commitments people made on a goal-setting website. The explanation they offered: landmarks create a mental line between a "past self", who missed the target, and a "new self", who can start clean.
Why this helps with development goals
Most professional goals do not fail in a dramatic way. They go quiet. A few busy weeks pass, the goal feels stale, and restarting feels like admitting it slipped. A landmark gives you permission to restart without the baggage.
The risk is the opposite mistake: treating every fresh start as a reason to add three new goals. That is how the next stall begins.
A 15-minute quarterly reset
- List what is live. Every goal you are actively working on.
- Mark each one: moving, quiet, or finished.
- For each quiet goal, choose one: make it smaller (fewer hours, a smaller first step), park it in a "later" list, or let it go. All three are honest answers.
- Pick one first step for this week for your lead goal, with a date.
- Only then consider adding anything new — and only if the hours exist.
| Landmark | Good for |
|---|---|
| Monday | Choosing this week's one step |
| First of the month | Restarting one quiet goal |
| New quarter | Resizing the whole plan; closing a 90-day cycle |
| New year or birthday | Revisiting the long-range goal and why it matters |
Make landmarks work for you automatically
Put a recurring 15-minute review on the first working day of each month. Jobulary surfaces a small "fresh start" note on your Today screen on these days — but only when there is something to act on, such as a goal that has gone quiet. For deciding how many goals to run at once, see how many goals should you have at once?
Frequently asked questions
What is the fresh start effect?
The tendency for people to take up aspirational behaviour after temporal landmarks such as a new week, month, year or birthday, which seem to separate a new self from past failures.
Who discovered the fresh start effect?
Hengchen Dai, Katherine Milkman and Jason Riis described it in a 2014 paper in Management Science.
How can I use it for career goals?
Schedule a short review on the first working day of each month or quarter: restart one stalled goal with a smaller first step, and move anything you are not going to do into a 'later' list.
Sources
- Dai, Milkman & Riis (2014), The fresh start effect: temporal landmarks motivate aspirational behavior, Management Science
- Dai, Milkman & Riis (2014), full paper (PDF, Wharton)
Topics: Behavioural science · Goal setting