Why do I always want to start on Monday?
· Source: Dai, Milkman & Riis, Management Science, 2014
It's Thursday, the plan has slipped, and you promise yourself: Monday, I'll start properly. You're not alone in that. In 2014, researchers looked at Google searches for diets, gym visits, and goals people signed up for online. All three went up after dates that feel like a beginning. A new week, a new month, a birthday, a new year. Researchers call it the fresh start effect. At the start of a year, searches for diets jumped by more than eighty percent. But that extra push tended to fade as the week or the month went on. So use the first of the month to say what worked, and what didn't. And if you slip on a Wednesday, start again on Thursday. Don't wait for Monday.