Research backs up the idea of “New year, new me.” In a 2014 paper, organizational psychologists introduced the idea of the “fresh start effect,” referring to a period of increased motivation at the beginning of a new time period, whether that’s a new calendar year, a work anniversary, or a birthday.
We reached out to Hengchen Dai, a professor at UCLA Anderson School of Business and lead author on that paper, to learn more about how to use the fresh start effect and the science of motivation to reach your goals in 2026. Here are excerpts from our conversation, edited for length and clarity:
What does your research say about how the ‘fresh start’ works?
People feel a different self at the beginning of a new time period, like the beginning of new year, new week, new season, right after their birthday, or maybe after they move to a new city or a new apartment. The past self may be a bit lazy, may not be able to go to bed on time, may not be able to resist the temptation of this delicious cake, but now it’s different. This is a new period, it’s a new me. I will be able to tackle goals more successfully. And that more positive view about themselves increases self-efficacy and motivates people to pursue goals at those first start moments.
I don’t necessarily think fresh starts are a panacea. Nobody can guarantee that, if you start pursuing a goal on a fresh start date, you’re going to be more successful than if you pursue it on a random day. We haven’t done that research. We are not talking about when it’s absolutely or objectively the best time to pursue a goal. Starting on a fresh start date does not guarantee success. The benefit of it is that people do have elevated motivation around a fresh start moment. So how can we leverage that elevated motivation to create as long-lasting impact as possible? If you never had that boost of motivation, you probably will never start.
A fresh start can get you started. And then when you start, you want to think in a smart way to create a commitment contract that would keep yourself in for a longer time, or you can create an incentive structure for yourself that would motivate yourself to come back to your goal every day or every week. It could be some temptation bundling. It could be rewarding yourself by binge watching a TV show over a weekend. Let’s say you sign up for the marathon, but then at the same time, you sign up for training to help keep you accountable. Or sign up to do the training together with your friends and then they can keep you accountable.
When you have this elevation in motivation, you also want to leverage other structures that we know are more likely to help you follow through that increase the motivation.
How can managers help individuals structure their goals to make the most of the fresh start effect?
One is looking for natural fresh start moments in a work environment that are personally relevant to your employees and highlighting those moments to your employees to leverage the naturally occurring sense of motivation your employees have. For example, people may not naturally think about their work anniversary, but you as a manager could point it out and help people reflect on where they would like to go next.
Another way the manager could use this fresh start framing is to point out future first start dates that are coming up and encourage people to pre-commit to engage in something beneficiary in advance, and make a very concrete plan to have them start on a future date. This leverages the idea of a pre-commitment device. If a manager is looking for a boost in motivation, they could strategically leverage something that is coming up for something that people otherwise would not even do.
For example, in a project with [Wharton’s] Katy Milkman, we did a few experiments with universities to encourage people to sign up for a retirement-savings program in the future. We told them either that they could sign up in a few months, or we made that few months connected with an upcoming fresh start date, like a birthday or the first day of spring. The fresh start framings worked better than just telling people to sign up in a few months, even though the few months is objectively the same length as when the next birthday would happen or when the first day of spring would come, but we just made the connection salient to them.
How might an individual use these same ideas to increase their motivation to improve their AI skills in 2026, for example?
Let’s imagine there is a course that teaches you how to do that, but the course takes time and you may procrastinate. There are a few things you can think about. One, setting a new year’s resolution can help you leverage the new year.
I would also recommend the idea of an emergency reserve, developed by Marissa Sharif and Suzanne Shu. In their research, they compare setting a goal that is so ambitious—for example, ‘I’m going to take this course seven days a week’—with one like, ‘I aspire to do seven days a week, but if I will do, at a minimum, five days a week.’ In the second condition, there are two days that will be an emergency reserve.
Say if on Monday I get very busy at the end of the day. After I finish my work, I just do not have time to take this course. [If you have an emergency reserve,] you are unlikely to feel, ‘I’ve already failed on Monday, why should I even bother to keep trying for the rest of the week?’ You want to set a goal that is smart and allows you to have those rare exceptions when absolutely needed, but then at the same time, you still try to aim high. Research has shown that this type of emergency reserve helps people pursue goals better than just setting a very strict goal or setting an easy goal.
You should also think about who you want to learn this with. The social environment matters a lot, both in terms of who shares the mutual accountability with you, and it’s going to make it much more fun than just learning by yourself.
Read a full transcript of our interview with Dai for more about the science behind pursuing your goals, including the potential dark side of fresh starts for high performers and tactics managers can use to follow through on fresh starts throughout the year.
Read our book briefing on How to Change by Katy Milkman.
Read our guide to how HR leaders should use the fresh start effect to time behavioral nudges.