The Fresh Start Effect

Source: Knowledge@Wharton, January 6, 2014; The Daily Pennsylvanian, January 16, 2014; ThinkAdvisor, January 27, 2014 Wharton researchers Hengchen Dai, Katherine Milkman and Jason Riis found that “fresh starts” demarcated by temporal landmarks, such as a birthday, the beginning of a school semester, or even next Monday, cause people to be more effective at setting goals and increasing their chances of achieving them. Now that they have demonstrated the existence of this “fresh start effect,” Hengchen Dai notes “the next step is to determine how we can induce fresh starts in the workplace.”