- [Matt] Have you ever wanted to just start over?
To hit control, alt, delete on your life
and begin again with a fresh slate?
- Let's rewind and try again.
- [Matt] It often feels impossible
to make any sort of change in our lives,
even though we daydream about it constantly.
Like doing better in school, finally getting in shape,
or handing in our resignation letter to our boss.
- [Matt] I quit.
- [Boss Matt] Yeah, you can't quit because you work for yourself.
- [Matt] Well then maybe you should quit.
- [Boss Matt] Yeah, it doesn't work like that.
- [Matt] Touche, touche.
- [Boss Matt] Yeah, you're not getting paid for overtime.
- A couple years ago,
my wife, Nat, and I felt like we were on a ride
that we couldn't get off of.
So we hit the reset button, started over,
and it changed our lives for the better.
And the science behind behavior change
says that it might work for you as well.
This video is sponsored by Squarespace.
More on them in a minute.
So when it comes to the science behind motivating yourself
into taking action, it turns out that it actually
has less to do with the how and more to do with the when.
- The Fresh Start Effect might be my favorite topic
I've ever studied.
- [Matt] That's Katy Milkman, behavioral scientist
and author of "How to Change: The Science of Getting
From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be."
I sat with Katy to talk with her about, well, how to change.
Some of the most fascinating research that she's done
is on understanding the importance
that timing plays on behavior change.
- What the Fresh Start Effect is,
it's our tendency to be extremely optimistic
about our capacity to change at moments in our lives
that feel like fresh starts or new beginnings.
- [Matt] Run your finger along your calendar
and you can spot fresh starts at every turn,
both big and small.
And we can use these as launching off points
to make changes in our lives.
- So think about the first day of a new year
and New Year's resolutions
as the most famous manifestation of the Fresh Start Effect.
But it turns out that's just one example.
Every Monday, we're a little bit more optimistic
and more likely to pursue our goals
than we are on other days of the week.
We see the same pattern when we look
at the start of a new semester for students.
When we look at following birthdays,
which feel like fresh starts in our lives.
When people move to a new community or a new job
they tend to have similar fresh start feelings.
And what happens is we feel like
at the beginning of these new cycles in our lives,
we've turned the page on who we are.
And we can say, you know,
that was the old me last year who didn't quit smoking
and get my finances in shape.
And yeah, okay, that didn't work out for the old me
but this is the new me and the new me is gonna be different.
- Making changes in your life isn't just difficult,
it can be terrifying.
Just a couple years ago, towards the end of 2020,
that's something that my wife, Nat and I faced firsthand.
Like everyone else,
we were feeling burnt out from the pandemic.
For most of the year,
we struggled to maintain healthy habits.
Our fitness routines fell off the map
and we ordered takeout three days a week.
As much as we tried to turn things around, we felt stuck.
We were trapped in this endless cycle of eating crap food
barely moving and feeling creatively unfulfilled.
We were desperately seeking a change.
- [Nat]Hey bubbles.
- [Matt] What did you do?
- [Nat] Quit my job today.
(Matt laughing)
- [Matt] You did it.
I'm so proud of you.
- [Nat] I'm proud of me, too.
- Oh, my God.
Nat had just quit her full-time job.
And so for the first time in our relationship
we had the option to live anywhere we wanted.
After talking it over, we asked a crazy question.
What if we lived between both Australia and America?
This question scared the hell out of us.
Would we be able to afford it?
How would we juggle visas?
What if we were making a huge mistake?
There was only one way to find out.
We sold 90% of our stuff, packed up all our things,
ended the lease on our apartment, and decided to go for it.
This was probably one of the most uncertain
and spontaneous decisions of our lives.
But something interesting happened
as the wheels of our plane lifted off the runway at LAX.
As quickly as the fear and panic rose in us,
it began to fade into the background,
and it gave way to a rising sense
of optimism and excitement.
It felt like anything was possible.
That was the Fresh Start Effect in action.
The question is, would it be enough for us
to get out of our rut
or would it just be another fleeting chance at a reset
that would find us tumbling back into our old habits?
I mean, New Year's resolutions
don't have the best track record.
- New Year's comes with holiday cheer
and plenty of resolutions to do better next year.
- New Year's just would not be the same
without making resolutions.
- Everybody's talking about
making New Year's resolutions today,
but how do you keep them going?
- [Reporter] One psychology professor says
setting resolutions at a time like this
make it overwhelming.
- A study by Scranton University
found that only 8% of us will actually keep
those New Year's resolutions.
- I think a lot of people
look at New Year's pretty pessimistically.
I know that you've heard this study probably too many times
but the fact that 80% of New Year's resolutions fail
within the first month or two.
Does this prove that the New Year's resolution
is actually not something that's worth pursuing?
- I think that's really important data to keep in mind
but I also, the point there really is that
change is almost always hard,
whether you start it New Year's or any other time.
There's no other time of year I've heard
that has a better success rate.
The exciting thing about New Year's
is that 40% of Americans are setting goals,
which they're not doing on February 15th or June 17th.
There aren't other days that motivate
that level of ambition and pursuit of change.
So to me, it's exciting to see all those attempts
because you can't succeed if you don't attempt it,
and you're gonna see a high failure rate
whenever people attempt change.
- [Narrator] Since change is really freaking hard,
maybe we should give ourselves a break
and look at fresh starts
like New Year's more optimistically.
After all, if you flip the stats around
it's actually pretty impressive
that 20% of people stick with their resolutions.
- If we don't try, we can't succeed.
And so whether it's New Year's, your birthday,
move to a new city, whatever it is that motivates you.
Okay, you may not succeed this time, but you're trying
and that's gonna bring you closer to a finish line.
- So when Nat and I found ourselves
in a rut at the end of 2020,
a fresh start was exactly what we needed.
And it played out a little bit differently
for the both of us.
For me, it was a resounding success.
The strategy to use that big move as momentum
to rebuild my healthy habits began almost immediately.
From day one, I started working out consistently.
And one week of workouts turned into two.
Then a month turned into three.
I started to eat better than I had all year.
And I started to pick the pieces of my life back up again.
The fresh start helped me to stick habits
I'd let slip for most of the year.
And it was largely because of this mental shift that I had
moving to a new city and starting over.
Natalie, not so much.
While she was definitely a lot happier
with the move in general,
it didn't really give her that same kick of motivation
that it did for me.
But the interesting thing about living between two countries
is that you've got a chance for a fresh start
basically every six months.
And on our trip back to the US,
Nat found the spring in her step
to totally transform her fitness and nutrition habits.
Like I'd honestly never seen her take fitness this seriously
in her life.
It was really impressive.
And she definitely credits the Fresh Start Effect
with being the initial wave that carried those behaviors
into automatic habits.
And here's the good news about the Fresh Start Effect.
You don't have to sell all of your stuff,
become a digital nomad and move halfway around the world
to take advantage of it.
As Katy explains.
- What we've shown about the way we can use it though
is that if we encourage someone to begin pursuing a goal
and we highlight a fresh start date
on the calendar in front of them,
they're more excited and more likely to say yes
on those fresh start dates.
So we, you know, circle the first day of spring
and label it as such and say,
do you wanna start pursuing a goal, choose a date.
And people pick the first day of spring
when it's labeled as the first day of spring,
but not when it's labeled as the third Thursday in March.
We can also get people to save more for retirement
when we invite them to start saving
after an upcoming birthday or after the start of spring,
rather than at an arbitrary date
that's at the same point in the future
that isn't labeled as a fresh start.
So when we highlight fresh starts to people
that creates this extra excitement about, oh,
this is a perfect moment to begin.
- So while fresh starts can be a really effective tool
to get us motivated,
if we're not careful
they can actually sabotage our progress.
More on that in a minute, cliff hanger,
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So we've talked all about how fresh starts
can help give us the right mindset that we need
to make significant changes in our lives,
but there are times when fresh starts
can actually undo our progress
and make it more likely that we'll fail.
While resets are helpful when we're in a slump,
as Katy Milkman told me,
they're the last thing that we need when we're on a roll.
- My number one piece of advice based on the research
on this topic is to try not to sort of wipe the slate clean
if things are going well for you.
If you have been tracking your performance in some way,
whether it's you're a salesperson
and you're trying to improve your sales,
or you use Duolingo and you track how many days
you've been practicing your Spanish,
or you're going to the gym and you've been paying attention
to like how successful you've been doing that.
What you want to avoid is allowing a fresh start
to come along, where you start tracking,
and you're like, oh, it's a new year.
Let me get a new calendar up.
We're gonna start tracking again.
Or, you know, it's a new quarter, let me restart my counter.
- So if you've been consistently exercising
every day for a month
and you've checked off every little box
on your habit tracker for 30 days straight.
When the next month comes along,
instead of starting over from the very beginning,
you might wanna pin up another calendar
next to your previous habit tracker.
This will help you continue to build
upon the momentum you've created
and enter into a mindset where you see yourself
as someone capable of maintaining this change,
which is something that Nat and I will have to keep in mind
as we split our time between two countries
and balance all the other fresh starts in our lives.
If things are going well,
how do we keep that momentum going?
And if we're in a slump,
how do we use the resets to our advantage?
Because no matter how good we are at sticking to change,
we're always gonna slip up.
- What I do wanna say though
is the fresh start is clearly not enough.
And that's what that data also points to.
We can't just count on fresh starts to propel us.
One moment of motivation doesn't get us to the finish line
when it comes to change,
which is why I wrote a book that has many more chapters
than one about the fresh start, right?
We need a lot of tools to figure out
how do I get from setting a goal to achieving it?
And that's sort of what the science I do is all about
is it's just that fresh starts are good moments to start.
And so, I think they're exciting for that reason.
- So whether you wanna make a change in your career,
run a marathon, or ditch your apartment to live in a van
there are always fresh starts around the corner
waiting for you to hit the reset button on your life.
And you know what?
I feel like finishing a YouTube video
is kind of like a fresh start.
Right?
Okay, that might be a bit of a stretch.
I definitely recommend you check out Katy's book,
"How to Change."
It's phenomenal.
I just finished it up a couple months ago.
Definitely recommend you check it out for yourself.
Until next time.
Bye guys.