BIG DATA
Resolutions: The Science
Behind And How To Make
The Best Out Of It.
By Timothy Oriedo
A
t some point in your life, you
probably made a New Year
resolution. You resolved to quit
smoking, call your mother every week, get a
promotion, exercise more often or enroll for
a course. Maybe you kept your resolution and
rectified your health and family relations,
but by February you relapse to your old self.
Regardless of your resolutions’ fate though,
the date you choose to motivate yourself
reveals another dimension of the power of
beginnings.
The first day of the year is what social
scientists call a temporal landmark. Just
as human beings rely on landmarks to
navigate direction, like say to get to my
office, turn left at the roundabout, we also
use landmarks to navigate time. Certain
dates function like the roundabout. They
stand out from the ceaseless and forgettable
march of other days and their prominence
helps us find our way.
For instance, the searches of the word
diet always soared by late December and
any avid use of social media will notice
the abundant of mention on social media
timelines of diets around this time of the
year. At my local gym I always notice a
surge of gym members in the first 2
months of the year. In essence, People
are using the New Year to demarcate the
passage of time and what we scientifically
refer to as the fresh start effect.
New Years’ day has long held a special
power to our behavior. We turn a page
in the calendar, glimpse’s at the empty
squares, and open a new book account on
our lives. But we do that unwittingly, blind
to the psychological mechanisms we’re
relying on.
Research shows that a month into a New
Year only 64 percent resolutions continue
to be pursued. Constructing own temporal
landmarks, especially those that are per-
sonally meaningful, gives us many more
opportunities to recover from rough begin-
nings and start again.
The second purpose of these time markers
is to shake us out of our comfort zones
so that we can see the bigger picture. In
so doing they interrupt attention to day
to day minutiae, causing people to take
bigger picture of their lives thus focus on
achieving their goals.
The fresh start effect allows us to use the
same technique but with awareness and
intention, on multiple days. After all, New
Years’ resolutions are hardly foolproof.
Research shows that a month into a
New Year only 64 percent resolutions
continue to be pursued. Constructing
own temporal landmarks, especially
those that are personally meaningful,
gives us many more opportunities to
recover from rough beginnings and start
again.
That’s why when we tackle challenges
in our lives - whether losing weight or
learning a new skill we need to increase
our repertoire of responses and include
when alongside what. Armed with the
science, we can do a much better job
of starting right. Knowing how our
minds reckon with time can help us use
temporal landmarks to recover from
false starts and make fresh ones.
To establish a fresh start effect, people
use two types of temporal landmarks -
social and personal. The social landmarks
are those that everyone shares, New
Year, National Holiday, beginning of
a new month, while personal ones are
unique to the individual like birthdays,
anniversaries, and job changes among
others. But whether social or personal
they served two purposes.
First they allowed people to open
82 MAL28/19 ISSUE
new mental accounts in the same way
businesses close books and open new
ledgers at the end of a fiscal year. The
new period offers a chance to start again
by relegating our old selves to the past.
Fortified by that confidence we behave
better than we have in the past and strive
with enhanced fervor to achieve our
aspirations.
Nobel Peace Prize winner behavioral
economist Daniel Kahneman drew a
distinction between thinking fast (making
decisions based on instinct and distorted
by cognitive biases) and thinking slow
(making decisions anchored in reason
and careful deliberations). Temporal
landmarks slow our thinking allowing us
to deliberate at a higher level and make
better decisions.
Most of us have har-
bored a sense that
beginnings are sig-
nificant. The science
of timing has shown
that they are even
more powerful than
we suspected. The
beginnings stay with
us far longer than we
know; their effects
linger on to the end. day you read this article. Organizations
too can enlist this technique e.g product
launch date, budget dates, mid-year
reviews or quarterly sales review dates.
Don’t worry if you don’t make a New Year
resolution or if you have, it fizzles out
soon. Identifying one’s own personally
meaningful days can erase a false start
“New Year Resolution” and help us begin
a new! Some of those days include first
day of the month, Mondays, country’s
Independence Day, religious holidays,
ones’ birthday, first day on new job or the Timothy Oriedo is Certified Big
Data Scientist (MIT), Executive
Coach, and Data Science Specialist.
You can commune with him on this or
related matters via mail at: Timothy.
[email protected].
Most of us have harbored a sense that
beginnings are significant. The science
of timing has shown that they are even
more powerful than we suspected. The
beginnings stay with us far longer than we
know; their effects linger on to the end.
Have a fruitful sojourn!