You’re More Likely to Pursue Your Goals After a Birthday or the First of the Month

People are more likely to exercise after a birthday or the start of a week, month, year, or semester (7%, 33%, 14%, 11%, and 47%, respectively, relative to baseline), suggesting that temporal landmarks make it easier to engage in aspirational behavior, say Hengchen Dai, Katherine L. Milkman, and Jason Riis of The Wharton School. In a series of studies, the researchers found evidence that these landmarks create new “mental accounting periods” that psychologically distance the present self from its past imperfections.