Name the "before" and create a deliberate "after"

Give the period before the setback a name and declare a clean break — the act of naming creates the separation.

Why it works

The fresh start effect works because temporal landmarks impose a mental account boundary: past failures belong to a prior period and a prior self, so they don’t fully contaminate the new one. You can create this boundary at any time by deliberately naming the division — "the period when I was under stress" versus "now, starting fresh." The naming activates the same mental account structure that a Monday or January 1st creates, without requiring the calendar event.

How to do it

1. Identify the period or circumstances that produced the failure or disruption you want to separate from.
2. Give that period a specific name: "the burnout stretch," "the travel period," "the rough quarter."
3. Declare, explicitly to yourself, that you are now in a different period.
4. Set one specific first action that belongs to the new period — not a plan, an action.

Evidence

Dai, Milkman & Riis (2014) documented that goal pursuit (measured through search and gym data) surged at temporal landmarks — particularly personal ones like birthdays — consistent with a fresh-start-driven motivation spike. (observational)

The original research established the effect of natural temporal landmarks, not deliberately engineered separations. The extension to intentional fresh starts is mechanistically grounded but less directly studied.

Sources

• Dai, Milkman & Riis (2014), the fresh start effect: temporal landmarks motivate aspirational behavior, Management Science

Common mistake

Skipping the naming step and trying to simply "decide to restart," which leaves the past period continuously present rather than mentally archived — the fresh start requires a real psychological break, not just a decision.