It is common to use landmarks as a way of getting yourself
motivated to do something new.
Culturally, New Year’s Day is a common date where people make the
commitment to do something new (though they have typically given up on their
new goal soon after the new year starts).
Similarly, people often use their birthday as a way of getting pumped up
to do something new.
An interesting paper by Johanna Peetz and Anne Wilson in the
February, 2013 issue of the Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology explores this issue. These researchers suggest that landmark dates
affect how similarly people view themselves right now to their future
selves.
In one study, the researchers used New Year’s Day to
demonstrate this phenomenon. About six
and a half weeks before New Years Day, a group of people were asked to rate how
confident, extraverted, motivated, and content they were at that moment. They were also asked to give these same
ratings for their self seven weeks in the future. One group was given the date seven weeks from
that day (January 4). A second group was
reminded that this was right after New Year’s Day. A third group was told to rate their future
selves right before New Year’s Day.
Everyone in this study rated their future self more
positively than their current self.
However, this difference was much larger for the people who specifically
thought about themselves right after New Year’s Day. The other two groups rated themselves as only
slightly more positively.
There are two key aspects to this result. First, people want their future self to be
more positive than their current self.
Second, this desire to be a better person in the future is more
pronounced when there is a major landmark on the calendar. Other studies in this series showed the same
effect with people’s birthdays.
Why does this matter?
When there is a gap between who you are now and who you want
to be in the future, that gap can motivate you to take action to make yourself
a better person.
In another study, participants were studied in January. They were given a calendar showing the next
six months. For one group, a variety of
holidays and weekends were marked in a different color on the calendar as
landmarks. For the other group, these
landmarks were listed, but they were not highlighted.
Participants rated their current self and their self
six-months into the future on six health-related adjectives (like physically fit,
strong, and energetic). As in the
previous study, there was a bigger difference in people’s ratings between the
current and future self when the landmarks were prominent than when they were
not.
Participants also rated their intention to engage in a
variety of health-related activities like eating better and exercising. Participants were also encouraged to use the
calendar to write down specific intentions for health-related activities in the
future. Finally, as participants left
the study, they were offered brochures for fitness classes.
When the landmarks were displayed on the calendar,
participants expressed more intention to engage in health activities. Participants with a calendar that had
landmarks were also much more likely to write on their calendar and to take a
brochure than those who had no landmarks.
Putting this together, it seems that landmark dates can help
people to see the difference between who they are now and who they would like
to be. This difference can be motivating
to engage in activities to improve the future self.
Of course, the motivation to change is only a small part of
the battle. We know that people express
lots of intentions to do new things around New Year’s Day, birthdays, and other
holidays. But, they rarely follow
through with these intentions.
So, it is important to use that motivation to make specific
future plans for how you will improve your life. Without those plans, it is unlikely the boost
in motivation will lead to actual change in behavior in the future.
