Are You Ready for a Fresh Start? (Update)

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1:14Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. You are probably already thinking about the new year and inevitably a new year's resolution. How often do resolutions actually work? And when they do, why do they? That's what we are asking in this episode. It is an update of a piece we first aired in 2021. We have updated facts and figures where necessary. Happy listening and happy new year.

1:46I know a lot of people were particularly excited about January 1 of this year. I got extra emails about, oh, thank goodness, it's finally 2021. I'm so excited. That's Katie Milkman. I'm a professor at the Wharton School, and I'm also the author of the book, How to Change. And I'm the co-director of the Behavior Change for Good initiative with Angela Duckworth. As a behavior change specialist, Milkman sees January 1st as something of a high holy day. Every year, roughly half of all Americans make a New Year's resolution to break some habit, fix some flaw, pick up some new activity. At the top of these wish lists, and yes, I am calling them wish lists.

2:30You'll see why later. At the top are eating better, drinking less, exercising more. We asked Freakonomics Radio listeners to tell us their resolutions for this year. Some of you set the bar pretty low. So my New Year's resolution is to give myself a freaking break. I realized I haven't been showering enough. So I made a New Year's resolution to shower every 36 hours. And so far, so good. Visiting the tide pools. That's it. That's the only New Year's resolution that I set. And I figured it'd be really awesome if it happened and also totally OK if it didn't. And some of you were more ambitious. My New Year's resolution was to read 25 books.

3:14So far, I'm on target. Last year, my New Year's resolution was to stop drinking during the week, and that was a complete failure. I made a resolution to try one new food every week because I used to be an incredibly picky eater. Hi there, Freakonomics. My one resolution in 2021 is that at least four days every month, I do not drive my car, nor do I hail any kind of ride chair or taxi or anything. It's my little way to try and reduce my fossil fuel consumption. Why is January 1st the day that we burden with so much hope, so much resolve? That's a fresh start. It's the big fresh start. But there are others too, it turns out.

3:55So it could be a birthday, the start of a new week even, or the start of a new month. There are other things that start cycles like going to a new job or having a child or moving to a new community, all of these things are fresh starts and give us that same sense that we have a new beginning, a new chapter opening in our lives. Katie Milkman and some colleagues have named this motivation the fresh start effect. She says that fresh starts can shift our psychology in at least two ways. The first. They feel like new beginnings. So they give us a sense that anything that preceded them, that was the old me.

4:33This is the new me. And so we can wipe that slate clean. And the second shift. They make us step back and think big picture about our lives and our goals because they're sort of disruptive. It's like this different moment. You're entering a new era. Did the phrase, the fresh start effect, really not exist? It really didn't. All we had to do was add effect to this very catchy, well-known phrase, and it became like we had invented something brilliant and new. Humans have indeed long been captivated by the notion of the fresh start. Think about the book of Genesis and the story of Joseph. Joseph's older brothers are so jealous of him and his fancy coat of many colors that first they toss him in a pit and later sell him into slavery.

5:18But ultimately, he gets a fresh start in Egypt, where none less than Pharaoh makes Joseph his advisor, his oracle. During the Enlightenment, the fresh start idea was given a philosophical boost when John Locke argued that each person begins life with a tabula rasa, what we think of today as a blank slate. And in the modern era, just think of all the literature and film where the protagonist sheds their skin, their identity, even their family. America itself was one big fresh start for a bunch of disgruntled Europeans, and it remains so today for people from every continent and every level of gruntlement.

6:00But in academia, as Katie Milkman found, the fresh start concept hadn't received all that much attention. It feels really important and real. Like, of course it's real. To me, those are the most exciting things to study as a social scientist because you know it's big. And it just hasn't been understood fully yet. And we were like, let's probe it. Let's see how we can use it. Let's really make sense of what are the moments that are fresh starts? What do they look like? What are their characteristics? How can we help people use them more? Today on Freakonomics Radio, the promise and limits of the fresh start effect.

6:34This is all a mind game. We hear about an accidental fresh start. I actually flew over here with a view to changing the visa and ended up being trapped by their travel ban. An unwanted fresh start. It's almost like your mom and dad saying, hey, by the way, we don't want you anymore. You're going to go live with the Smiths. And fresh starts that spoil fast.

7:08This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything, with your host, Stephen Dubner.

7:24In 2021, we published an episode on the lowly, lovely traffic roundabout, which, even though it's safer than an intersection with traffic lights, is relatively uncommon in the U.S. One convincing theory was that many people are simply averse to change. They are naturally suspicious of anything that's a bit different. Indeed, there is a large body of research showing that aversion to change is real and large. And yet, humans being the funny animals we are, we also want change, sometimes desperately. At least that's what you'd conclude when you think about New Year's resolutions and the zeal with which so many people make them.

8:04So how successful are New Year's resolutions? A recent study by a University of Stockholm psychologist named Per Carlbring, along with three co-authors, found that 55 percent of these resolutions essentially worked. That sounds amazing. So I'm going to be a grouch about it. That, again, is Katie Milkman, whose research on the fresh start effect is cited approvingly in this new study. So the study is correlational. It's also, you know, based on self-report. That is, the study wasn't a randomized or controlled experiment. Most every study that is done to see how many people achieve their New Year's resolutions is based on self-report.

8:46It's really hard to get objective data on this unless you're like, you know, stalking people in some incredibly bizarre way. But also, Milkman's own experience tells her that a 55 % success rate for New Year's resolutions is just incredibly high. It's out of whack with any other study I've ever heard of. It's possible they recruited a really unusual sample. But it's also possible that there was something about the way they were asking the questions that led people to report success when they weren't really achieving it. You can ask the same question very different ways, like, are you still working on your goal?

9:18We reached out to Per Carlring for some clarification. He told us that his research sample was indeed unusual, that it wasn't random, that he'd recruited volunteers who were on average more motivated to make a change. He also said that the way he posed his question, you did not have to be 100 percent successful. As long as you are moving in the right direction, he said, that is enough to be counted as a success. So, yes, that 55 percent success rate isn't what you might objectively consider success. To Katie Milkman's point, other studies trying to measure New Year's resolutions have shown a success rate as low as 8 percent.

10:00To her, that is closer to the reality. So it's a funny thing. In general, goal pursuit mostly ends in failure. Tell me about it. Yeah. I'm always a little defensive when people say, oh, why should we even bother pursuing our goals? Most of it ends in failure because obviously you can't really get anywhere if you don't try. As they like to say, you miss 100 % of the shots you never take. You got it. So we're pretty confident that it is a beneficial thing to have more people going for it.

10:32Going for it, meaning pursuing goals that require behavior change and using whatever tools are available, like the Fresh Start, to accomplish those goals. Milkman and her colleagues published their first research on the Fresh Start effect in 2014. The data came from Google search results. So if you just grab a data set, like when people search for the term diet on Google, you see a natural tendency to create goals more at these fresh start moments, meaning the beginning of a new year, birthdays, the start of a new week or a new month. They also ran some experiments. It turns out if you just point out to someone, hey, did you notice March 20th is the first day of spring?

11:14That all of a sudden increases their likelihood of wanting to start pursuing a goal on that date. But they also found, as shown by New Year's resolutions, that a fresh start is only a start. It is by no means a guarantee that the new behavior will stick. It's not a one and done solution. You don't just need a little more motivation. There's all these obstacles to change. And we need a set of tools that tackle all of them, not just that momentary motivation, if we want to change daily decisions. But what about situations where a behavior doesn't have to be repeated? like enrolling in a retirement savings program.

11:51We teamed up with several universities that wanted to encourage their employees who weren't yet saving for retirement to save more. Milkman and her team sent out mailers to more than 8 ,000 people, randomly dividing them into two treatment groups. So imagine there was Stephen Dubner 1 and Stephen Dubner 2 in our study and you're identical twins with the same name except for 1 and 2. Dr. Seuss named me plainly. So Stephen Dubner 1 is randomly assigned to the control group. He gets a mailing inviting him to start saving either now or in three months. And let's say Stephen Dubner 2's birthday and Stephen 1's birthday both happen to be in three months.

12:31Stephen Dubner 2 gets randomly assigned to the fresh start condition. He's invited not to start saving now or in three months, but to start saving now or after his next birthday. Now, it's an identical offer, but in one case, it's highlighting the moment that might feel appropriate for saving. The researchers also sprinkled in a few placebo dates throughout the sample, like Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Valentine's Day. We found that the dates that really worked were birthdays and the beginning of spring, whereas the other dates we looked at, actually, New Year's didn't have a big effect, which was surprising.

13:06we would have expected it to. And then, of course, as you would expect, the placebo dates, nothing happening there. Milkman was convinced that the fresh start effect is substantial enough that it can transcend the calendar, that it can be manipulated to suit one's needs. And this is all a mind game. So certainly if you want to, you can remind yourself every Monday, you know, every time there's a holiday, it's a new beginning. Is the average Monday more powerful than the average first of the month? even though there are four times or five times as many Mondays? That's my sense. The day of the week effect seems stronger.

13:43Like, we all notice the weekends. Monday, you haven't been at your desk in a while, hopefully, if you had a good weekend and you managed to set everything aside. That juice runs out a little bit by the 17th Zoom call of the week. But I feel excited at the beginning of a week. One thing I've observed is how often a new location can trigger a fresh start. Like if you rent a little house for a family vacation and there's a chair in the corner and a bunch of books on the shelf, I will spend days reading books I'd never think about reading at home. Why? Your routines have been broken. Also, these aren't the same old books you have at home.

14:21The novelty is inspiring. Isn't that why so many of us love to travel? It exposes you to new experiences, new people, new ways to see the world and think about your place in it. Travel is a constant barrage of fresh starts. That's why travel can also be disorienting, even overwhelming. This past year, we have all taken a disorienting and unscheduled trip to the land of COVID-19. So what will our collective return feel like? Just think about how many fresh starts we'll be looking at. New relationships, new jobs, new living circumstances. You've got all the goodies in there, right? You've got the new environment and the psychological break.

15:07What we know is that when people move and their circumstances change, their environments change, their social circles change, it gives them an opportunity to change along with those things. And if they want to take advantage of that opportunity and structure their lives in a way that will facilitate better outcomes, they're better set up to do that when you move because you haven't built routines, you haven't built bad habits. Coming up after the break, we talked to someone who has moved across continents several times for work. Each job I've gone to, there's been a little bit of me that's developed.

15:40I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back.

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17:57Stephen, Andy Byford here. How are you? Andy, how are you? Good to hear from you, my friend. I'm really well, thank you. Andy Byford is one of the world's best-known public transit officials. A few years ago, he worked on an overhaul of the New York City subway system. Before that, Toronto, and previously, Sydney, Australia. Certainly, I'm used to fresh starts. I find it invigorating. I don't want to flit around, but I've enjoyed the diversity of the various cities. I've lived in. Byford grew up in Plymouth, England, the son of a transit worker, and he began his career as a station foreman in London.

18:33Each job I've gone to, there's been a little bit of me that's developed. Someone described me the other day as a veteran, and you never think of yourself as a veteran. You think, hang on a minute, this has been 32 years now, three continents. Maybe I'm a veteran. With his accumulated expertise, Byford became the person that people call when they're entire system needs a fresh start. Obviously, you have to learn a whole new system. You have to learn the new personalities, the politics, the detail, if you will, of that system. But I don't really see that as a downside. It keeps you focused. It energizes you.

19:10He uses that fresh start to persuade the powers that be that the reason their transport system needs an overhaul is because they've been underfunding maintenance and innovation and that they need to find a big pot of money right away. You have to develop, create, write, and present a compelling case as to what could be different and what could be better were you to have adequate funding. So let's take some examples. New York City Transit is a classic example. I could have gone there and held the fort. I could have turned up and, you know, made marginal improvements, a few tweaks here and there.

19:45But I felt that New Yorkers deserve better than that. The year before Byford arrived in New York City, 2017, was a banner year for subway awfulness. The governor of New York State, Andrew Cuomo, was Byford's ultimate boss. He had declared a state of emergency at the MTA, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Andy Byford put together a rehab plan called Fast Forward with a price tag of$40 billion. He was able to sell the plan and secure the funding. The subway rehab quickly got underway. When Byford got to New York, the subway's on-time performance was 58%. Under him, it rose to 80%. He became a folk hero.

20:29His nickname? Train Daddy. Train Daddy's stickers began showing up around the city. The whole Train Daddy thing was amusing. It appeared from nowhere, and suddenly there was that associated fuss that went with the moniker. If there's one thing politicians dislike, and this seems especially true for New York politicians, including Governor Cuomo, it is when their subordinates become too popular. Andy Byford began to find himself excluded from certain meetings. His parent agency, the MTA, underwent a sudden reorganization. As a result of the reorganization, my job was basically cut in half. It wasn't the job that I was brought into New York to do.

21:11The modernization of the subway system was no longer part of Andy Byford's portfolio. He had been downsized to running the day-to-day operations. Even what was left, the residual element, namely of running the day-to-day, I found that I was being excluded from key decisions. I was finding that other people were taking what I felt were operational decisions, and that was an untenable position. Byford had loved this New York job. He and his wife loved living in New York, but train daddy had had enough. I chose to resign. It was my choice, though. I could have stayed. Byford's resignation landed in January 2020, just as a certain pernicious virus was starting to circulate the globe.

21:57Once the true horror of COVID emerged, I did feel somewhat guilty because had I known what was only a couple of months away, I may still have resigned, but I would think I would have put it in abeyance because I felt desperately sad for the wonderful 50 ,000 employees of New York City Transit who've borne a terrible price for COVID. As a leader, I would like to have been there to at least lead them through it, even if the end result would have been that ultimately I'd have still gone. But Byford had quit, and he didn't know what he was going to do next. He and his wife did plan to stay in New York, but first he had to fly home to England.

22:36I actually came over from New York to change my visa and ended up being trapped by the travel ban. So the COVID shutdown had Byford stuck in England and his wife in New York. Sitting in my home in Plymouth, it struck me that this was a golden opportunity to do my bit for Britain, to do my bit for London, to throw my hat in the ring. That's right. At the very moment that the former New York City transit chief happened to be detained in his native country, a vacancy had arisen for the commissioner's post at the massive agency known as Transport for London. Byford applied, got the job, and is now responsible not only for London's subways, also known as the Tube or the Underground, but the entire transport system, above-ground trains and ferries, roads and buses, even bicycles and pedestrians.

23:30It was a COVID-induced fresh start for Byford in a system that will need to make its own COVID-induced fresh start. Bus ridership at the moment is around 40 percent, the Tube around 20 percent of normal levels. At one point, the Tube was 5 percent of its normal ridership, levels not seen since Victorian times. And it's hard to predict what ridership levels will return to and when. We've modeled five scenarios ranging from a doomsday scenario, where pretty much the ridership never recovers, through to probably an overly optimistic one where we get back to normal within a couple of months of lockdown ending.

24:07I don't think either of those are likely, but something in the middle ground, where maybe we get to 90 % of ridership in the medium term, that's more likely. Byford is choosing to look at this moment as an opportunity. One of my mantras in life is there's always opportunity in adversity. And I'd certainly say that's the case for the pandemic because you can take the opportunity to reflect upon the way you've always done things. Reflecting on the way you've always done things is, as Katie Milkman explained earlier, one of the key benefits of a fresh start. And one of the most interesting pieces of fresh start evidence happens to come from the very same London underground that Andy Byford now runs.

24:50In 2014, there was a two-day transit strike that shut down some stations across the London subway system. Many commuters had their normal routes disrupted. You could look at this as simply a temporary inconvenience, or you could look at it as a forced fresh start. Especially if you were an economist in search of a research project. So my name is Ferdinand Rauch. When we first spoke for this episode, Rauch was at Oxford University. Today, he's at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. When the London tube strike was over, he and some colleagues gathered data to show how commuters had adjusted their routes.