"I'll start Monday"

The fresh start effect from chapter 3 doesn't only happen in January. It happens every Monday, on the first of each month, after every holiday and every birthday. Dai, Milkman and Riis measured it in weeks and months as well as years. And that has a use and a cost.

The cost is the wait. If you believe that starts need a clean page, then a Wednesday afternoon isn't a place you can start, so you wait for Monday. Monday goes badly for the ordinary reasons, and now you're waiting for the first of the month, and then the first of the year. The clean page becomes a reason not to write on the dirty one, and the dirty one is the only page there is most of the time. I've no study of this, but I'd guess that a fair share of people's Januaries are made of Mondays that were going to be the day.

There's a deeper problem with Monday. Monday is the most landmark-shaped day of the week and the least Tuesday-shaped. It has a fresh push behind it, the way the first of January does, and it tests nothing. The day the wish has to survive is the one with no push, and Monday's push runs out on Tuesday. Starting Monday means starting on the day that tells you least about whether the plan works.

So the use of the effect is the reverse of how people use it. Don't wait for a landmark to start. Start on the Wednesday afternoon, at the least version, so the plan meets an ordinary day on its first outing. And then let the landmarks do what they're good at, which is renewing. If the Sunday five minutes in chapter 19 shows the week went badly, the Monday is a free push to restart at the same size. If the month went badly, the first is another. The effect is real and it's free and it comes round every week. It's wasted on waiting and it's useful for going again.

The day after the drop, chapter 22 will say, is the right day to restart, whatever day it is. There's usually a landmark within a week if you want one. There's always a Tuesday.