Member-only story
Why September Is the Perfect Time to Start That New Routine
According to the calendar, September is just another month in the year. But according to our emotions, this time of year often feels particularly weighty.
With summer at an end, many people experience a pang of nostalgia for the good weather and days off. For parents and students, the back-to-school period is often a potent cocktail of relief, excitement, and anxiety.
But even if your summer was uneventful and you’re long past your student days, September often still feels important. After at least 13 years of experiencing the ninth month of the year as a new beginning, most of us have a hard time shaking the sensation that September offers a sort of reset button on life.
“For many of us, September is the other January — time to make a fresh start,” author Gretchen Rubin wrote on Facebook, summing up the feelings of many.
The scientific case for starting afresh in September.
And as Science of Us blogger Melissa Dahl notes in her fun and useful post pointing to Rubin’s writings on the odd power of September, there’s a good scientific reason why this should be so. Thanks to the academic calendar, she writes, September is what’s known as a “temporal marker,” a life transition when one era feels like it ends and…
