If you have been meaning to get into a posting routine, the day you start matters more than you would think. New habits stick better when you begin on a landmark, a Monday, the first of the month, the start of a season. So do not start on a random Wednesday; pick a fresh start and let it carry you.
Researchers call this the fresh start effect. People take up new habits far more readily just after a landmark date, when it feels like a clean page and last month’s failures belong to the old version of things (Dai, Milkman and Riis, The Fresh Start Effect, Management Science). The date does real work; it gives you permission to begin again.
September is the biggest fresh start of all after New Year. Routines restart, everyone is rebuilding their week, and it is a natural moment to begin a new habit of your own. You can see this on the back to school run-up: a new term is a shared reset, and a habit you begin in that window has the mood of the month behind it.
This cuts both ways, which is the useful part. A landmark is a good day to start, and it is also a good day to restart. If your posting fizzled out in the spring, you do not have to feel bad about it. The first of next month is a clean line. Draw it, and begin again as if from scratch. The fresh start is not a trick; it genuinely helps the habit take.
So choose your day on purpose. The coming Monday. The first of the month. The start of your quiet season, or your busy one. Your shop’s anniversary. Any of these is a better launch pad than “sometime soon”, because “sometime soon” never arrives, and a real date does. A gym knows this in its bones: half its year’s sign-ups come in the first week of January, not because January is magic, but because a landmark gives people the push to begin. You can borrow the same push for your own habit of showing up.
It also helps to mark the start, at least to yourself. Write it on the calendar. Tell a member of staff. Make the first post a small line about it if you like: “new season, and we’re going to be here more often, showing you what we’re up to.” Naming the start makes it feel like a decision you have made, not a vague hope, and decisions get kept more than hopes do.
A caution. The landmark helps you begin, but it will not keep you going on its own. The fresh start gets you off the mark; the small, repeatable routine is what carries you after the glow fades. So use the date to launch, then lean on keeping each post tiny and on the same slot every week. Do not let a strong start turn into a sprint that burns out by the second week.
The short version: pick a landmark to begin on, a Monday, the first, a new term, an anniversary, because a fresh start makes a new habit far likelier to hold. And if you have stopped before, use the next landmark to restart with a clean slate and no guilt. Choose the day, mark it, and let the fresh start do its bit.
Print the free A4 calendar and circle your own landmark, the Monday, the first, the new term, to start on.