The start of the New Year is when a lot of people plan to start new habits, change behaviours and take on new goals. Other such days when people act in a similar way are birthdays, anniversaries, etc.

Even though these days are just points on a continuous timeframe, we choose these points to make big changes in our lives. Even though there is no real difference between the 31st of December and the 1st of January, or between the day before our birthday and the day after, we choose these days to make big changes (or attempt to start making big changes) in our lives.

This is because we don't live our lives in one continuous timeframe.

Our minds perceive time in chunks, like the chapters of a novel. And some of these events act as natural delimiters to chunk timeframes, like chapter breaks in a novel. Other such points we use are the days we change jobs, days we move cities, etc.

When we come to the end of a chunk of time (as perceived by our minds), we tend to reflect back on that chunk of time and take stock of what we have done. And this results in is identifying some things we want to change, or some things we want to double down on.

Hence, a majority of people tend to use these delimiters or inflection points to identify changes they want to bring about.

There is nothing special about these days, and yet there is.