Nudge · 2-minute read
People are far more likely to finish something when they feel they’ve already started — even if the remaining work is identical.
Car wash customers given a 10-stamp card with two stamps already filled completed it 34% of the time. Customers given an 8-stamp card with none filled — the same eight washes — completed it 19% of the time.
We respond to the fraction of a goal already covered, not just the distance left. Framing a new initiative as “already underway” rather than “starting from zero” changes how likely people are to see it through.
The research: Nunes & Drèze (2006), Journal of Consumer Research.
Adapted from Nudges at Work by Tareef Jafferi, shared in partnership with Happily.ai.
Once you understand something, it becomes very hard to imagine not understanding it — which is why leaders consistently overestimate how clearly their priorities have landed.
People speed up as a finish line gets closer and slow down when a new goal starts. Long programmes with one distant finish line stall in the middle.
When people stop recognising colleagues or sharing ideas, leaders blame motivation. Usually the real culprit is how hard we’ve made the right behaviour.