November has an unusual reputation, somewhere along the way, it became the waiting room for January. It’s too late to pretend the year unfolded exactly as planned, yet too early to write it off completely. Around this time, many professionals begin mentally closing the books on the year. We replay the promotion that didn’t happen, the business idea we never launched or the qualification we meant to complete.
Without realising it, we start treating an unfinished year like a finished one. Then comes the familiar promise. “I’ll start properly in January.” Yet I wonder if that’s one of the biggest career mistakes we make.
This is what behavioural scientists call the “fresh start effect”: our tendency to pursue goals after temporal landmarks such as New Year’s Day, birthdays or even the beginning of a new month. Those moments create a psychological separation from our past mistakes, making change feel easier. The problem is that waiting for a fresh start often means overlooking the one we already have.
The challenge is that goals often ask us to predict who we’ll become months from now. But what if, instead of thinking like fortune tellers, we think like scientists? This month offers us the opportunity to experiment.
Instead of promising yourself you’ll become a confident public speaker next year, volunteer to present at your next team meeting and see what happens. Instead of deciding that 2027 will be the year you build your professional network, invite just one interesting person for coffee before this month ends and make an observation.
Instead of announcing you’ll launch a business “one day,” spend a week conducting a survey from potential clients. The objective isn’t to prove you’re ready, it’s to discover what happens when you begin. Goals become tied to our identity and when we don’t achieve them, we begin questioning ourselves. Experiments don’t carry that burden. If an experiment succeeds, you’ve learnt something worth repeating. If it fails, you’ve learnt something worth changing. Either way, you’ve made progress.
Curiosity is remarkably difficult to discourage because it isn’t trying to protect your ego. It’s trying to understand reality. Today and tomorrow’s workplace rewards that type of mindset.
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 identifies analytical thinking, curiosity, resilience, flexibility and lifelong learning among the fastest-growing skills employers value as artificial intelligence reshapes work. None of those qualities belong to people who believe they already have the answers. They belong to people willing to test, adapt and improve.
Artificial intelligence makes this even more relevant. Sure, AI can draft a business plan, write a proposal, analyse data and generate ten marketing campaigns before you’ve finished your morning coffee. But what A.I cannot do is replace the lessons that only action can teach, which is why the real answers are found by experiments.
So before you spend December writing ambitious goals for next year, ask yourself a different question. What experiment can I run before this year ends?