Back to School: The Best Challenges to Start This Semester (and Why Now Is the Perfect Time)

Researchers Hengchen Dai, Katherine Milkman and Jason Riis coined the term in a 2014 study in Management Science. They found that aspirational behaviour - gym visits, searches for 'diet', commitments to goals - reliably spikes right after 'temporal landmarks': the start of a new week, month, year... and, crucially, a new semester.

The idea is that these moments create a clean line between your old self and a new one, filing away past slip-ups and making you feel like this version of you can pull it off. The back-to-school moment is one of the biggest fresh starts on the calendar - so it's worth using while the motivation is naturally high.

The highest-impact academic habit might be the simplest: put your phone out of sight while you work. In a well-known University of Texas study, people performed worse on attention-heavy tasks when their phone was merely on the desk - even switched off - than when it was in another room. (The exact effect has been debated since, but a 2023 meta-analysis still found an overall small negative effect.) Pair that with the Pomodoro method - 25 focused minutes, a 5-minute break - and challenge friends to log daily 'deep work' sessions.

The least glamorous, most underrated student habit. Sleep is when your brain consolidates what you learned that day, and a regular sleep schedule supports memory, focus and mood far more than a caffeine-fuelled all-nighter ever will. The challenge: a consistent bedtime and wake time, even on weekends, for 30 days. Your grades and your mood will both notice.

(If coffee's your crutch, it's worth knowing how caffeine really affects your sleep - the afternoon cup is often the hidden culprit.)

Exercise isn't just for your body - it's some of the best fuel for a student brain, boosting focus, mood and memory. And it doesn't need to be intense. A daily walk between classes, a Couch to 5K on the campus paths, or interval walking all count. Movement is the study break that actually makes you study better.

Beyond study sessions, a broader challenge to reclaim your attention: set a daily phone-time limit, delete one attention-eating app for the semester, or go phone-free for the first hour of the day. In a world engineered to fragment your focus, protecting your attention is a genuine competitive advantage as a student.

Whatever habit you pick, track it - because tracking is one of the most reliably effective tools in all of behaviour science. Logging your progress, ideally somewhere visible to others, measurably increases the odds you'll follow through. A simple daily streak - 'studied today', 'moved today', 'slept on time' - turns a vague intention into a satisfying chain you won't want to break. Here's why streaks and tracking work so well.

Here's a gentler one that matters more than grades. Starting somewhere new can be lonely, and social connection is one of the biggest predictors of wellbeing. Challenge yourself to make one new connection a week - join a club, sit somewhere new, say yes to one invite. It's uncomfortable at first and enormously worth it, and a fresh semester is the natural moment when everyone else is open to it too. If you're really struggling, reach out to your school's support services - that's exactly what they're there for.

Because the science says the motivation is already there - the fresh-start effect is doing half the work for you. The catch is that the initial surge fades, so the trick is to convert this week's motivation into a tracked, visible habit (ideally with a friend or two) before the novelty wears off.

Pick one challenge - just one - and start it this week, while the new-semester energy is high. Future you, halfway through the term, will be very glad you did.

*Harder is a social challenge platform where you set challenges, submit daily proof, and build a public track record of doing hard things - the perfect way to turn back-to-school motivation into habits that outlast the first month.*