Depict the First Step As Completed

Additional tasks feel easier if the first step is already completed.

Need to motivate someone?

Try emphasizing a completed step.

For example, customers visited a coffee shop more frequently when they were given a loyalty card that started with existing progress (Kivetz et al., 2006).

It happens with any sequence of tasks.

Like this email from Change.org:

Email with three steps: sign this petition, post to facebook, and tweet your followers. The first step is crossed out to signify completion

Insert any completed task, even if it's trivial (e.g., opening an email, visiting a website, reading a description).

Why It Works

Law of Inertia. Objects in motion stay in motion. Well, we use motion to imagine abstract ideas. If we're moving across tasks, we imagine physically moving across these tasks. Additional progress feels easier because we're inheriting the law of inertia. Since we're moving, it feels easier to continue moving.

How to Apply

Start Progress Above Zero. Need users to complete their profile? Don't say it's 0% complete. Say 5%. Or start referral programs with 1 referral instead of 0.
Acknowledge Trivial Completions. Survey takers give more details when they see occasional completion screens because they can see their progress (Gu et al., 2024).
Remind Customers They're Already at Your Store. Why postpone? They would need to revisit.
Reframe Finished Goals As a New Starting Point. Customers bought more wine if their selection became the first product in a bundle (Bauer et al., 2022).

Customer selected a starter wine, and they see empty placeholders for a main course wine and dessert wine

Bundle Past Purchases With New Items. After a customer buys a shirt, you could bundle it with a "casual night out" bundle of clothes. Since they already collected one item in this bundle, they'll be motivated to collect the remaining items.

A "casual night" bundle of clothes with a shirt that has already been purchased and pair of jeans that hasn't been purchased yet

Bauer, C., Spangenberg, K., Spangenberg, E. R., & Herrmann, A. (2022). Collect them all! Increasing product category cross-selling using the incompleteness effect. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 50(4), 713-741.
Kivetz, R., Urminsky, O., & Zheng, Y. (2006). The goal-gradient hypothesis resurrected: Purchase acceleration, illusionary goal progress, and customer retention. Journal of marketing research, 43(1), 39-58.
Gu, Y., Chan, E., & Krishna, A. (2024). The trivial-task motivation effect: highlighting completion of an initial trivial task increases motivation for the main task. Marketing Letters, 35(2), 219-230.