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It’s fall, buckos. Are you going to rot your way through December, or are you locking in?
Across social media, “The Great Lock In” has begun. From September to the end of the year, participants say they are walking five miles every day in weighted vests. They’re sleeping eight hours a night. They’re drinking several liters of water a day. They’re deactivating Instagram, but not before posting their lengthy lists on how to lock in on Instagram.
What it means to go locked-in mode varies wildly — there is a lock-in for every key, it seems. The Great Lock In can include tackling financial goals, finding love, building community, and, perhaps more than anything, achieving maximum wellness. For women on TikTok, it’s a time to journal and set intentions for self-improvement; for men on X, it’s about maxing out on protein, skipping sugar, and taking cold showers. “No excuses, just grind,” a rule posted to X states. In a culture obsessed with improvement, productivity hacks, and ideal morning routines, locking in is the latest cult of self-upgrade.
Goodbye to the anti-work, lazy girl era or a summer of hedonism, where day drinking is followed by nightly doomscrolling through brain rot and AI slop. To close out a year marked by a herky-jerky economy, doom and gloom news cycles, and an increasing focus on the loneliness epidemic, people are committing to a 121-day-long mindful, self improvement journey that’s part-75 Hard, part-preamble to a New Year’s resolution, part back-to-school energy (nostalgically so for those who graduated long ago), and ultimately the latest iteration of optimization culture. Whatever end game people have in mind, the process is a way to take control back from a chaotic world.
Kadie Glenn is among the locked-in corps. The 28-year-old London-based personal consultant had a bad start to her 2025. She tells me she went through a breakup and moved, and her aspirational goals for the year were hard to reach. Instead, Glenn says, she’s focusing on smaller changes across shorter chunks of time, first by breaking down her life into certain areas, like health, career, or relationships, and then focusing on the areas that need the most work rather than a full overhaul of her life. Right now, her big goal to run a half marathon in early 2026, but she’s starting with committing to regular runs and scaling up for training.
“People have just arrived at that point wanting to refuel, wanting to get something out of 2025 other than what it has been,” says Glenn, who posted about the Great Lock In and then started Instagram chats for her followers to discuss their goals and team up. “People want to reframe the narrative. People want to start again.”
The worse the old chapter was, the more you need the fresh start.Katy Milkman
Success for self-improvement campaigns is mixed. A YouGov poll found that in 2020 about a quarter of people in the US made New Year’s resolutions, and around half kept some of their resolutions, while around a third stuck to them all. Swedish researchers found in a 2020 study that New Year’s resolutions that seek to approach a goal rather than avoid a habit (for example, starting a gym routine versus quitting sugary snacks) tend to be more successful, as do people who receive support in achieving their goals.
But, as Katy Milkman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School reminds me, it’s hard to change, and you won’t change at all if you don’t at least start trying. Milkman, who wrote the book “How to Change,” says the Great Lock In is an example of the “fresh start effect.” It’s the idea that a birthday, new year, or even the start to a new month or week can bring the potential to start new habits. And if the season of locking in seems arbitrarily tied to September, “every fresh start is socially constructed,” she says. But those fresh starts can come when people feel stuck and fed up with the current version of their lives. “The worse the old chapter was, the more you need the fresh start.”
Unlike the strict 75 Hard program (a challenge pulled from a 2020 self-help book of the same name that involves changing your diet, fitness regimen, and reading daily), the Great Lock In is a grassroots social media movement that began bubbling up on social media in August. It’s a continuation or rebrand of last year’s Winter Arc, which last fall encouraged people to use chilly months to start chiseling away at the parts of themselves they didn’t like and emerge as their best self. The Great Lock In also follows years of people “locking in” and putting all of their energy onto various tasks, like studying or cleaning, as they arise. It’s part of the grindset mentality focused on building wealth and success, a more personalized and flexible version of the 9-9-6 (working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week). In a world where distractions are ever present on our phones, a longer lock in period to tackle a range of goals is resonating with Gen Z — even for those “born to dilly dally, forced to lock in.”
Racha Yessouf, a 26-year-old wellness content creator in London, has started working on what she deems the “hot girl edition” of the Great Lock In. Her self-imposed rules include waking up at 5 a.m., drinking lots of water, doing regular skin and hair care, eating lots of protein, and going to bed by 9 p.m. “It’s not about reinventing yourself in the way New Year’s resolutions tend to be,” Yessouf says (she was already working out and had a beauty regimen). “It’s more about focusing on consistency and going into the new year with the momentum already built instead of guilt.”
Tatiana Forbes has three goals she’s locking in on: decluttering her house, getting her Instagram account to 100,000 followers, and running two marathons this fall. The 31-year-old Atlanta-based leadership development coach says she did the 75 Hard challenge previously, and the locking in movement feels like a way to wellness where “you’re creating your own rules and own journey,” and that means tackling more than just diet and exercise. “A lot of us are addicted to our phones, or are overwhelmed by the new beauty standards that are pushed to us through the media,” she says. “This challenge is giving you time to take your power back and focus on what you want to focus on and shut out the noise for a little bit.”
Online challenges come and go. The Great Lock In might fade from FYPs before October, with lists of rules abandoned in notes apps on phones one by one. But for those who are really committed to lock in, there’s never a better time to make a fresh start than right now.
Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.
Business Insider’s Discourse stories provide perspectives on the day’s most pressing issues, informed by analysis, reporting, and expertise.
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