The Great Lock In of 2025 - Cal Newport

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      If there’s one area where I often find myself lagging, it’s in discovering online youth trends. Staying true to form, I'm just now beginning to hear about what’s termed the “Great Lock In of 2025.”

      This notion gained traction on TikTok over the summer. Taking inspiration from the phrase ‘lock in,’ which is Gen Z slang for concentrating without distractions on a significant objective, this challenge encourages individuals to dedicate the last four months of 2025 to pursuing personal improvement resolutions they might typically postpone until the New Year. “It’s simply about buckling down for the remainder of the year and accomplishing what you said you would,” one TikTok influencer explained in a recent Times article discussing the trend.

      Listeners of my podcast are aware that I advocate for the strategy of using the fall to implement significant life changes. My episode on this subject, ​How to Reinvent Your Life in 4 Months​, which first aired in 2023 and was re-aired this past summer, has become one of my most popular, with nearly 1.5 million views on YouTube.

      In my view, the more notable aspect of this trend is the broader concept of ‘lock in,’ which has attained such popularity among Gen Z that the American Dialect Society named it the “most useful” term of 2024.

      Importantly, ‘lock in’ appears to have emerged as a response to smartphone usage. Language science professor Kelly Elizabeth Wright noted in the Times, “We live in a time where distractions abound and we spend a lot of time on our phones. ‘Lock in’ has surfaced in the past few years, with people saying, ‘I need to make myself focus. I need to enter a state where I’m free from distractions to achieve anything.’”

      This is significant because establishing positive alternatives to negative habits is an effective method for reducing them.

      When I first released ​Deep Work, which emphasizes the importance of undistracted focus in professional life, there was already an awareness that constantly checking emails wasn’t ideal. People only felt inspired to change when offered a positive alternative.

      Concepts like ‘locking in’ could potentially provide a similar motivation for Gen Z’s collective reliance on smartphones. Hearing constantly that devices are detrimental is one thing, but gaining a vivid understanding of the benefits that come from disconnecting is different. When you relish life in its full analog depth, the lure of the digital world lessens.

      The irony behind the Great Lock In of 2025 is that it originated on TikTok– the quintessential digital distraction. I hope that by the New Year, this challenge will no longer be popular; not because people have given up on it, but because they’re spending less time online, making it a topic they no longer discuss.

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