  How long does a trajectory take to reach a stable equilibrium point in the
basin of attraction of a dynamical system? This is a question of quite general
interest, and has stimulated a lot of activities in dynamical and stochastic
systems where the metric of this estimation is often known as the transient or
first passage time. In nonlinear systems, one often experiences long transients
due to their underlying dynamics. We apply resetting or restart, an emerging
concept in statistical physics and stochastic process, to mitigate the
detrimental effects of prolonged transients in deterministic dynamical systems.
We show that stopping an ongoing process at intermittent time only to restart
all over from a spatial control line, can dramatically expedite its completion,
resulting in a huge decrease in mean transient time. Moreover, our study
unfolds a net reduction in fluctuations around the mean. Our claim is
established with detailed numerical studies on the Stuart-Landau limit cycle
oscillator and chaotic Lorenz system under different resetting strategies. Our
analysis opens up a door to control the mean and fluctuations in transient time
by unifying the original dynamics with an external stochastic or periodic
timer, and poses open questions on the optimal way to harness transients in
dynamical systems.
