Speaker 1: If you encourage people to find a way to pursue
Speaker 1: their goals that they actually enjoy, they persist much longer.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Katie Milkman,
Speaker 1: a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: host of Charles Schwab's popular behavioral economics podcast, Choice Oology,
Speaker 1: and former president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making.
Speaker 1: She's also the co founder and co director of the
Speaker 1: Behavior Change for Good Initiative. Today, Katie and Eric discuss
Speaker 1: her book, How to Change the Science of Getting From
Speaker 1: Where You Are to where You Want to Be. Hi, Katie,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I'm excited
Speaker 1: to be here. These are some of my favorite kinds
Speaker 1: of conversations with scientists of how we make changes. I'm
Speaker 1: a behavior coach, so I do a lot of this
Speaker 1: type of work. I'm a recovering heroin attic, so I've
Speaker 1: had lots of change in my life and I just
Speaker 1: love these conversations. I loved your book, which is called
Speaker 1: How to Change the Science of Getting from Where You
Speaker 1: Are to Where you Want to Be. But before we
Speaker 1: jump into the book, will start like we always do,
Speaker 1: with the parable. There's a grandmother who's talking with her
Speaker 1: grandson and she says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and he looks up at his grandmother says, Grandmother, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandmother says the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. It's actually such a perfect
Speaker 1: parable for the work that I do because the research
Speaker 1: I've done, the book I've written are about the internal
Speaker 1: obstacles to change and how we can overcome them, and
Speaker 1: how important it is to understand what you're up against,
Speaker 1: and that the strategy you take to try to overcome
Speaker 1: the challenges you face is the key to success. And
Speaker 1: that parable highlights the importance of recognizing there's options, there's
Speaker 1: choices that if we make the right choices, if we
Speaker 1: make choices that are strategically wise, then we'll end up
Speaker 1: with outcomes will be pleased with. And if we make
Speaker 1: choices that are less advisable, then we can end up
Speaker 1: in a place that won't make us as happy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love that, and I love the book. You really
Speaker 1: start off by saying, look, you can apply a one
Speaker 1: size fits all strategy to behavior change. And there are
Speaker 1: some things that we know, some general principles that are
Speaker 1: very helpful. There's been some great books written about general principles.
Speaker 1: We've interviewed many of those authors on this show, but
Speaker 1: that if you really want to get where you want
Speaker 1: to be, you need to learn to customize your strategy
Speaker 1: for you and your life. Say a little more about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is I think the most the important thing I've
Speaker 1: learned over the course of my career studying behavior change
Speaker 1: is that, um, too often we look for sort of
Speaker 1: the one size fits all, shiny strategy that it sounds great,
Speaker 1: you know, set big audacious goals. How could you go
Speaker 1: wrong with that? That's what I need to do, And
Speaker 1: too rarely do we actually step back to diagnose what
Speaker 1: is specifically holding me back and make sure that the
Speaker 1: approach we're using is going to attack that challenge. I
Speaker 1: see this with organizations, I see it with individuals trying
Speaker 1: to create change. Too little time goes into that diagnosis
Speaker 1: phase because there's an assumption that, you know, if this
Speaker 1: method that sounds good has been proven, it will work
Speaker 1: for us too, it will work for me too. And
Speaker 1: the answer is it depends. It depends if the barriers
Speaker 1: that lead it to work in one situation because this
Speaker 1: was a salve for that problem, are also the ones
Speaker 1: you face. So that's really what I mean by that,
Speaker 1: And the book is structured around and a lot of
Speaker 1: my work is structured around trying to identify Okay, here
Speaker 1: are the most common barriers, and here's what science has
Speaker 1: to say if you're facing that challenge about what you
Speaker 1: can best do to achieve greater success. Yeah, I love
Speaker 1: that idea, and I have certainly discovered that in the
Speaker 1: work that I do with people. Again, there are some
Speaker 1: general principles we can use, but everybody is different. Their
Speaker 1: emotional structure and background is different, the sorts of things
Speaker 1: that motivate them are different, the structures of their lives
Speaker 1: are very different. Single mother with three children is a
Speaker 1: very different behavior change challenge than an eighteen year old man. Right.
Speaker 1: I mean, there again commonalities that we can look at,
Speaker 1: but we've got to really look at each of those
Speaker 1: and their lives individually to know what's going to work best. Right, Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And there's sort of multiple levels of tailoring that I
Speaker 1: think are critical, including you know, maybe both the thirtysomething
Speaker 1: woman and the eighteen year old man who are facing challenges,
Speaker 1: maybe what's holding them back literally is the same thing.
Speaker 1: It's possible, right, they could both be struggling with you know,
Speaker 1: I hate doing the thing that I need to do.
Speaker 1: It's literally a chords of burden in the moment, and
Speaker 1: so I constantly delay. But what would make it less
Speaker 1: of a burden in the moment, would make it a
Speaker 1: joy is gonna be incredibly different for each of them, Right,
Speaker 1: So it's the same barrier, but even with the insight
Speaker 1: they might need to get through it, they're going to
Speaker 1: have to apply it differently. Yep, yep. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to use what you just said there to circle around
Speaker 1: a kind of the tail end of the book. And
Speaker 1: the tail end of the book you talk about one
Speaker 1: of the big barriers to people is confidence. They don't
Speaker 1: believe they can change. I mean this is I think
Speaker 1: one of the most common things I see is people say, well,
Speaker 1: I've just started and stopped so many times. The reason
Speaker 1: I want to go kind of tail around to that
Speaker 1: is that what we were just talking about, which is
Speaker 1: that if we can have confidence in that we know
Speaker 1: our own life, and we know what we like, and
Speaker 1: we know some things about us, and we know some
Speaker 1: things that might have worked for us in the past
Speaker 1: maybe in different situations, that we have at least part
Speaker 1: of the recipe that we need, and only we can
Speaker 1: provide part of that recipe, So say a little bit
Speaker 1: more about the role of confidence in our ability to change. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that you jumped to confidence, because I think, actually,
Speaker 1: this is one of my favorite chapters in the book,
Speaker 1: where I focus on this research and some of my
Speaker 1: favorite insights and some of the most counterintuitive ones about
Speaker 1: what can be effective. There's a lot of evidence that
Speaker 1: if we believe we can achieve something, if we have
Speaker 1: what legendary psychologist Albert Bandura has called self efficacy, we think,
Speaker 1: you know, I have the tools, I have the ability,
Speaker 1: we get much farther. It's part of the reason, by
Speaker 1: the way, that the placebo effect is so powerful, a
Speaker 1: well known effect where if your doctor prescribes a sugar pill,
Speaker 1: it actually makes you better when it comes to almost
Speaker 1: just a remarkable range of different disease states and and
Speaker 1: kinds of pain because you believe it will improve your outcomes.
Speaker 1: It literally does. It has physiological benefits as well as
Speaker 1: simply changed enanging your expectations. So our beliefs are really important.
Speaker 1: Once we recognize that, then we have to figure out
Speaker 1: how can I get myself to believe that I can change?
Speaker 1: What are the tools, what are the tactics One of
Speaker 1: my favorite insights on this topic comes from work that
Speaker 1: was led by Lauren Escris Winkler, who is a professor
Speaker 1: at the Kellogg School of Management and Northwestern University. And
Speaker 1: she had this great insight and it relates to what
Speaker 1: you mentioned, which is that a lot of people know
Speaker 1: more than they appreciate about what will take to help
Speaker 1: them change. She was interviewing people who were struggling in
Speaker 1: all different walks of life, um, you know, from salespeople
Speaker 1: to students, to try to understand what were commonalities and
Speaker 1: their experience, what did they know about change, And she
Speaker 1: was startled to find actually how many had really great
Speaker 1: insights when they were pushed and when she probed them
Speaker 1: for what they thought might be an effective tool for them.
Speaker 1: And she started to wonder if the way we typically
Speaker 1: encourage change and approach change when someone comes to us
Speaker 1: and tells us they're struggling my be backwards and and
Speaker 1: actually harmful given what we know about the importance of confidence. Specifically,
Speaker 1: she noticed normally when someone comes to you and says,
Speaker 1: you know, this isn't going right in my life, we
Speaker 1: sort of put our arm around them. We start giving
Speaker 1: them advice just off the cuff because we think, gosh,
Speaker 1: I must know things that will be useful to them.
Speaker 1: That kind of unsolicited advice can actually be really demotivating.
Speaker 1: It can just reinforce the message people have already been
Speaker 1: hearing internally that they just don't have what it takes.
Speaker 1: This person who I just met and just told my
Speaker 1: story immediately things they know something I don't know and
Speaker 1: is gonna solve my problem. Gosh, they must think I'm
Speaker 1: so foolish. She wondered if we should actually flip the script,
Speaker 1: and she thought, what if instead of offering advice when
Speaker 1: someone is struggling, we put them on a pedestal and
Speaker 1: asked them what they think would work to help someone
Speaker 1: else who's facing a similar challenge. What if we turn
Speaker 1: them into a mentor a coach, an advisor to others
Speaker 1: in a similar position, ask them for their own advice.
Speaker 1: Maybe that would be actually really valuable. Because she figured
Speaker 1: out they actually know a lot. If they're pressed to
Speaker 1: dredge up those insights, it's going to boost their confidence
Speaker 1: to be told I think you know something and can
Speaker 1: help others. It's going to cause them to introspect more
Speaker 1: than they would usually. And again she knew that from
Speaker 1: her background research that introspection lead to great insights and finally,
Speaker 1: once you have given coaching advise someone else on how
Speaker 1: to change, you're gonna feel hypocritical if you don't follow
Speaker 1: that advice yourself. I think it's a really brilliant formula
Speaker 1: she realized would be so potent. Of course, there's lots
Speaker 1: of mentoring programs in the world, but normally we think
Speaker 1: of them as helping the mentee, not the mentor, and
Speaker 1: Lauren has done a series of brilliant studies showing the
Speaker 1: mentor benefits. When I'm put in the position of advice giver,
Speaker 1: it improves my own outcomes, um on everything from you know,
Speaker 1: different goals I might be working to in my personal
Speaker 1: life to student achievement. And I think that the lynchpin
Speaker 1: there is largely that it boosts confidence. So we can
Speaker 1: think of lots of other ways that we might boost
Speaker 1: confidence as well, and we can talk about others if
Speaker 1: you'd like. But I thought that was a good one
Speaker 1: to begin with because it's truly one of my favorites
Speaker 1: on the most counterintuitive. Yeah, as I was reading that,
Speaker 1: I was thinking very much about my experience in twelve
Speaker 1: step programs, and twelve step programs, when done right, they
Speaker 1: encourage somebody who's even a week sober to start helping
Speaker 1: somebody who's a day sober. And I think that that's
Speaker 1: happening right. What's happening is that person a week sober
Speaker 1: is saying, well, here's what I did, and here's some things,
Speaker 1: here's what I think. You know immediately they are in
Speaker 1: that role. And one of the things that I think
Speaker 1: A stumbled on and was was so right about was
Speaker 1: the reciprocal nature of help in a twelve step program,
Speaker 1: the person who was a week sober talking to the
Speaker 1: person a day sober, they both got equal benefit right away.
Speaker 1: They they saw that. They saw right away, like you know,
Speaker 1: doesn't matter whether you're the giver or the receiver, you
Speaker 1: get equal benefit in this. And that was an insight
Speaker 1: I think that they had right, and certainly was you know,
Speaker 1: in my case so true. I can just think too
Speaker 1: early in recovery. The more that I talked to other
Speaker 1: people who were new coming in, the more convinced I
Speaker 1: was that A I knew what I was doing, be
Speaker 1: that I was gonna stay sober. I mean, it really
Speaker 1: does work. I love that example, and I do think
Speaker 1: a A is such a powerful example of an organization
Speaker 1: that takes this principle and applies it. It hadn't been
Speaker 1: tested and proven specifically, believe it or not that this
Speaker 1: tool was effective, even though lots of organizations were implicitly
Speaker 1: relying on it. And so that's one of the things
Speaker 1: I think is so wonderful about lawrence work. But you know,
Speaker 1: I think the insight is more of us and more
Speaker 1: parts of our lives, not just when it's a crisis,
Speaker 1: should be relying on the power of advice giving and
Speaker 1: recognizing that we can do things like forming advice clubs,
Speaker 1: just you know, even for simple life goals other people
Speaker 1: who have similar objectives, who both mentor each other and
Speaker 1: get wisdom from each other. So we've got that back
Speaker 1: and forthgoing, and you benefit from both sides of the equation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to take us back around towards the front
Speaker 1: of the book a little bit, and I want to
Speaker 1: talk about one thing that most of us do recognize
Speaker 1: is indeed a common problem. If you ask people why
Speaker 1: can't you stick with the things you want to do
Speaker 1: or why can't you make the changes you want to make?
Speaker 1: Most people they may not use this word but they
Speaker 1: would describe this phenomenon, which is impulsivity, or as it's
Speaker 1: known more in the literature, you know, present bias. Right,
Speaker 1: So talk to me a little bit about impulsivity, and
Speaker 1: then let's talk about what's a little counterintuitive in some
Speaker 1: of what you're saying, and how we can work with impulsivity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is one of my favorite topics too, so you're
Speaker 1: just sort of going from one of my favorite areas
Speaker 1: to another. Present bias is I think one of the
Speaker 1: most pernicious barriers to change. Econs speak for it economist
Speaker 1: at present by it is the tendency to value whatever
Speaker 1: we'll get right now, you know, the experience will have
Speaker 1: right now, from biting a chocolate doughnut, from screaming at
Speaker 1: at a friend who's irritating us, you know, from driving
Speaker 1: too fast, that instant hit of gratification. We overvalue that
Speaker 1: relative to the downstream consequences, which we tend to undervalue.
Speaker 1: And this obviously has all sorts of important implications and
Speaker 1: leads to lots of mistakes made in life if you
Speaker 1: look more globally. But it's also a major barrier to
Speaker 1: behavior change is the fact that we we value so
Speaker 1: much what we're getting now and discount so much what
Speaker 1: we'll get later. Can I ask you a question about that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the way you were just describing it, it's sort of
Speaker 1: as if I'm thinking about the current reward, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about the possible future reward, and I'm making a decision
Speaker 1: that balances this one. Right. And while that's sometimes the
Speaker 1: case where it's actually a conscious thing, so often it's
Speaker 1: not conscious, absolutely, And I think your head in this direction.
Speaker 1: But I was sort of thinking, you know, how much
Speaker 1: is even recognizing we're making a choice important in the
Speaker 1: overall equation. Yeah, it's a great question. Well, we can't
Speaker 1: be strategic if we don't start to understand the choice,
Speaker 1: and if we don't start to understand the trade offs
Speaker 1: and recognize that we want to tip the balances in
Speaker 1: order to facilitate choices, will be prouder of in the
Speaker 1: long run. So I do think recognizing you're making a
Speaker 1: choice is really key, and that's important to being able
Speaker 1: to start using some of these tactics that I'll talk
Speaker 1: about to affect positive change. But you're absolutely right. Often
Speaker 1: this choice, most of the time, I would say it's
Speaker 1: implicit rather than explicit. Right, You're not at least I'm not.
Speaker 1: When I'm reaching for dessert, maybe I feel I might
Speaker 1: feel a little guilt, right, and maybe, oh well, maybe
Speaker 1: I shouldn't eat the whole thing, and then I just
Speaker 1: eat the whole thing. But I'm not literally thinking most
Speaker 1: of the time, like, let me calculate the probability that
Speaker 1: this will increase the difficulty of fitting into my favorite
Speaker 1: pair of gus. You know, it's not it's not that
Speaker 1: kind of calculation. But of course, economic modeling abstracts away
Speaker 1: from all of that and just tries to capture a
Speaker 1: descriptive model of behavior, and it's descriptively shown and study
Speaker 1: after study that roughly six of downstream value is sort
Speaker 1: of captured in the decisions we make now, and we
Speaker 1: just sort of throw right away. So we discount pretty
Speaker 1: dramatically anything in the future. As soon as I have
Speaker 1: to wait a day for it, it's worth sixty percent
Speaker 1: as much. That's kind of a rough ballpark statistic. But again,
Speaker 1: this is all boiling down a very complex phenomenon to
Speaker 1: a really simple mathematical equation, which is losing a lot
Speaker 1: of richness. The simple fact remains, whether we're doing an
Speaker 1: implicitly or explicitly that we're impulsive, and then we have
Speaker 1: we face a challenge, which is okay if we recognize
Speaker 1: that in ourselves we want to make choices that are better,
Speaker 1: but impulsivity, the desire for instant gratification, often overrides our
Speaker 1: tendency to do the things that we know will add
Speaker 1: long term value. How do we solve for that? What
Speaker 1: can we do better? And there's really two approaches that
Speaker 1: research points to I think as most useful. One of
Speaker 1: them and they both involved changing the calculus of the choice.
Speaker 1: One of them is to try to make the behavior
Speaker 1: that you know is good for you in the long
Speaker 1: run more instantly gratifying, so there's not attention anymore. And
Speaker 1: this is something that I l at Fishbox of the
Speaker 1: University of Chicago and Caitlin Wooley of Cornell University. I
Speaker 1: think I've done absolutely brilliant research on showing that most
Speaker 1: of us don't get that it's important to make it
Speaker 1: fun to do whatever aligns with our long term goals.
Speaker 1: We think I should just find the most effective way
Speaker 1: to hit my goal, right. You know, if I want
Speaker 1: to work out more and get fit, I'm going to
Speaker 1: do the toughest, most efficient workout possible. That's how I'll
Speaker 1: get to my goal. But a small fraction of people appreciate,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I should do what's most fun. Maybe
Speaker 1: I should go to zoom back class with my friends,
Speaker 1: and I'll really enjoy the workout, and I'll burn fewer calories, say,
Speaker 1: and I'll get fit a little slower, but I'll keep
Speaker 1: doing it. And what their research has shown is those
Speaker 1: people have got it right. If you encourage people to
Speaker 1: find a way to pursue their goals that they actually enjoy,
Speaker 1: they persist much longer. So that's I think a critical insight.
Speaker 1: And I've done some research on a very specific way
Speaker 1: to do that, which I call temptation bundling, and that's
Speaker 1: literally linking something you love, something you crave, with a
Speaker 1: behavior that you know is good for you in the
Speaker 1: long run to create a hook so that you'll do
Speaker 1: that chore. So for me, I'm using a lot of
Speaker 1: exercise examples, and you can get away from that if
Speaker 1: you want, but at least now there's continuity. I'll go
Speaker 1: back to the gym. You could imagine only letting yourself
Speaker 1: binge watch your favorite TV show while you're on the treadmill,
Speaker 1: and now all of a sudden, you're looking forward to
Speaker 1: finding out what happens next in that show while you're
Speaker 1: exercising time flies at the gym. And maybe if if
Speaker 1: you feel a little guilt watching that show out of
Speaker 1: the gym, well now it's gone because you're not allowed
Speaker 1: to anymore. You're only getting that temptation while doing something
Speaker 1: else can do with your favorite podcast and household chores,
Speaker 1: drinking a glass of wine while cooking a meal for
Speaker 1: your family, and you know, favorite treat, heading to hit
Speaker 1: the books at school. There's all these different ways you
Speaker 1: can combine tem tatient, but that's with a chore. And
Speaker 1: that's one way we can overcome impulsivity is actually leaning
Speaker 1: into it, recognizing I just actually need to harness impulsivity
Speaker 1: so that it's pulling me in the right direction instead
Speaker 1: of the wrong one. I love that. For a while,
Speaker 1: I did some of that temptation bundling, like you said,
Speaker 1: where I would only allow myself to watch a certain
Speaker 1: show when I was on the treadmill and I would
Speaker 1: do my run and then I would be on the
Speaker 1: treadmill walking for like an additional hour. So I don't
Speaker 1: want to turn it off. I mean, I blogged my
Speaker 1: problem became getting off the treadmill. It's a better problem
Speaker 1: in getting off the couch. At least that speaks to
Speaker 1: its efficacy as a solution. Exactly, exactly. That's great. I'm
Speaker 1: glad you used it yourself and found it helpful. So
Speaker 1: temptation bundling is one, you know. I love this idea
Speaker 1: that you talk about, and I think what you said
Speaker 1: there that I want to highlight is that we really
Speaker 1: underestimate how important this is to try and make what
Speaker 1: we're doing fun. It's why I feel like my exercise
Speaker 1: life has been a history of like forty different types
Speaker 1: of fitness over the last twenty years. It's because after
Speaker 1: I get bored, I'm like, well, what can I do
Speaker 1: boxing that sounds fun? Currently it's rock climbing, you know,
Speaker 1: But I'm always looking for how can I do this
Speaker 1: move my body in a way that I enjoy and
Speaker 1: find stimulating and fun. And I think, you know, asking
Speaker 1: ourselves those questions around everything we're trying to do is
Speaker 1: really helpful. How do we make this better? The other
Speaker 1: thing that I found, and I wonder if you can
Speaker 1: speak to this either in the literature your experience, is
Speaker 1: if we can't quite get to making the activity itself enjoyable.
Speaker 1: Can we bring the reward in as close to the
Speaker 1: event as possible? And so for me, what I've done
Speaker 1: with exercise is it's gone from being something that I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: it will help me when I'm sixty, which is true,
Speaker 1: and it makes me look better if I do it consistently,
Speaker 1: which is true to the very concrete. I feel better
Speaker 1: immediately when I'm done. I feel better in my body
Speaker 1: right now. So I'm not waiting on a reward that
Speaker 1: I have to visualize a month, three months, three years,
Speaker 1: ten years. I've at least brought it in closer. Are
Speaker 1: there studies that talk about ways to do that. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: There's a couple of things that come to mind. Um.
Speaker 1: One is just that actually and the importance when we
Speaker 1: have a big goal of breaking it into sub goals
Speaker 1: so that we can see progress more clearly. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: if you have the big goal of getting fit, then
Speaker 1: breaking that down into sort of you know, well then
Speaker 1: I want to go to the gym three times a week,
Speaker 1: or you know, you can break it down in different ways.
Speaker 1: That becomes more useful for a number of reasons. That's
Speaker 1: more concrete, you have a plan, etcetera. But one of
Speaker 1: them is that you start to see progress and you
Speaker 1: can give yourself a pad on the back for those
Speaker 1: sub goals that you've you've achieved, instead of having to
Speaker 1: wait for the reward you'll feel when you get to
Speaker 1: the end of the super goal. Another thing, though, that
Speaker 1: I think is related, which is sort of wrapping paper.
Speaker 1: Just like this goal achievement hurrahs. Wrapping paper is gamification.
Speaker 1: So there's research suggesting that some of the bells and
Speaker 1: whistles of gamification, like being able to collect points and
Speaker 1: move up to another level if you're achieving more, or
Speaker 1: you know, see a streak, get a badge, get a star,
Speaker 1: those things, especially when it's something we're intrinsically motivated to do.
Speaker 1: It's it's a little different when an employer is trying
Speaker 1: to use these and it feels like a coercion tactic
Speaker 1: to get us to change our behavior. But if we
Speaker 1: are interested in changing this behavior. I want to exercise more,
Speaker 1: I want to learn a foreign language on my own time,
Speaker 1: I want to meditate more regularly, and we're struggling to
Speaker 1: feel those milestones on a daily basis are meaningful, then
Speaker 1: these kinds of gamification bells and whistles do seem to
Speaker 1: actually motivate us. And there's this wonderful study I talk
Speaker 1: about in the book about Wikipedia volunteers who are obviously
Speaker 1: very intrinsically motivated to be getting on Wikipedia editing, adding
Speaker 1: their knowledge and improving this encyclopedia. But a lot churn so,
Speaker 1: meaning they joined the platform, they start editing, and then
Speaker 1: they decide, well, you know, yes, I've intrinsically motivated to
Speaker 1: do this, but it's a little bit of work to encyclopedia,
Speaker 1: and maybe maybe all do something else that's even more
Speaker 1: fun in the moment. Interestingly, in one randomized controlled trial
Speaker 1: led by u c l A. Siana galis just giving
Speaker 1: people a small award like a star an adal vice flower.
Speaker 1: In this case, it was a study she did in
Speaker 1: Switzerland to acknowledge their contributions. She randomly assigned some people
Speaker 1: to get that acknowledged, been others who were doing equal
Speaker 1: work didn't. They didn't learn that others had gotten it.
Speaker 1: That's a really important component, right, so they were like,
Speaker 1: oh no, I lost out. It was just some people
Speaker 1: were alerted that there was a special thing and they
Speaker 1: had gotten in and others never learned there was such
Speaker 1: a thing in the first place. Getting that little reward,
Speaker 1: that little sort of pat on the back, a tiny
Speaker 1: bit of gamification increased how much time they spent on
Speaker 1: the platform for up to a year later, and pretty substantially.
Speaker 1: So I think that's another important thing we can think about.
Speaker 1: Some forms of gamification, even small tokens that we give
Speaker 1: ourselves elves or others who are trying to encourage, can
Speaker 1: help bring rewards forward and make us stay more engaged
Speaker 1: with the things that have mostly long term benefits. This
Speaker 1: makes me think of a area of discussion in behavior
Speaker 1: change about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. And there's this basic
Speaker 1: idea that intrinsic motivation is better than extrinsic motivation, and
Speaker 1: by intrinsic, I mean you do the thing because you
Speaker 1: simply want to do the thing, and that extrinsic motivation
Speaker 1: and getting an award, being recognized all these other things
Speaker 1: is less good and can actually be harmful. Two people
Speaker 1: are intrinsically motivated, and I think that's a superficial reading
Speaker 1: of the science. So from your perspective, and this may
Speaker 1: be too broad of a question, but I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: you could speak to how we combine intrinsic and extrinsic
Speaker 1: motivation in wise ways so that we're getting the best
Speaker 1: of both. I love that you asked that question, and
Speaker 1: actually I want to also take a moment to say
Speaker 1: that I think there's been some misunderstanding of the literature
Speaker 1: on what's called intrinsic motivation crowd out. I think a
Speaker 1: couple of books have written about this idea. It's gotten
Speaker 1: very widely believed that if you add an extrinsic reward
Speaker 1: like cash payment for something, suddenly it crowds out intrinsic motivation.
Speaker 1: And if that cash reward has removed, people won't actually
Speaker 1: want to keep doing it because they've relabeled I wasn't
Speaker 1: doing it for myself, I was doing it for the money.
Speaker 1: There is almost no evidence that that's real. So there's
Speaker 1: one really good study with kids who didn't really know
Speaker 1: yet whether or not puzzles they were doing were something
Speaker 1: that was work or fun, and when they get paid,
Speaker 1: that signals to them, Okay, I get it, it's work
Speaker 1: and paid. Kids weren'tetting paid, you know, they're getting stickers
Speaker 1: or little rewards, um and and that was very clear
Speaker 1: when there's ambiguity and you really don't know and why
Speaker 1: am I doing this, which is rarely the case as adults.
Speaker 1: I think then there's some evidence in child development studies
Speaker 1: that it can be harmful to add bells and whistles
Speaker 1: in these extrinsic motivators. That's really the only finding that
Speaker 1: points to this outside of a laboratory environment. And there's
Speaker 1: a really interesting study by Chicago's Oleg or Minsky that
Speaker 1: came out recently that points to a potential reason that
Speaker 1: we've mixed things up, and that when we look at
Speaker 1: behavior in the field, out in the wild instead of
Speaker 1: in like survey studies with undergraduates, we almost never see
Speaker 1: any evidence of this intrinsic motivation crowd out firm incentives.
Speaker 1: And yet psychologists are sort of obsessed with the idea
Speaker 1: because they sometimes think they find it in the lab.
Speaker 1: What he thinks is going on is if I pay
Speaker 1: you a lot to do something in a lot of
Speaker 1: really controlled laboratory environment, you do it a lot of
Speaker 1: it because Wow, you're getting rewarded, and then you get tired,
Speaker 1: and so then I take away the rewards and you
Speaker 1: tend to be more tired than the person who wasn't rewarded.
Speaker 1: So for a little while you actually don't get quite
Speaker 1: as much done because you're so exhausted. But then if you,
Speaker 1: you know, watch for long enough, you kind of picked
Speaker 1: back up and you catch up because you get through
Speaker 1: that exhaustion. So he thinks it's just a burnout effect
Speaker 1: in the lab. We don't see it in the field.
Speaker 1: So anyway, that was a long tangent, but I do
Speaker 1: think it's really important because I think there's this common
Speaker 1: misconception that if I add bells and whistles, if I
Speaker 1: if I'm not doing it for the purest of reasons,
Speaker 1: if there's money attached to it, it's going to ruin
Speaker 1: this sort of beautiful balance, and I'm not gonna do
Speaker 1: it for the right reasons anymore. And happily we can,
Speaker 1: it seems, actually add the bells and whistles, you know,
Speaker 1: link the x or so is with the TV watching,
Speaker 1: give ourselves badges and stars, and still be just as
Speaker 1: motivated on the other end for almost all of these
Speaker 1: behaviors that we care about because they're the ones that
Speaker 1: were intrinsically motivated to do, and we don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about that nasty side effect that has been I
Speaker 1: think overblown. Thank you, that's very good to hear. It's
Speaker 1: always seemed common sense to me. And I know common
Speaker 1: sense is not always a good indicator in human behavior,
Speaker 1: not always, but very often common sense maybe when you
Speaker 1: get to quantum physics is no good. But it's always
Speaker 1: seemed to me that if you can stack incentives that
Speaker 1: seems positive. It seems to be the more reasons I
Speaker 1: have to do something like I work out because A
Speaker 1: I feel better right away, be I get a fancy badge.
Speaker 1: See I'm going to be healthy when I'm sixty five.
Speaker 1: D my girlfriend likes the way I look like. All
Speaker 1: those like seems to me and in my life have
Speaker 1: always been helpful to make something more lasting. I feel
Speaker 1: like the more motivations I have the better versus trying
Speaker 1: to As you've said, it seems very strange to pare
Speaker 1: it down to only the pure one. I couldn't agree more. Um.
Speaker 1: I guess the one like bit of subtlety I would
Speaker 1: add to that is that, unfortunately, it does seem like
Speaker 1: not always are the benefits additive when we layer on
Speaker 1: twenty seven different things, they aren't just purely the some
Speaker 1: of their parts, because sometimes you have decreasing marginal returns.
Speaker 1: Say if you're already if you're already pretty motivated, and
Speaker 1: motivation isn't your biggest barrier, it's say time, you know,
Speaker 1: you just don't have time, so you just like keep
Speaker 1: layering on the extra reasons to be motivated, but you
Speaker 1: haven't solved the underlying problem. You're gonna start hitting a
Speaker 1: wall on how much value you get out of it.
Speaker 1: So I do think one of the most useful things
Speaker 1: to think about when we're trying to, you know, throw
Speaker 1: the whole kitten caboodle out a problem is the more
Speaker 1: diversity we deploy in terms of the parts of the problem,
Speaker 1: which is almost always multiply determined that we solve as
Speaker 1: opposed to try to just solve one part of it
Speaker 1: really really well with a bunch of different tools. That
Speaker 1: diversity seems to add more value than throwing everything at
Speaker 1: one element of the problem. Yeah. I think that's a
Speaker 1: really good point. It's why I've always loved B. J.
Speaker 1: Fogg's behavior change model. I don't know if you're familiar
Speaker 1: with it. What I like about it is it talks
Speaker 1: about prompts, It talks about motivation, it talks about ability.
Speaker 1: It really just makes it clear like you've got to
Speaker 1: work on all these different areas. And I think that's
Speaker 1: the other thing that your book does really really well,
Speaker 1: is it points out, you know, again, you've got to
Speaker 1: look for where is your weakness. If your problem is
Speaker 1: not motivation. To your point that you just made, adding
Speaker 1: more motivation is not going to get you the result
Speaker 1: because that's not where your problem is. Well. B J.
Speaker 1: Fogg certainly has a lot of common sense, and as
Speaker 1: you said, I think common sense is a really important
Speaker 1: part of this equation. It's not we need sort of
Speaker 1: a combination of common sense and science guiding us in
Speaker 1: this domain. Oh boy, that that makes me want to
Speaker 1: completely redirect this conversation, But I'm not going to do it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to resist the temptation. I'm going to resist
Speaker 1: the impulsivity to ask a ton of questions about that,
Speaker 1: because I want to stay focused on your work, not
Speaker 1: someone else's work. Let's talk about we've sort of hit
Speaker 1: on this a little bit by talking about adding these
Speaker 1: other devices. But in your chapter on procrastination, you talk
Speaker 1: a lot about commitment devices, and I'd like to talk
Speaker 1: about commitment devices because I love the idea, but I
Speaker 1: particularly want to start there with the discussion you have
Speaker 1: about people who are either sophisticates or naives. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I'm saying that word right. I would never
Speaker 1: have known either except for having taken a class where
Speaker 1: someone else pronounced it, and I assume they were right.
Speaker 1: They say naives naives. Okay, thank you for that, but
Speaker 1: we now may all be wrong. So I've often remarked
Speaker 1: that as somebody who did way more reading than anything
Speaker 1: else and still does more than I listen to podcasts
Speaker 1: more than I see video. Every once in a while
Speaker 1: when I'm doing this show, I come across a word
Speaker 1: that I've read that I feel very often in it.
Speaker 1: But I'm like, I have never heard it spoken before.
Speaker 1: How on earth do you say that? I have the
Speaker 1: same thing all the time. And anyway, we have some
Speaker 1: famous examples in my family. My favorite is my grandmother
Speaker 1: said placebo instead of placebo. And actually just this week
Speaker 1: my dad was talking about an amurdus professor and I
Speaker 1: was like, do you mean emeritus, which is what you
Speaker 1: called professor after they retire. Anyway, there you go, yes,
Speaker 1: so naives versus naives, as I said, it, let's talk
Speaker 1: about sophisticates and knives. I think this is such a
Speaker 1: fascinating topic, and I should note that I'm borrowing from
Speaker 1: Matt Raven and Ted o'donahue of Harvard and Cornell, respectively,
Speaker 1: who wrote about this in an economics journal twenty some
Speaker 1: years ago, and I think the idea is just so
Speaker 1: interesting and important. What they noted is that pretty much everybody.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's some weird example we could find somewhere
Speaker 1: in the world, but pretty much all of us are
Speaker 1: present biased. We've talked about present bias. We all overweight
Speaker 1: the now and underweight the later, but we have different
Speaker 1: degrees of awareness of this problem. And by the way,
Speaker 1: I think we could extend this from talking about present
Speaker 1: bias to other barriers to change and other limitations of
Speaker 1: the human mind. But present bias was the topic they
Speaker 1: were interested in. And so those of us who are
Speaker 1: aware of our present bias and interested in fixing it
Speaker 1: taking steps to actually resolve the conflicts that arise, that
Speaker 1: we make good decisions, so we save for retirement, so
Speaker 1: we don't smoke, so that we you know, stay fit
Speaker 1: and healthy and and don't have awful arguments with loved
Speaker 1: ones that could be avoided. We're sophisticated, So everybody listening,
Speaker 1: you're officially sophisticated. You should feel really good about yourselves.
Speaker 1: But that there is a subset of people who, while
Speaker 1: they still are subject to this bias, this present bias,
Speaker 1: they're still impulsive, they don't recognize it in themselves. They
Speaker 1: have more of a expectation that the next time will
Speaker 1: be different. You know, the next time I won't eat
Speaker 1: the whole Ben and Jerry's point that I put in
Speaker 1: the refrigerator in one sitting, I'll be able to resist
Speaker 1: that temptation. The next time, I won't scream with my kid.
Speaker 1: So they're not looking for ways to solve for inevitable
Speaker 1: present bias. They're just you know, hoping for better in
Speaker 1: the future. Naively, what's really interesting about this is as
Speaker 1: soon as we recognize that at least some subset of
Speaker 1: the population, and probably a decent subset, everyone on this
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast has some sophistication that sets us
Speaker 1: up to think about, Okay, well, what will a sophisticate do.
Speaker 1: What will a sophisticate value to get around these problems?
Speaker 1: You know, they're going to be looking for solutions to
Speaker 1: present bias and actually want to create constraints on themselves
Speaker 1: to help provide a higher probability of a good outcome
Speaker 1: in the future. So we're very used to society, you know,
Speaker 1: our manager at work, our parent, our government creating structures
Speaker 1: that set us up to succeed in the face of temptation,
Speaker 1: that sort of slap our hand if we do the
Speaker 1: wrong things, so the incentives are aligned to do the
Speaker 1: right thing. So think about like speeding tickets for instance. Right,
Speaker 1: we all might be tempted to speed. It's not really
Speaker 1: good for us. It's certainly not good for others if
Speaker 1: we do, because there's this risk it imposes. But we
Speaker 1: might be tempted to do it, but we know we'll
Speaker 1: get slapped on the hand because there's a constraint. You're
Speaker 1: gonna get a speeding ticket if you get caught. So
Speaker 1: a sophisticate it's going to look to set up the
Speaker 1: same kind of structure on themselves that government has set
Speaker 1: up with speeding tickets, look for a way to prevent
Speaker 1: themselves in the future from giving into temptation, and will
Speaker 1: be interested in things like a bank account that you
Speaker 1: can't take money out of until you've reached a predetermined
Speaker 1: savings goal that would be interesting to a sophisticate. To
Speaker 1: someone else, they'd say, you better give me a higher
Speaker 1: interest rate if you're gonna not let me at my money.
Speaker 1: But someone who recognizes they might be tempted to take
Speaker 1: money out early may say, I would love a bank
Speaker 1: account that I can't get into until I've reached a goal.
Speaker 1: That sounds great, it's going to help me, so um,
Speaker 1: you'd start seeing products pop up. That's the prediction of
Speaker 1: their model that cater to people eager or this kind
Speaker 1: of commitment. Another product famously predicted by this model, that,
Speaker 1: of course it does exist in many states is gambling
Speaker 1: self exclusion lists. People can sign themselves up to not
Speaker 1: be allowed into casinos if they know they have a
Speaker 1: challenge with gambling and you know, to be walked off
Speaker 1: the premises. And that's a very funny thing. Why would
Speaker 1: you want to prevent yourself from going in, Well, because
Speaker 1: you're sophisticated, you know you have a problem, and you
Speaker 1: want that temptation to be taken away. There's a drug
Speaker 1: you can take called ant abuse that alcoholics sometimes choose
Speaker 1: to take that makes you nauseous at the smell of alcohol,
Speaker 1: vomit if you have a sip. Why would you do that? Well,
Speaker 1: because you recognize you might be tempted to start drinking
Speaker 1: if you haven't, and you want to prevent your future
Speaker 1: self from giving into that temptation. So UM commitment devices
Speaker 1: are tools that sophisticates find appealing that anyone else would
Speaker 1: look askance and say, why would you do that? Why
Speaker 1: would you take somebody's gonna make you vomit? Why would
Speaker 1: you restrict your access to a UM gambling establishment that's
Speaker 1: just giving yourself less places to have fun? Right? Why
Speaker 1: would you do these things? But a sophistic it has
Speaker 1: a rationale. So UM commitment devices are really powerful. I
Speaker 1: think we under use them. And my favorite kind is
Speaker 1: just a really simple cash commitment device where you can
Speaker 1: penalize yourself with money if you don't achieve your goals.
Speaker 1: And there are various websites where you can put money
Speaker 1: on the line that you'll forfeit and declare a referee
Speaker 1: who will hold you accountable for achieving those goals, and
Speaker 1: they work. So there's a great study actually on smoking
Speaker 1: showing that when people who wanted to quit smoking were
Speaker 1: randomly assigned to one of two groups. One gets sort
Speaker 1: of the traditional here are the tools for quitting. Another
Speaker 1: gets those tools, plus is told you can put money
Speaker 1: into this account, your own money for the next six months,
Speaker 1: as much as you want. If you fail in nicotine
Speaker 1: or cotening, you're in test. Then in six months though,
Speaker 1: that money is going to just disappear. We're gonna take
Speaker 1: it away. And having just access to that opportunity to
Speaker 1: put money on the line that they would forfeit if
Speaker 1: they didn't achieve their goal help people um quit smoking.
Speaker 1: They quit at a thirty percent higher rate in that
Speaker 1: group than in the group that only had traditional tactics.
Speaker 1: So that's where are sophisticate and naives lead. I think
Speaker 1: it's a really valuable insight, and that you know, the
Speaker 1: more sophisticated we can get, the more strategic we can get,
Speaker 1: the more we can recognize we can manage ourselves and
Speaker 1: help ourselves succeed when we face present bias. By building
Speaker 1: some constraints and incentives that align with our long term goals,
Speaker 1: the better off will be. As you said, if you
Speaker 1: are a sophisticate, you should intentionally lead yourself to commitment devices.
Speaker 1: And yet given how many people actually do leads to
Speaker 1: the conclusion that we may be more naive than we
Speaker 1: think we are. I think that's right. Well, there's something
Speaker 1: in between two, which is, I know I have these challenges,
Speaker 1: I know they're real, but maybe I don't think I
Speaker 1: need this strong of a commitment. Maybe I think if
Speaker 1: I just tell my friends, I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe if I just post on social media,
Speaker 1: that's enough that we aren't willing to put the teeth,
Speaker 1: the incentives behind it, maybe at as high a rate
Speaker 1: as we should, given the huge added benefit of making
Speaker 1: those kinds of hard commitments, because backing out is tougher
Speaker 1: when it's a hard commitment. I think we over rely
Speaker 1: on soft commitments tools like shame, where we, you know,
Speaker 1: tell other people and then we're embarrassed that we didn't
Speaker 1: follow through. And maybe not often enough do we lock
Speaker 1: down ten thou dollars that will go to a charitable organization.
Speaker 1: We hate our life savings if we don't achieve a goal.
Speaker 1: You know, of course, that could have really bad consequences.
Speaker 1: You may not be that committed, You might not be
Speaker 1: committed enough. That's a good idea. Actually it depends how
Speaker 1: important this goal exactly. I think it points to the
Speaker 1: two things you talked about their thing. One is that
Speaker 1: I'm not yet certain of how much support I need,
Speaker 1: you know, and then the other being I'm not that
Speaker 1: committed yet. I think that first point is a really
Speaker 1: important one because I have seen this over and over
Speaker 1: in recovery from addiction, which is that to me sometimes
Speaker 1: seems like I don't know that the nature of behavior changed.
Speaker 1: Science would support this, which is, how do we get
Speaker 1: better at changing over time as we've tried to change
Speaker 1: something multiple times. I've seen this in again, this is
Speaker 1: anecdotal watching people in recovery and also working with people
Speaker 1: in coaching. Is that in recovery, I think for me,
Speaker 1: I came in and I was like, all right, this
Speaker 1: is a problem. Clearly I've got a problem. I'm going
Speaker 1: to do this thing that seems like it seems like
Speaker 1: a pretty big step. And then I do that thing,
Speaker 1: and maybe it works for a little while, doesn't for
Speaker 1: very long, whatever, I have some mixed degree of success,
Speaker 1: which then leads me to go, oh, well, maybe I
Speaker 1: need to do a little bit more. And then the
Speaker 1: next time I realized I need to do a little
Speaker 1: bit more. And so it sometimes seems that the process
Speaker 1: of trying to change can lead us from a naive
Speaker 1: to a sophisticate right where we realize over time, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I thought this was going to be easier to solve
Speaker 1: than it is. I need more support. I need more help,
Speaker 1: whether it's commitment devices, whether it's external people helping us.
Speaker 1: Is there anything in the science that sort of talks
Speaker 1: about this. We get better at making the change the
Speaker 1: more we try it. Yeah, it's a wonderful question. There
Speaker 1: is certainly evidence of learning around so many settings, and change,
Speaker 1: I think is no different than many others where experience
Speaker 1: builds wisdom and better outcomes. I'm trying to think of
Speaker 1: specific examples that I can point to where we have
Speaker 1: sort of large longitudinal studies and see people achieving better
Speaker 1: outcomes over life. There's certainly evidence that with age, many
Speaker 1: temptations aren't as alluring, right, And so you know, and
Speaker 1: it's just like thinking about research on adolescence. Of course,
Speaker 1: there's other things going on there too, besides wisdom. Literally,
Speaker 1: your prefrontal cortex is not fully formed. It's my friend
Speaker 1: Angela Duckworth, who actually has some training in this area,
Speaker 1: likes to remind me until you're like twenty five, which
Speaker 1: is mind boggling, but also helps me understand college better
Speaker 1: and all the things that I did wrong, and you know,
Speaker 1: all the things going on for my students anyway. So
Speaker 1: so there's wisdom, there's pre rental cortex development. It's a
Speaker 1: little bit confounded, but but we do know that with
Speaker 1: age we see better outcomes than so many walks of life,
Speaker 1: and in general that there are strong learning effects from experience.
Speaker 1: So so I resonate very strongly with everything you just said.
Speaker 1: You said something really important about the nature of change
Speaker 1: that I just want to double click on, which is
Speaker 1: it's not a linear. If anyone expects I'm going to
Speaker 1: decide I will make a change change, I will deploy
Speaker 1: a tactic that is science backed, maybe from Katie's book,
Speaker 1: and then I will get straight to the finish line,
Speaker 1: they're going to be sorely disappointed because the nature of change,
Speaker 1: as you said, is you know, maybe like make a
Speaker 1: little progress that you stumble. You need something else, You
Speaker 1: need something more. This wasn't quite right, You need to adjust.
Speaker 1: Change is really hard, even with all the best science
Speaker 1: available at your fingertips, even when you know everything there
Speaker 1: is to know, you know, human nature is working against
Speaker 1: us in a lot of ways, and there's going to
Speaker 1: be missteps, and it's not always just up to you.
Speaker 1: You're embedded in a social context. There's temptations that come
Speaker 1: up that truly may be impossible for a human to resist.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you're going to make mistakes, and so recognizing that
Speaker 1: being forgiving to yourself and being ready to step back
Speaker 1: up to the plate. One of my favorite things that
Speaker 1: I've studied is the concept of fresh start, that there
Speaker 1: are moments in life when we're more motivated to make change,
Speaker 1: and they're actually new beginnings, moments that signal new beginnings.
Speaker 1: But one of the coolest things about them that may
Speaker 1: sound intuitive and you might say like, yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: I make new year' shows a lot shans, one of
Speaker 1: the coolest things we've found is they come up really frequently,
Speaker 1: like every Monday is a first start, and it comes
Speaker 1: with this renewed optimism and a sense that you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: last week I didn't do it, but this week I'm
Speaker 1: more likely to be able to. Every time we can,
Speaker 1: even a small chapter break in life gives us that
Speaker 1: renewed optimism, and I'm really glad we have that because
Speaker 1: there are all these stumbles. I think it's probably really
Speaker 1: adaptive to be built with this resilience that shows us
Speaker 1: a new opportunity and the ability to give ourselves a
Speaker 1: clean slate. And we need to do that, I think
Speaker 1: even more often than we do naturally. I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1: I say to coaching clients all the time, like you're
Speaker 1: gonna get off track. The question is just when and
Speaker 1: how are we going to respond and how long would
Speaker 1: you be off track? And I think with myself and
Speaker 1: things that I try and do very regularly, I still
Speaker 1: get off track. It's just that my degree of variance
Speaker 1: is smaller. It's instead of being off track for a week,
Speaker 1: a month, six months, it's like I'm off track for
Speaker 1: a day or two and then I'm back on and
Speaker 1: those things sort of come out that they're sort of
Speaker 1: rounding errors in the long run. But I think you
Speaker 1: speak to something that I kind of want to emphasize
Speaker 1: here that you emphasize in the book, which is that
Speaker 1: we need to keep working on behavior change. There's an
Speaker 1: idea we have. I think it's why habits sell so well,
Speaker 1: because there's an idea that if I conform a habit,
Speaker 1: then I will never have to think of this thing
Speaker 1: again and it will be solved, and it will be
Speaker 1: on autopilot. And it seems that while some things maybe
Speaker 1: that way, things that are very small like brushing my teeth,
Speaker 1: perhaps bigger things like move my body for forty five minutes,
Speaker 1: five days a week, those things, while I think habits
Speaker 1: are very helpful and make it easier. You talk very
Speaker 1: much in the book, and I think it's so important
Speaker 1: that in a life that isn't predictable and routine, building
Speaker 1: a set it and forget it habit forever just isn't
Speaker 1: going to happen. And if we think it is, we
Speaker 1: actually can hinder our change. Say a little bit more
Speaker 1: about that. I love that you brought that up. We
Speaker 1: did this research actually trying to create exercise habits without
Speaker 1: Google employees. They all wanted to kick start a lasting
Speaker 1: workout habit, and we tested two tactics for doing that,
Speaker 1: sort of competing hypotheses about the best way to help
Speaker 1: set someone up for a long term change. We basically
Speaker 1: had a month to kick start this habit and then
Speaker 1: we were going to look and see what happened after
Speaker 1: the month was over. So with different rewards schemes, we
Speaker 1: got both groups to exercise at the same frequency, but
Speaker 1: one group went in a more consistent fashion, meaning their
Speaker 1: workouts were more likely to be always at the same time.
Speaker 1: So actually, in this particular group, of their workouts were
Speaker 1: at the same time, So they maybe pick seven am,
Speaker 1: that's when I go to the gym, and of their
Speaker 1: workouts over this month were at that time. The other
Speaker 1: group they go at the same frequency, but they mix
Speaker 1: up the timing more so in that case, fift of
Speaker 1: their workouts only were at that sort of ideal time
Speaker 1: for them, say seven am. So the question is which
Speaker 1: of those groups, right has a more sustained habit will
Speaker 1: be the people who have built this really consistent routine,
Speaker 1: or will it be the people who have been more
Speaker 1: flexible in the way they approached habit formation. And eight
Speaker 1: of psychologists at top universities who we surveyed and asked
Speaker 1: to make a prediction said, it's the routine. You want
Speaker 1: that consistent queue, the consistent time. It's what we thought too,
Speaker 1: And when we dug into the data, we were surprised
Speaker 1: to find we were wrong. It was actually the group
Speaker 1: that had formed a more flexible habit And we looked
Speaker 1: at why, like, how could this be that those people
Speaker 1: who were less consistent in the way that they exercise
Speaker 1: ended up going more often after this month long period,
Speaker 1: the sort of kickstart period, were out of their hair.
Speaker 1: They're on their own. They just had formed this lasting
Speaker 1: habit around exercise. What we saw was that the people
Speaker 1: who had been so routine had really brittle habits. So
Speaker 1: if if it's a seven am exerciser, that that was
Speaker 1: what they had gotten used to. Um, they're still going
Speaker 1: at seven am and decent frequency. But if they ever
Speaker 1: missed their seven am workout, that's it. They don't go.
Speaker 1: There's there's no hope for them. The folks who were
Speaker 1: more flexible, who were say seven am normal work out person,
Speaker 1: they still go at seven am and a pretty decent
Speaker 1: clip actually, but when they miss seven am, they have
Speaker 1: a fallback plan because they've built flexibility into their routines. So, Okay,
Speaker 1: seven am didn't happen, but I'll go at noon or
Speaker 1: I'll go at five. And that led to more consistency
Speaker 1: in their actual exercise habit because they understood life throws
Speaker 1: you curveballs and they were prepared for it, whereas these
Speaker 1: other folks have these rigid, brittle habits. That weren't robust
Speaker 1: to life, frankly, and I think it's just a really
Speaker 1: important lesson in general about the fact that our environments
Speaker 1: are not certain, they are not stable, and we need
Speaker 1: to have flexibility built in when we're trying to create
Speaker 1: something that will be sustained and have recovery plans when
Speaker 1: the first best option doesn't pan out. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's so true. I always say to clients to build
Speaker 1: any sort of behavior that lasts over time, you need
Speaker 1: a particular blend of stubbornness and flexibility, Like there has
Speaker 1: to be a certain stubbornness, like I'm going to do
Speaker 1: this right and no matter what habit as opposed to
Speaker 1: and only if habit, Yeah, exactly, and you've got to
Speaker 1: be really flexible and how it happens. And particularly again
Speaker 1: this gets to the nature of different people's lives, kind
Speaker 1: of taking us back to the beginning. A nineteen year
Speaker 1: old male may be able to structure his environment in
Speaker 1: such a way that he can make it to the
Speaker 1: gym most every day at seven am. A single mother
Speaker 1: of three children, on the other hand, almost assuredly is
Speaker 1: going to have interruptions to whatever routine she sets up,
Speaker 1: and so you know, knowing the nature of your life
Speaker 1: and your circumstances speaks a little bit also, I think
Speaker 1: to which type of routine works better for you? Yes, No,
Speaker 1: that almost certainly has to be true. I will say
Speaker 1: we couldn't identify the single mothers in eighteen year old
Speaker 1: men in our study well enough to prove that we
Speaker 1: actually did want to see are there sort of different
Speaker 1: job types that have more or less flexibility and where
Speaker 1: we maybe see a reversal of this pattern, And at
Speaker 1: least among the Google employees and our study there wasn't
Speaker 1: enough variability. We never saw a reversal. But it almost
Speaker 1: has to be true that at some extreme and the
Speaker 1: life that's really really really rigid, that you might expect
Speaker 1: those consistent routines could have a different impact. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I think the other thing, and I know we've got
Speaker 1: to wrap up here in a second, so I'm going
Speaker 1: to just kind of be our last piece. I think
Speaker 1: the other nuance to that and why behavior people were
Speaker 1: confused by this study is that I think when we're
Speaker 1: trying to start something and absent other motivation, and this
Speaker 1: study you did had motivation that I think rewarded people
Speaker 1: to make it to the gym. So when you're trying
Speaker 1: to start something and with different motivations in general, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have more success if you're specific about what you're
Speaker 1: going to do when, But you have to evolve from
Speaker 1: that into the flexibility. So specificity at least seems to
Speaker 1: me a good starting tool, but then you've got to
Speaker 1: evolve into being flexible. And to be fair, actually everyone
Speaker 1: in both groups in the study had a plan around
Speaker 1: their ideal time to exercise, got reminders at that ideal time.
Speaker 1: It was just a question of basically how much sort
Speaker 1: of pressure was put on always doing it at that
Speaker 1: ideal time versus sometimes doing it at that ideal time
Speaker 1: but having other times they tried as well. So absolutely,
Speaker 1: this is in no way an indictment of the importance
Speaker 1: of planning. And I am such a fan of planning,
Speaker 1: and if you read my book you'll discover an entire
Speaker 1: chapter devoted to that. Yes, it's really important, but as
Speaker 1: you said, after the plan, you need a backup plan,
Speaker 1: really ye, And we have jumped around a lot. The
Speaker 1: book is wonderful, I mean I just found it really
Speaker 1: brought a lot of different studies together in a really
Speaker 1: helpful way. So I'd encourage listeners to check it out.
Speaker 1: And Katie, thank you so much for taking the time
Speaker 1: to come on. I've really enjoyed this. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for having me. This has been tremendously fun. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate the invitation. If what you just heard was
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