Speaker 1: So you're committed to being healthy and in shape, and
Speaker 1: then someone offers you a cupcake and you take it,
Speaker 1: and you hold it in your hand and you know
Speaker 1: that part of you doesn't want to eat it, but
Speaker 1: then you take a bite and then another bite. Now,
Speaker 1: from the brain's point of view, why did you do that?
Speaker 1: Because you know you didn't want to do that, but
Speaker 1: obviously some part of you did want to do that.
Speaker 1: So we see this kind of thing all the time.
Speaker 1: You don't want to give into some craving that maybe
Speaker 1: has been costly to you, whether that's cupcakes or alcohol
Speaker 1: or social media scrolling or drugs or gambling or whatever.
Speaker 1: And then you find yourself in a situation where a
Speaker 1: temptation is available and you take it, and you later
Speaker 1: suffer regret and you get mad at yourself or you
Speaker 1: cuss it yourself. Who is talking with whom when you
Speaker 1: argue with yourself like this? The weird part is that
Speaker 1: it's all you. So we're going to unpack this today
Speaker 1: because we all have goals and we all face temptations.
Speaker 1: So what exactly is happening under the hood in the
Speaker 1: brain when we act in a manner that is not
Speaker 1: in accordance with who we want to be. I mean,
Speaker 1: computers don't have these problems. They make their calculations and
Speaker 1: boom they're done. But being human is tough. So once
Speaker 1: we understand what's happening under the hood, we'll see how
Speaker 1: it becomes just a little easier to steer the ship.
Speaker 1: In the last two episodes, we talked about all the
Speaker 1: systems battling it out under the surface in your brain,
Speaker 1: and today we're going to talk about the gap between
Speaker 1: what you intend to do in some situation and what
Speaker 1: you actually do when the temptation is there. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Inner Cosmos with me David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and
Speaker 1: an author at Stanford in California, and on this podcast
Speaker 1: we journey deep into the beautiful and complex three pound
Speaker 1: universe that underpins your perceptions and your behavior. We saw
Speaker 1: in the previous episodes that we typically have little to
Speaker 1: no awareness about the factors that influence our choices. So
Speaker 1: if someone asks you why you did this or that,
Speaker 1: you'll reference your conscious decision like I chose this brand
Speaker 1: because it tastes better, when in fact, you may have
Speaker 1: been heavily influenced by marketing that you can't even consciously remember,
Speaker 1: or by what your friends think is cool, or by
Speaker 1: other associations you have with that product that you're not
Speaker 1: even aware of. In other words, we don't always have
Speaker 1: access to our real preferences why we really chose what
Speaker 1: we chose. We only have our expressed preferences, which is
Speaker 1: what we say we want, and that doesn't always give
Speaker 1: us the full picture. So, for example, you might say
Speaker 1: that you want to spend more time working on a
Speaker 1: project that's important to you, like building your new website
Speaker 1: or getting new tires, or hitting some work deadline, But
Speaker 1: then you click on your social media app and you
Speaker 1: scroll through meaningless stuff for hours, and then it's too
Speaker 1: late and you fall asleep. So people do this all
Speaker 1: the time. They think they want one thing, but they
Speaker 1: act in a different way. They want to stop drinking alcohol,
Speaker 1: but they think, fine, it's just one drink. Or they
Speaker 1: want to stay loyal in their relationship, but they think, okay,
Speaker 1: just this once, and on and on. What we say
Speaker 1: we want, who we say we want to be doesn't
Speaker 1: always match up with what we do. So why is
Speaker 1: it so hard to navigate ourselves? And we need to
Speaker 1: understand this because if we want to express our best
Speaker 1: desires in life. It's critical that we get to the
Speaker 1: core of the issue about what gets in our way,
Speaker 1: and this requires an understanding of what's happening in the brain.
Speaker 1: As we saw in the previous episodes, the brain is
Speaker 1: made up of many subparts, like a society of mind.
Speaker 1: You can't think about the brain as being one thing. Instead,
Speaker 1: there's a neural parliament happening inside the skull, with lots
Speaker 1: of political parties voting for different things, and these networks
Speaker 1: in the brain battle to control your decisions, and the
Speaker 1: outcome of the battle determines what you do. So imagine
Speaker 1: that the waiter puts a basket of warm bread on
Speaker 1: your table at the restaurant. Part of your brain sees
Speaker 1: that as a rich source of energy. A different part
Speaker 1: of your brain wants you to not eat the whole
Speaker 1: thing so that you can keep your appetite for the
Speaker 1: meal and more generally, avoid unnecessary weight gain. And this
Speaker 1: is the sense in which humans can be conflicted. Now,
Speaker 1: in the past couple of decades, neuroscientists in my lab
Speaker 1: and hundreds of other labs have used brain imaging also
Speaker 1: called neuroimaging, to peer inside and pease out the details
Speaker 1: of this neural parliament. And the bottom line is that
Speaker 1: we find networks in your brain that care about different
Speaker 1: things like social pressure or financial loss, or the emotional
Speaker 1: experience that's predicted from something and so on. But today
Speaker 1: we're going to concentrate on two networks that often find
Speaker 1: themselves in conflict with one another, short term decision making
Speaker 1: versus long term decision making. Now, sometimes these are aligned,
Speaker 1: like both want good things and they want to avoid
Speaker 1: pain and so on, but sometimes they end up facing
Speaker 1: off with one another, like do I hit the gym
Speaker 1: or do I eat the cupcake. So let's take an
Speaker 1: example of this. Let's say I offer you one hundred
Speaker 1: dollars right now or one hundred and ten dollars in
Speaker 1: one week. So think about which choice you'd take. Okay,
Speaker 1: so remember your decision on that. Now here's a new game.
Speaker 1: I'm going to offer you one hundred dollars one year
Speaker 1: from now, or you can choose one hundred and ten
Speaker 1: dollars a year and a week from now. So which
Speaker 1: are you going to choose? Most people take the one
Speaker 1: hundred and ten dollars in fifty three weeks, because why
Speaker 1: wouldn't you wait seven more days to get ten percent
Speaker 1: more money. But what I want you to notice is
Speaker 1: that these two offers are exactly the same. What I'm
Speaker 1: saying is, if you wait one more week, you get
Speaker 1: ten percent more. But in the first scenario, which is
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars now or one hundred and ten in
Speaker 1: a week, most people will take the one hundred dollars
Speaker 1: right now, and in the second scenario they'll wait the
Speaker 1: extra week, even though there's no difference in the economics
Speaker 1: of the offer. Now. The way to understand this is
Speaker 1: with the notion of delayed discounting, which means that things
Speaker 1: right now have more value to you than things that
Speaker 1: are in the future. So, for example, when you have
Speaker 1: something right in front of your face, like a slice
Speaker 1: of pizza or a dessert, or a cigarette or a
Speaker 1: lottery ticket, those things have more power than things that
Speaker 1: are not right in front of you now. When my
Speaker 1: colleagues Sam McClure and Jonathan Cohen asked people these sorts
Speaker 1: of now versus later decisions in the brain scanner, they
Speaker 1: found separate brain networks, some of which care about the
Speaker 1: short term and others of which are involved in the
Speaker 1: long term. And these networks short and long are often
Speaker 1: in a situation where they're battling it out, and the
Speaker 1: problem is that the war is biased because the short
Speaker 1: term networks are more powerful. A temptation that is right
Speaker 1: in front of us tends to have more power than
Speaker 1: something that is in the distant future, and as a result,
Speaker 1: it's very easy to get seduced by short term reward.
Speaker 1: And this understanding about the power of the now, as
Speaker 1: we'll see, allows us to interpret many things in the
Speaker 1: world around us and in our own lives. So here's
Speaker 1: an example. Near the beginning of this millennium, about eighty
Speaker 1: percent of mortgages were subprime, which means these were loans
Speaker 1: to customers who didn't have very good credit scores. And
Speaker 1: by two thousand and seven, many of these borrowers found
Speaker 1: their interest rates going up as the initial low rates expired,
Speaker 1: and suddenly they couldn't manage the payments anymore. So delinquencies
Speaker 1: soared and credit tightened up, and the economy melted down
Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven. In two thousand and eight, Now,
Speaker 1: what does that have to do with the brain. These
Speaker 1: loans were perfectly optimized to plug into the I want
Speaker 1: it now systems in the brain. The short term, the
Speaker 1: idea is this, take this house, now, live better than
Speaker 1: you thought you could afford, impress your friends and family.
Speaker 1: At some point the rates will go up, but that's
Speaker 1: a long way away that's obscured in the mists of
Speaker 1: the future. So by directly plugging into these short term networks,
Speaker 1: the lenders tanked the entire economy, and in this sense,
Speaker 1: housing bubble bursts can be understood as a neural phenomenon,
Speaker 1: and what happens on the large scale of society also
Speaker 1: happens at the scale of the individual. Consider athletes who
Speaker 1: take anabolic steroids. They know that this is going to
Speaker 1: shave years off their life, and taking the drugs comes
Speaker 1: at the risk of losing all of one's acol if
Speaker 1: you ever get caught. But the game is this, you
Speaker 1: can stay alive in extra five years when you're old,
Speaker 1: or you can win the race right now. The trophy
Speaker 1: is going to feel really good while your death is
Speaker 1: almost infinitely far away, and so the powerful short term
Speaker 1: networks typically make a hands down win. Here. It's easy
Speaker 1: to take these sorts of deals. In fact, it's so
Speaker 1: common that it has a name in our mythology, a
Speaker 1: deal with the devil. In a deal with the devil,
Speaker 1: you get all sorts of good things right now, and
Speaker 1: you know that there will be consequences later, but that's
Speaker 1: so far off that you go for the temptation. And
Speaker 1: you can see why it's easy to take these sorts
Speaker 1: of deals because things that are distant are hard to
Speaker 1: really mentally simulate, whereas with things that are right in
Speaker 1: the now, you can just taste them, and so it's
Speaker 1: very difficult to care about long term consequences over the
Speaker 1: short term gain. Gambling addictions are a good example of this.
Speaker 1: People lie about their gambling habits, they gamble more than
Speaker 1: they can afford to lose, They borrow money to pay
Speaker 1: for their gambling, and some people steal to fund their habit,
Speaker 1: and it's easy to see why people can fall into
Speaker 1: these traps. It's because the short term is so addictive.
Speaker 1: You feel like you're just about to win this hand.
Speaker 1: You know you're about to get the ace dealt to you,
Speaker 1: or the cigarette's going to taste so good, or the
Speaker 1: drink or the infidelity or whatever, and the long term
Speaker 1: consequences are far away. In any sort of addiction, the
Speaker 1: short term wins more often now often When we talk
Speaker 1: about an addiction, there's a question about is this a
Speaker 1: disease or is it a choice? And the answer is
Speaker 1: it involves both. Typically, someone with an addiction is perfectly
Speaker 1: able to list the reasons why they don't want to
Speaker 1: be doing that. For example, in one of my projects,
Speaker 1: I worked with people who were addicted to cocaine, and
Speaker 1: they're perfectly able to list the reasons why their addiction
Speaker 1: has cost them in terms of relationships, in terms of employment,
Speaker 1: in terms of their money reserves, in moments of reflection.
Speaker 1: They're totally aware that they want to make different choices
Speaker 1: for the long term. It's just that the short term
Speaker 1: networks are so powerful that they beat out the long
Speaker 1: term when the temptation is there. So we've all seen
Speaker 1: in our own lives that it's easy to get seduced
Speaker 1: by the short term And the question is is there
Speaker 1: a way that we can manage this aspect of ourselves.
Speaker 1: There is, and to explain it, we're going to step
Speaker 1: back to nineteen oh nine. In nineteen oh nine, there
Speaker 1: was a banker named merkle Landis, and he was the
Speaker 1: treasurer of a bank in Pennsylvania, and he came up
Speaker 1: with a new financial idea, and he called this a
Speaker 1: Christmas Club. And the idea was this, to see if
Speaker 1: my patrons will give me their money all throughout the year,
Speaker 1: and that way the bank will have capital to work with.
Speaker 1: I'll hold onto their money all year, and I'll charge
Speaker 1: them in early withdrawal fee, and then just in time
Speaker 1: for holiday shopping, I'll let them have their money back. Now,
Speaker 1: this seemed like an unlikely idea that anybody would be
Speaker 1: willing to give up their money all year, but he
Speaker 1: tried it, and the idea worked like gangbusters. Patrons began
Speaker 1: socking away their money with the bank, and soon enough
Speaker 1: all the banks were doing it. Now what surprised land
Speaker 1: Is is that people wanted to give him their money
Speaker 1: all year. Why because note that if they held onto
Speaker 1: their own capital, they could get higher interest or invest
Speaker 1: in emerging opportunities, but instead their money was now locked
Speaker 1: in the bank with early withdrawal fees. The answer to
Speaker 1: why people gave him their money should be obvious. They
Speaker 1: wanted him to stop them from spending their money during
Speaker 1: the year. If they held on to their money, they
Speaker 1: knew they were going to blow it. So people saw
Speaker 1: this as a way to protect themselves from their own
Speaker 1: bad decision making. Now, by the way, a lot of
Speaker 1: people use the IRS in this way. You claim fewer
Speaker 1: deductions on your paycheck, and you have the IRS hold
Speaker 1: on to your money, and then you get a big
Speaker 1: check back in April, and it feels like free money.
Speaker 1: But it's not free money. It's your money, and you've
Speaker 1: simply had the government hold on to it for you
Speaker 1: and they get to earn interest on your capital instead
Speaker 1: of you. And any economist will tell you this is
Speaker 1: a bad idea, But it depends on the person doing it,
Speaker 1: because some people correctly into it that if they have
Speaker 1: the money, it's going to burn a hole in their
Speaker 1: pocket and they're gonna spend it. So they are granting
Speaker 1: responsibility to someone else to protect them from themselves. Now
Speaker 1: there's a framework to explain this fascinating human behavior. And
Speaker 1: to explain it, I'm going to step back even further
Speaker 1: to a story that you may be familiar with. We're
Speaker 1: gonna go back three thousand years to the King of
Speaker 1: Ithaca and the hero of the Trojan War Ulysses Ulysses
Speaker 1: or Odysseus in Greek. He was coming home from the
Speaker 1: Trojan War and on the way back, he suddenly realized
Speaker 1: that his ship was going to pass the island of
Speaker 1: the Sirens. Now this was an incredible opportunity because the
Speaker 1: sirens were these beautiful creatures that sang these incredible songs.
Speaker 1: But the songs were so beautiful that they had the
Speaker 1: effect of hypnotizing the passing sailors, and no mortal man
Speaker 1: could resist the sirens song. So Ulysses knew that every
Speaker 1: ship that ever passed this way before ended up steering
Speaker 1: toward the island and crashing into the rocks. And he
Speaker 1: knew that he was just as susceptible as any other man,
Speaker 1: and that he would end up dying that way if
Speaker 1: he heard the sirens song. Now, what he could have
Speaker 1: done is steered wide of the island, but he really
Speaker 1: wanted to hear what the sirens sounded like, so he
Speaker 1: came up with a plan to deal with his future self.
Speaker 1: He was still at a great distance from the island,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't thinking about his present rational self. He
Speaker 1: was instead thinking about the future. Prazed short term decision making,
Speaker 1: Ulysses and he considered who he was going to be
Speaker 1: in that situation. So what he did is he had
Speaker 1: his men lash him to the mast with ropes, and
Speaker 1: he said, no matter what I do and how much
Speaker 1: I scream and beg and cry, just keep rowing whatever
Speaker 1: you do, don't listen to me. And he had them
Speaker 1: fill their ears with beeswax. Now, Ulysses did this because
Speaker 1: he care directly surmised that he would be kicking and
Speaker 1: screaming and that future Ulysses would be in no position
Speaker 1: to make any good decisions. In other words, the Ulysses
Speaker 1: of sound mind structured things so that the future Ulysses
Speaker 1: couldn't do the wrong thing. It was a deal struck
Speaker 1: between the present and the future Ulysses, and it worked.
Speaker 1: It saved his life and the life of all his sailors.
Speaker 1: That he saw how he was going to act in
Speaker 1: that scenario, and he put up barriers to protect himself
Speaker 1: against himself. This sort of freely made decision that binds
Speaker 1: us in the future is what we call a Ulysses contract.
Speaker 1: And this sort of Ulysses contract explains the Christmas Club.
Speaker 1: You lash yourself to the mass at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the year so that your summertime self doesn't listen to
Speaker 1: the sirens songs of commercialism and blow all your money
Speaker 1: So let's return to what happens when you're having dinner
Speaker 1: at someone's house and they put a delicious piece of
Speaker 1: chocolate cake in front of you, but you're trying to
Speaker 1: train for a marathon, and part of you is trying
Speaker 1: not to eat that. It's not just eat or don't
Speaker 1: eat the cake. It can be more interestingly complicated than that,
Speaker 1: because you can make you lyss's contract with yourself. What
Speaker 1: I always do when there's a dessert put in front
Speaker 1: of me is I have a couple of bites, and
Speaker 1: then in the moment before I get weak, I pour
Speaker 1: table salt all over the cake to drown out the
Speaker 1: siren songs. It's the me of sound mind taking a
Speaker 1: temptation out of the way that I know my future
Speaker 1: self will do badly with. And there are lots of
Speaker 1: versions of this. You can say, you know what, I'll
Speaker 1: eat the cake, but I'm going to text my buddy
Speaker 1: right now to meet at the gym tomorrow morning, because
Speaker 1: you know that your future self will feel lazy and
Speaker 1: not want to go, and so you're buying yourself into
Speaker 1: a contract with your friend who's going to show up
Speaker 1: at the gym, so you have to be there, so
Speaker 1: here's where we are so far. We know that there's
Speaker 1: great seduction in the now in short term decision making.
Speaker 1: So if you want to accomplish something in the future,
Speaker 1: but you know there's going to be temptations that will
Speaker 1: pull you off the road along the way, it can
Speaker 1: be helpful to lock down a Ulysses contract with yourself.
Speaker 1: So take something like New Year's resolutions. These rarely last
Speaker 1: past January. Why because voluntary controls just aren't enough. If
Speaker 1: they were, everyone would be exercising every day. But everyone's not.
Speaker 1: And that's because it's not enough to make a resolution
Speaker 1: with good intention. There's a difference between good intention and
Speaker 1: a meaningful contract with yourself. So instead, when you're full
Speaker 1: of fire at the moment, that's when you need to
Speaker 1: think about structuring a contract with your future self. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to suggest five actionable steps for implementing these
Speaker 1: sorts of Ulysses contracts in your life. The first step
Speaker 1: is to minimize temptation. You have to build fences around
Speaker 1: you so that you're not drawn in by the sirens song.
Speaker 1: Take as an example alcoholics Anonymous. They teach you all
Speaker 1: sorts of steps to resist temptation, but one of the
Speaker 1: things they teach you right away is to get all
Speaker 1: the alcohol out of your house. Why it's because on
Speaker 1: a festive Saturday night or a lonely Sunday night, the
Speaker 1: mere presence of the bottle can be enough to put
Speaker 1: you over the edge into short term decision making. And
Speaker 1: the point is if if it's not there, then it
Speaker 1: can't happen. This is a Ulysses contract that you're making
Speaker 1: with yourself to get it out of the way. And
Speaker 1: it's the same thing with programs that help you to
Speaker 1: quit smoking. One of the first things they tell you
Speaker 1: is not to hang out with other smokers, because you're
Speaker 1: pretty sure you're going to say no when they offer
Speaker 1: you a cigarette, but you won't, and so the better
Speaker 1: idea is to not tempt temptation. And this is the
Speaker 1: same thing with drug rehabilitation programs. One of the first
Speaker 1: things they teach you is that you shouldn't carry more
Speaker 1: than twenty dollars of cash in your pocket because at
Speaker 1: some point you're going to run into somebody who tries
Speaker 1: to sell you drugs, and if you simply don't have
Speaker 1: any cash with you, you can't take them up on
Speaker 1: the offer. These rehabilitation programs also advise you to get
Speaker 1: rid of your ATM card and to entrust a friend
Speaker 1: or a family member to control your spending for you.
Speaker 1: In other words, don't tempt temptation. These programs expect that
Speaker 1: at some point a person with an addiction will learn
Speaker 1: to modify his or her decision making, even when faced
Speaker 1: with powerful cravings. But until then, a person in recovery
Speaker 1: needs to protect themselves from themselves. I'll give you another example.
Speaker 1: I was speaking on a college campus recently, and I
Speaker 1: found out that when finals week comes around, many of
Speaker 1: the students will do this. You log into TikTok or Instagram,
Speaker 1: and you hand your phone to your friend, and you
Speaker 1: have that person change your password and not tell you
Speaker 1: what the new password is, and then they log you
Speaker 1: off and you can't get back on, and you're doing
Speaker 1: the same thing for your friend's account, So now you're
Speaker 1: both locked out of your accounts for the week and
Speaker 1: you can't waste time that way. Then after finals are over,
Speaker 1: you tell each other the new passwords so you can
Speaker 1: log in again. So the theme here is to remove temptation,
Speaker 1: and this sort of thinking can also apply to the
Speaker 1: products that you buy. I recently saw an Architectural magazine
Speaker 1: with a review of refrigerators with clear glass doors. Now,
Speaker 1: these look great, but I suspect that for some people
Speaker 1: these are a terrible idea because it's a constant temptation.
Speaker 1: Imagine you have a chocolate cake on the middle shelf
Speaker 1: when you shut the door. On a regular fridge that's
Speaker 1: out of sight, but in the glass door fridge, the
Speaker 1: cake is constantly staring at you. So if you're trying
Speaker 1: to stick to a diet, don't get stared at by
Speaker 1: a cake. I'll give one more example of minimizing temptation.
Speaker 1: You may have heard of the marshmallow test. This was
Speaker 1: a study run by Stanford psychologists some decades ago. The
Speaker 1: idea is that you bring a child into a room
Speaker 1: and you offer them one marshmallow on a little plate,
Speaker 1: and you tell the kid you can eat this marshmallow
Speaker 1: or you can wait for five minutes, and if you
Speaker 1: do that you don't eat that marshmallow, then I'll give
Speaker 1: you two marshmallows. So then you leave the room and
Speaker 1: the child is left alone, just the kid and the marshmallow.
Speaker 1: So some kids eat their marshmallows immediately, but about a
Speaker 1: third of them were strong enough to resist the temptation
Speaker 1: and wait for the larger reward. So years later, the
Speaker 1: study team followed up with the participants and found that
Speaker 1: children who had waited for the second marshmallow generally were
Speaker 1: doing better in life in terms of having higher high
Speaker 1: school scores, or lower likelihood of obesity, or more rewarding jobs. Now,
Speaker 1: their ongoing debates about the details of the study, but
Speaker 1: I just want to draw your attention to one important
Speaker 1: point that's typically not even discussed, which is that the
Speaker 1: kids who did better didn't always do so by having
Speaker 1: a naturally stronger capacity to resist. Instead, several of them
Speaker 1: just had better strategies for resisting. Those who resisted it
Speaker 1: often did so because they clapped their hands over their eyes,
Speaker 1: or they turned their chair around so that their back
Speaker 1: was to the marshmallow. So the first lesson when you're
Speaker 1: trying to act in accordance with your long term interests
Speaker 1: is to do whatever you need to do to minimize
Speaker 1: the temptation. Now, that is a foundational strategy, but it's
Speaker 1: not always enough, and that leads us to the second strategy,
Speaker 1: which is to put money on the line. Why, because
Speaker 1: the loss of money stings, and even the prospect of
Speaker 1: losing money stings, and that sort of anticipated regret can
Speaker 1: steer you appropriately. As one example, there's a gym in
Speaker 1: Denmark where you pay for a membership but they refund
Speaker 1: your money as long as you show up once a week. Now,
Speaker 1: that's a terrific idea, but most gyms aren't going to
Speaker 1: offer this. They're of course happier if you pay for
Speaker 1: a membership and then you don't sweat all over their equipment.
Speaker 1: So how do you motivate yourself? Well, here's one way
Speaker 1: to get yourself to the gym. Do a financial reality
Speaker 1: check to consider the cost of not going each month.
Speaker 1: Not going means that you've wasted your membership money without
Speaker 1: getting anything in return, and any additional costs like private
Speaker 1: training session or workout clothes that you've already bought, that's
Speaker 1: even more cost and those come without any benefits gained
Speaker 1: by you. So tally up the total amount that you've
Speaker 1: spent for a little bit of shock effect that gets
Speaker 1: you over there. And in this context, I think that
Speaker 1: pre committing yourself to a personal trainer is a great idea.
Speaker 1: It's not great despite the cost of money, it's actually
Speaker 1: great because of the money that you put on the line,
Speaker 1: and you can put money on the line. Even more explicitly.
Speaker 1: Some colleagues of Miny Yale started a website called Stickka
Speaker 1: with two k's. Now here's how it works. Define your
Speaker 1: own goal, like let's say I want to lose ten
Speaker 1: pounds by the end of April. Then you load, say
Speaker 1: two hundred bucks onto the site with your credit card.
Speaker 1: Then if you don't meet your goal, they keep your money,
Speaker 1: and if you do meet your goal, the money gets
Speaker 1: returned to you. Now this is a great idea because
Speaker 1: you're putting something on the line, money that things if
Speaker 1: you lose it. Now there's a closely related idea here
Speaker 1: that's fascinating. So there was a woman who was featured
Speaker 1: on Radio Lab a few years ago because she really
Speaker 1: wanted to quit smoking. She was socially very liberal and
Speaker 1: had participated in a lot of the foundational civil rights
Speaker 1: movements and had founded the Congress on Racial Equality in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties. But she couldn't quit smoking and felt
Speaker 1: so terrible that she had smoked through her two pregnancies.
Speaker 1: And so she told her best friend, here is a
Speaker 1: check for ten thousand dollars, and if you catch me
Speaker 1: smoking again, I want you to donate this check to
Speaker 1: the KKK. Now, this was her most despised organization, and
Speaker 1: this is what's known as an anti charity. What she
Speaker 1: was doing was pitting these neural networks against one another.
Speaker 1: Of course, she wants the cigarette, but now she has
Speaker 1: to counterbalance that with how much it would hurt her
Speaker 1: if her money funded in group that's so politically offensive
Speaker 1: to her. And it worked. She didn't smoke anymore. So
Speaker 1: a financial sting can fence in your behavior. And this
Speaker 1: works even better when there's social pressure, and that leads
Speaker 1: us to the third lesson, which is recruit social pressure.
Speaker 1: All of this works better when your friends and colleagues
Speaker 1: can be there to make sure that you follow through
Speaker 1: with promises. Why because we have brain networks that really
Speaker 1: care what other people think. So, coming back to this website, Stickcay,
Speaker 1: once you set your goal, let's say you want to
Speaker 1: lose ten pounds and you set the stakes two hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: You then add a referee who will judge whether you've
Speaker 1: met the goal or not, and you add friends to
Speaker 1: support you. So you're recruiting social pressure this way. And
Speaker 1: by the way, you know, even though social media gets
Speaker 1: a bad rap for most things. It has been shown
Speaker 1: in studies to be really helpful with this issue of
Speaker 1: recruiting the social support that you need. So a lot
Speaker 1: of people use social media to good effect. When they're
Speaker 1: trying to diet. They write things like, Hey, I've passed
Speaker 1: the two hundred pounds goal and I'm on to my
Speaker 1: next goal of one hundred and ninety pounds, and all
Speaker 1: their friends comment and they say things like great job
Speaker 1: and keep going, and that sort of feedback really helps.
Speaker 1: Everyone likes to bag on social media, but a recent
Speaker 1: study out of the University of Georgia concluded that it's
Speaker 1: really helpful when people are trying to lose weight because
Speaker 1: when people join social media, they have the impression that
Speaker 1: they're being constantly watched, and so the self control increases.
Speaker 1: And this is all related to another strategy that people
Speaker 1: find success with, which is committing themselves to social embarrassment
Speaker 1: if they don't do something. So you know these fitness
Speaker 1: boot camps where you sign up and you run around
Speaker 1: with a group of other people early in the morning
Speaker 1: and you get yelled at and you get in great shape.
Speaker 1: But if you don't show up one morning, everyone jogs
Speaker 1: to your front lawn and does jumping jacks and push
Speaker 1: ups and screams your name until you come out. Now,
Speaker 1: why would anybody sign up for this? It's because it's
Speaker 1: a really smart idea. You are recruiting social pressure so
Speaker 1: that you can stick with your goals, so that you
Speaker 1: can steer your behavior in the direction that you want
Speaker 1: when you're thinking about the long term about who you
Speaker 1: want to be. And this is great because it's critical
Speaker 1: to leverage the different networks in our brain, like what
Speaker 1: do other people think about me if we want to
Speaker 1: make a contract that's going to stick? Okay, Now onto
Speaker 1: the fourth strategy, involve emotion. Something that's interesting is that
Speaker 1: there are all these terrifically informative websites with information about
Speaker 1: preventative health screening or stopping smoking things like that. But
Speaker 1: you know what, the networks in your brain involved in
Speaker 1: emotion don't care about those websites because they're just full
Speaker 1: of facts. And that's simply not the language of these
Speaker 1: parts of the brain. And as we saw in the
Speaker 1: previous episode, our decisions are not all about logic or rationality.
Speaker 1: We're not just information processing devices. Instead, our lives are
Speaker 1: richly painted by emotion. Now, these emotional networks are very
Speaker 1: powerful drivers of your decision made, so you have to
Speaker 1: involve them if you want to steer your behavior. For example,
Speaker 1: if you're trying to lose weight, you have to do
Speaker 1: things that plug right into your emotions. One strategy is
Speaker 1: to get out all the clothes that you wish you
Speaker 1: could fit into, and you lay those out and you
Speaker 1: use that as a motivator to get yourself back into
Speaker 1: the gym. Some people take photos of themselves trying to
Speaker 1: wear those tight clothes and they put those on their
Speaker 1: fridge where they see them as visual reminders of what
Speaker 1: needs to happen, and that way, when they unconsciously wander
Speaker 1: over to the fridge door, they see those photos and
Speaker 1: that triggers an emotional response, and that gets them to
Speaker 1: not open the door, or at least one fewer time.
Speaker 1: For people who are trying to quit chewing tobacco, what
Speaker 1: they can do is put up pictures of a guy
Speaker 1: who has had his jaw removed from mouth cancer, or
Speaker 1: for someone trying to become a vegetarian, they put up
Speaker 1: pictures of what what happens in a slaughter house. And
Speaker 1: I suspect there are increasingly sophisticated ways that people are
Speaker 1: going to be able to do this in the future.
Speaker 1: So let's say you're trying to quit gambling, and so
Speaker 1: the important part is to really remember how bummed out
Speaker 1: you were the last time you lost a bunch of
Speaker 1: money and came home from the casino. So my idea
Speaker 1: is this, you take a video of yourself talking to
Speaker 1: your future self and telling your future self not to
Speaker 1: do it, and then you set up geo fencing on
Speaker 1: your phone such that when you go near a casino,
Speaker 1: your cell phone automatically kicks off that video and you
Speaker 1: see yourself full of emotion, pleading with your current self
Speaker 1: not to go in there. Okay, so now I've told
Speaker 1: you about leveraging negative emotion to fence in your behavior.
Speaker 1: But how about the flip side, like reward, well, associating
Speaker 1: something with reward. This is something companies always try to do.
Speaker 1: They associate their brand with various sorts of positive things
Speaker 1: they want to make and association like Pavlov's dog. Remember
Speaker 1: there's nothing rewarding about the bell, but the bell becomes
Speaker 1: a predictor of future reward, and so companies hope to
Speaker 1: do that with the right kind of advertising, such that
Speaker 1: simply seeing their product or even just seeing their logo
Speaker 1: will make you do the same thing. It'll make you
Speaker 1: drool at their bell. But how do you leverage this
Speaker 1: kind of linkage for yourself. Well, the answer is you
Speaker 1: link some action that you want to do to the reward.
Speaker 1: So every time I go to the gym, I'll get
Speaker 1: this delicious smoothie afterwards as a reward, Or after I
Speaker 1: finish doing this work that needs to get done, I'll
Speaker 1: go to the beach, or I'll go to that party
Speaker 1: or whatever. You make that linkage, so the thing that
Speaker 1: you need to do for the long term is hooked
Speaker 1: to a reward. And finally, for the fifth strategy, establish habits.
Speaker 1: There's an old joke about a guy who wants to
Speaker 1: find enlightenment and he travels for months to find this
Speaker 1: famed guru. And when he hikes for weeks and fords
Speaker 1: the streams and climbs the mountains and gets to the top,
Speaker 1: he finds the guru and asks him to give him
Speaker 1: the secret to life, and the guru says, by low
Speaker 1: sell high. Now it works as a joke only because
Speaker 1: the advice is so batal. If you want to make
Speaker 1: money in the stock market, you just have to follow
Speaker 1: the rule, and that should be easy, right, but it's not.
Speaker 1: Lots of studies show that the majority of investors can't
Speaker 1: follow that advice. And it's clear why the guru's advice
Speaker 1: is difficult to follow because bitcoin rises into the thousands
Speaker 1: and tens thousands, and everyone thinks I'm buying now because
Speaker 1: of the fear of missing out. So the solution is
Speaker 1: to set up rules in advance when the sirens songs
Speaker 1: are not deafening. You can do this on stock websites
Speaker 1: where you say, okay, if it rises to this amount,
Speaker 1: then automatically sell or automatically buy this stock, but only
Speaker 1: if it drops to this amount. More generally, we can
Speaker 1: set habits throughout our lives to accomplish the things that
Speaker 1: we want. For example, you can just be the kind
Speaker 1: of person who says, I don't eat dessert and that way,
Speaker 1: when the waiter comes around to take the order, you
Speaker 1: just say, that's not my identity. Or here's another habit
Speaker 1: you can establish. You eat fifty percent of your meal
Speaker 1: always and you throw out the rest When you get
Speaker 1: to the halfway point, you say, I'm the kind of
Speaker 1: person who only eats half their meal, and you have
Speaker 1: the way to take it away. That's similar to what
Speaker 1: I mentioned about the way I cover my chocolate cake
Speaker 1: in salt after a few bites, and this is a
Speaker 1: good way to preclude the possibility of future temptation. Or
Speaker 1: A closely related method is to get in the habit
Speaker 1: of splitting portions with your partner. So you both order
Speaker 1: one meal and you split it, and that's just what
Speaker 1: you do. There's another useful habit, which is to link
Speaker 1: a particular reward with something you have accomplished, but only
Speaker 1: after the thing is accomplished. So, for example, you always
Speaker 1: treat yourself to a fratpucino after you finish a gym workout,
Speaker 1: but that's the only time you ever get to enjoy
Speaker 1: the fratpuccino. So you're nailing down the habit in your
Speaker 1: mind that if you want that reward, you have to
Speaker 1: earn it first. You make it contingent. I mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: that a person trying to battle drugs needs to not
Speaker 1: carry more than twenty dollars in their pocket. This has
Speaker 1: to be converted into a habit to wield power. It
Speaker 1: has to be something automatic, not something that in person
Speaker 1: thinks about every time they're going out. Same with the
Speaker 1: person battling alcohol addiction. It has to become a habit
Speaker 1: to not have alcohol in the house. It's not something
Speaker 1: that's just considered consciously every time. And I want to
Speaker 1: point back to an earlier lesson, which is that rules
Speaker 1: and habits aren't always binding without social pressure, because if
Speaker 1: you can break the rule and not get caught, then
Speaker 1: eventually you're going to break it. So once you've made
Speaker 1: a rule, get your friends into it, make promises where
Speaker 1: if you break it you can be caught. And ask
Speaker 1: your friends not to be nice, not to be charitable,
Speaker 1: but to really hold you to it. And one more thing,
Speaker 1: there are tricks for making the rules you set more followable.
Speaker 1: The main thing is don't over commit. I heard a
Speaker 1: guy named Graham Hill give a talk at TED a
Speaker 1: few years ago in which he said, really, there are
Speaker 1: many of us who want to be vegetarian. We all
Speaker 1: know the reasons, from health to pollution, energy to animal cruelty,
Speaker 1: but we find it's so difficult to follow through. So
Speaker 1: here's the solution. Just become a weekday vegetarian. It's not
Speaker 1: as difficult. Or some people do meatless mondays. These are
Speaker 1: ways of easing into something without it being overwhelming. So
Speaker 1: in summary, we have many drives, all of whom want
Speaker 1: to be in control, and these systems are always battling
Speaker 1: it out under the surface. And understanding this about yourself
Speaker 1: is critical for how you think about the complex nuances
Speaker 1: of your behavior and how you can captain your ship
Speaker 1: much better. It's not just about knowing thyself, it's about
Speaker 1: knowing thyselves and our job is to learn how these
Speaker 1: systems work and how to outwit them. And I think
Speaker 1: the way to do that this is to take inspiration
Speaker 1: from another captain who got the memo Ulysses. He realized
Speaker 1: that if he wanted to get something accomplished, he would
Speaker 1: have to do something in the present in order to
Speaker 1: successfully constrain his future behavior. He didn't just hope that
Speaker 1: he'd make it in the face of the sirens. He
Speaker 1: lashed himself to the mast. And there are several ways
Speaker 1: to do this. Minimize temptation, put money on the line,
Speaker 1: recruit social pressure, get your emotions involved, and establish habits.
Speaker 1: So think about one thing that you know that you
Speaker 1: want to be doing better in the future and ask
Speaker 1: yourself how you can leverage these lessons to get there.
Speaker 1: Because the only person who can steer the ship for
Speaker 1: your life is you, and i'd wish you good luck,
Speaker 1: but it's not about luck. It's about strategy. So let's
Speaker 1: figure out how to set a contract yourself for the future.
Speaker 1: That's all for this week. To find out more and
Speaker 1: to share your thoughts, head over to eagleman dot com,
Speaker 1: slash Podcasts, and you can also watch full episodes of
Speaker 1: Inner Cosmos on YouTube. Subscribe to my channel so you
Speaker 1: can follow along each week for new updates until next time.
Speaker 1: I'm David Eagleman, and this is Inner Cosmos.