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 2: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. We
Speaker 2: hope you'll enjoy this episode from the archive. Thanks for
Speaker 2: joining us. Our guest on this episode is Katie Milkman,
Speaker 2: a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania,
Speaker 2: host of Charles Schwab's popular behavioral economics podcast Choiceology, and
Speaker 2: former president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making.
Speaker 2: She's also the co founder and co director of the
Speaker 2: Behavior Change for Good Initiative. Today, Katie and Eric discuss
Speaker 2: her book, How to Change the Science of Getting from
Speaker 2: Where You Are to where you want to Be.
Speaker 3: Hi, Katie, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 3: These are some of my favorite kinds of conversations with
Speaker 3: scientists of how we make changes. I'm a behavior coach,
Speaker 3: so I do a lot of this type of work.
Speaker 3: I'm a recovering heroin addicts, so I've had lots of
Speaker 3: change in my life and I just love these conversation.
Speaker 3: I loved your book, which is called How to Change
Speaker 3: the Science of Getting from where you Are to where
Speaker 3: you Want to Be. But before we jump into the book,
Speaker 3: will start like we always do, with the parable. There's
Speaker 3: a grandmother who's talking with her grandson and she says,
Speaker 3: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 3: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 3: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 3: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 3: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 3: thinks about it for a second, and he looks up
Speaker 3: at his grandmother. He says, well, grandmother, which one wins?
Speaker 3: And the grandmother says the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 3: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 3: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 3: that you do.
Speaker 1: It's actually such a perfect parable for the work that
Speaker 1: I do because the research I've done, the book I've
Speaker 1: written are about the internal obstacles to change and how
Speaker 1: we can overcome them, and how important it is to
Speaker 1: understand what you're up against, and that the strategy you
Speaker 1: take to try to overcome the challenges you face is
Speaker 1: the key to success. And that parable highlights the importance
Speaker 1: of recognizing there's options, there's choices that if we make
Speaker 1: the right choices, if we make choices that are strategically wise,
Speaker 1: then we'll end up with outcomes we'll be pleased with.
Speaker 4: 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.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I love that, and I love the book. You
Speaker 3: really start off by saying, look, you can apply a
Speaker 3: one size fits all strategy to behavior change. And there
Speaker 3: are some things that we know, some general principles that
Speaker 3: are very helpful. There's been some great books written about
Speaker 3: general principles. We've interviewed many of those authors on this show,
Speaker 3: but that if you really want to get where you
Speaker 3: want to be, you need to learn to customize your
Speaker 3: strategy for you and your life. Say a little more
Speaker 3: about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is I think the most important thing I've
Speaker 1: learned over the course of my career studying behavior change
Speaker 1: is that too often we look for sort of the
Speaker 1: 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 led it to work in one situation because this
Speaker 1: was a solve 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.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that idea, and I have certainly discovered
Speaker 3: that in the work that I do with people. Again,
Speaker 3: there are some general principles we can use, but everybody
Speaker 3: is different. Their emotional structure and background is different, the
Speaker 3: sorts of things that motivate them are different, the structures
Speaker 3: of their lives are very different. Of single mother with
Speaker 3: three children is a very different behavior change challenge than
Speaker 3: an eighteen year old man, right. I mean, there are
Speaker 3: again commonalities that we can look at, but we've got
Speaker 3: to really look at each of those and their lives
Speaker 3: individually to know what's going.
Speaker 2: To work best.
Speaker 1: Right, Absolutely, And there's sort of multiple levels of tailoring
Speaker 1: that I think are critical, including you know, maybe both
Speaker 1: the thirty something woman and the eighteen year old man
Speaker 1: who are facing challenges, maybe what's holding them back literally
Speaker 1: is the same thing. It's possible, right, they could both
Speaker 1: be we're struggling with it. You know, I hate doing
Speaker 1: the thing that I need to do. It's literally it
Speaker 1: towards a burden in the moment, and so I constantly delay.
Speaker 1: But what would make it less of a burden in
Speaker 1: the moment, would make it a joy is going to
Speaker 1: be incredibly different for each of them. Right, So it's
Speaker 1: the same barrier, but even with the insight they might
Speaker 1: need to get through it, they're going to have to
Speaker 1: apply it differently.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep. And I'm going to use what you just
Speaker 3: said there to circle around to kind of the tail
Speaker 3: end of the book. And the tail end of the
Speaker 3: book you talk about one of the big barriers to
Speaker 3: people is confidence. They don't believe they can change. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is I think one of the most common things
Speaker 3: I see is people say, well, I've just started and
Speaker 3: stopped so many times. The reason I want to go
Speaker 3: kind of tail around to that is that what we
Speaker 3: were just talking about, which is that if we can
Speaker 3: have confidence in that we know our own life, and
Speaker 3: we know what we like, and we know some things
Speaker 3: about us, and we know some things that might have
Speaker 3: worked for us in the past, maybe in different situations
Speaker 3: that we have at least part of the recipe that
Speaker 3: we need, and only we can provide part of that recipe.
Speaker 3: So say a little bit more about the role of
Speaker 3: confidence in our ability to change.
Speaker 1: Yeah, 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
Speaker 1: think 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 kinds
Speaker 1: of pain because you believe it will improve your outcomes.
Speaker 4: It literally does.
Speaker 1: It has physiological benefits as well as simply changing your expectations.
Speaker 1: So our beliefs are really important. Once we recognize that,
Speaker 1: then we have to figure out how can I get
Speaker 1: myself to believe that I can change? What are the tools?
Speaker 1: What are the tactics. One of my favorite insights on
Speaker 1: this topic comes from work that was led by Lauren Eskriswinkler,
Speaker 1: who is a professor at the Kellogg School of Management
Speaker 1: in Northwestern University. And she had this great insight and
Speaker 1: it relates to what you mentioned, which is that a
Speaker 1: lot of people know more than they appreciate about what
Speaker 1: will take to help them change. She was interviewing people
Speaker 1: who were struggling in all different walks of life, from
Speaker 1: salespeople to students, to try to understand what were commonalities
Speaker 1: and their experience, what did they know about change, And
Speaker 1: she was startled to find actually how many had really
Speaker 1: great insights when they were pushed and when she probed
Speaker 1: them for what they thought might be an effective tool
Speaker 1: for them. And she started to wonder if the way
Speaker 1: we typically encourage change approach change when someone comes to
Speaker 1: us and tells us they're struggling, might be backwards 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'll be useful to them. That
Speaker 1: kind of unsolicited advice can actually be really demotivating. It
Speaker 1: can just reinforce the message people have already been hearing
Speaker 1: internally that they just don't have what it takes. This
Speaker 1: person who I just met and just told my story
Speaker 1: immediately thinks they know something I don't know and is
Speaker 1: going to 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: ask 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 the their own advice.
Speaker 1: Maybe that would be actually really valuable. Because she'd 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 advised someone else on how
Speaker 1: to change, you're going to feel hypocritical if you don't
Speaker 1: follow that advice yourself. I think it's a really brilliant
Speaker 1: formula she realized.
Speaker 4: Would be so potent.
Speaker 1: Of course, there's lots of mentoring programs in the world,
Speaker 1: but normally we think of them as helping the mentee,
Speaker 1: not the mentor, and Lauren has done a series of
Speaker 1: brilliant studies showing the mentor benefits. When I'm put in
Speaker 1: the position of advice giver, it improves my own outcomes
Speaker 1: on everything from different goals I might be working to
Speaker 1: in my personal life to student achievement. And I think
Speaker 1: that the lynchpin there is largely that it bo confidence.
Speaker 1: So we can think of lots of other ways that
Speaker 1: we might boost confidence as well, and we can talk
Speaker 1: about others if you'd like. But I thought that was
Speaker 1: a good one to begin with because it's truly one
Speaker 1: of my favorites on the most counterintuitive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as I was reading that, I was thinking very
Speaker 3: much about my experience in twelve step programs and twelve
Speaker 3: step programs, when done right, they encourage somebody who's even
Speaker 3: a week sober to start helping somebody who's a day sober.
Speaker 3: And I think that that's happening right. What's happening is
Speaker 3: that person who weeks sober saying, well, here's what I did,
Speaker 3: and here's some things, here's what I think. You know
Speaker 3: immediately they are in that role. And one of the
Speaker 3: things that I think AA stumbled on and was so
Speaker 3: right about was the reciprocal nature of help in a
Speaker 3: twelve step program, the person who was a week sober
Speaker 3: talking to the person a day sober, they both got
Speaker 3: equal benefit absolutely right away. They they saw that. They
Speaker 3: saw right away, like you know, doesn't matter matter whether
Speaker 3: you're the giver or the receiver, you get equal benefit
Speaker 3: in this. And that was an insight I think that
Speaker 3: they had right and certainly was, you know, in my
Speaker 3: case so true. I can just think to early in recovery,
Speaker 3: the more that I talked to other people who were
Speaker 3: new coming in, the more convinced I was that A.
Speaker 3: I knew what I was doing, be that I was
Speaker 3: going to stay sober. I mean it really does work.
Speaker 1: I love that example, and I do think AA is
Speaker 1: such a powerful example of an organization that takes this
Speaker 1: principle and applies it.
Speaker 4: It hadn't been tested.
Speaker 1: And proven specifically, believe it or not, that this tool
Speaker 1: was effective, even though lots of organizations were implicitly relying
Speaker 1: on it. And so that's one of the things I
Speaker 1: think is so wonderful about Lauren's 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, people who
Speaker 1: have similar objectives, who both mentor each other and get
Speaker 1: wisdom from each other. So we've got that back and
Speaker 1: forth going, and you benefit from both sides.
Speaker 4: Of the equation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm going to take us back around towards the
Speaker 3: front of the book a little bit, and I want
Speaker 3: to talk about one thing that most of us do
Speaker 3: recognize is indeed a common problem. If you ask people,
Speaker 3: why can't you stick with the things you want to
Speaker 3: do or why can't you make the changes you want
Speaker 3: to make. Most people they may not use this word,
Speaker 3: but they would describe this phenomenon, which is impulsivity, or
Speaker 3: as it's known more in the literature, you know, present bias. Right,
Speaker 3: So talk to me a little bit about impulsivity, and
Speaker 3: then let's talk about what's a little counterintuitive in some
Speaker 3: of what you're saying, and how we can work with impulsivity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of my favorite topics too, so
Speaker 1: you're just sort of going from one of my favorite
Speaker 1: areas to another. Present bias is I think one of
Speaker 1: the most pernicious barriers to change. Econs speak for it.
Speaker 1: Economists call it present bias. The tendency to value whatever
Speaker 1: we'll get right now. You know, the experience we'll have
Speaker 1: right now from biting a chocolate doughnut, from screaming at
Speaker 1: a friend who's irritating us, you know, from driving too fast,
Speaker 1: that instant hit of gratification. We overvalue that relative to
Speaker 1: the downstream consequences, which we tend to undervalue. And this
Speaker 1: obviously has all sorts of important implications and leads to
Speaker 1: lots of mistakes made in life if you look more globally,
Speaker 1: But it's also a major barrier to behavior change. Is
Speaker 1: the fact that we value so much what we're getting
Speaker 1: now and discount so much what we'll get later.
Speaker 3: Can I ask you a question about that? Yeah, the
Speaker 3: way you were just describing it, it's sort of as
Speaker 3: if I'm thinking about the current reward, I'm thinking about
Speaker 3: the possible future reward, and I'm making a decision that
Speaker 3: balances this one. Right. And while that's sometimes the case
Speaker 3: where it's actually a conscious thing, so often it's not conscious, absolutely,
Speaker 3: And I think you're head in this direction. But I
Speaker 3: was sort of thinking, you know, how much is even
Speaker 3: recognizing we're making a choice important in the overall equation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a great question.
Speaker 1: Well, we can't be strategic if we don't start to
Speaker 1: understand the choice, and if we don't start to understand
Speaker 1: the trade offs and recognize that we want to tip
Speaker 1: the balances in order to facilitate choices we'll be prouder
Speaker 1: of in the long run. So I do think recognizing
Speaker 1: you're making a choice is really key, and that's important
Speaker 1: to being able to start using some of these tactics
Speaker 1: that I'll talk about to affect positive change. But you're
Speaker 1: absolutely right, often this choice most of the time, I
Speaker 1: would say it's implicit rather than explicit, Right, You're not,
Speaker 1: at least I'm not. When I'm reaching for dessert, maybe
Speaker 1: I feel I might feel a little guilt, right, and maybe,
Speaker 1: oh well, maybe I should'tat the whole thing, and then
Speaker 1: I just eat the whole thing. But I'm not literally
Speaker 1: thinking most of the time, like, let me calculate the
Speaker 1: probability that this will increase the difficulty of fitting into
Speaker 1: my favorite pair of jeeps. It's not that kind of calculation.
Speaker 1: But of course, economic modeling abstracts away from all of
Speaker 1: that and just tries to capture a descriptive model of behavior.
Speaker 1: And it's descriptively shown and study after study that roughly
Speaker 1: sixty percent of downstream value is captured in the decisions
Speaker 1: we make now, and forty percent we just sort of
Speaker 1: throw right away. So we discount pretty dramatically anything in
Speaker 1: the future. As soon as I have to wait a
Speaker 1: day for it, it's worth sixty percent as much. That's
Speaker 1: kind of a rough ballpark statistic. But again, this is
Speaker 1: all boiling down a very complex phenomenon to a really
Speaker 1: simple mathematical equation, which is losing a lot of richness.
Speaker 4: The simple fact.
Speaker 1: Remains, whether we're doing it implicitly or explicitly that we're impulsive.
Speaker 1: And then we face a challenge, which is okay if
Speaker 1: we recognize that in ourselves we want to make choices
Speaker 1: that are better, but impulsivity, the desire for instant gratification,
Speaker 1: often overrides our tendency to do the things that we
Speaker 1: know will at long term value. How do we solve
Speaker 1: for that? What can we do better? And there's really
Speaker 1: two approaches that research points to I think as most useful.
Speaker 1: One of them and they both involve changing the calculus
Speaker 1: of the choice. One of them is to try to
Speaker 1: make the behavior that you know is good for you
Speaker 1: in the long run more instantly gratifying, so there's not
Speaker 1: a tension anymore. And this is something that I l
Speaker 1: At Fishbach of the University of Chicago and Caitlin Wooley
Speaker 1: of Cornell University, I think have done absolutely brilliant research
Speaker 1: on showing that most of us don't get that it's
Speaker 1: important to make it fun to do whatever aligns with
Speaker 1: our long term goals.
Speaker 4: We think I.
Speaker 1: Should just find the most effective way to hit my goal, right.
Speaker 1: You know, if I want to work out more and
Speaker 1: get fit, I'm going to do the toughest, most efficient
Speaker 1: workout possible.
Speaker 4: That's how I'll get to my goal.
Speaker 1: But a small fraction of people appreciate, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: I should do what's most fun. Maybe I should go
Speaker 1: to zoomba class with my friends, and I'll really enjoy
Speaker 1: the workout, and I'll burn fewer calories, say, and I'll
Speaker 1: get fit a little slower, but I'll keep doing it.
Speaker 1: And what they're recent or has shown is those people
Speaker 1: have got it right. If you encourage people to find
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 4: I'll go back to the gym.
Speaker 1: You could imagine only letting yourself binge watch your favorite
Speaker 1: TV show while you're on the treadmill, and now all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you're looking forward to finding out what
Speaker 1: happens next in that show while you're exercising time flies
Speaker 1: at the gym. And maybe if you feel a little
Speaker 1: guilt watching that show out of the gym, well now
Speaker 1: that's gone because you're not allowed to anymore. You're only
Speaker 1: getting that temptation while doing something else could do with
Speaker 1: your favorite podcast and household chores, drinking a glass of
Speaker 1: wine while cooking a meal for your family, and favorite treat,
Speaker 1: heading to hit the books at school.
Speaker 4: There's all these.
Speaker 1: Different ways you can combine temptation, but that's with a chore.
Speaker 1: And that's one way we can overcome impulsivity is actually
Speaker 1: leaning into it, recognizing I just actually need to harness
Speaker 1: impulsivity so that it's pulling me in the right direction
Speaker 1: instead of the wrong one.
Speaker 3: I love that. For a while, I did some of
Speaker 3: that temptation bundling, like you said, where I would only
Speaker 3: allow myself to watch a certain show when I was
Speaker 3: on the treadmill, and I would do my run and
Speaker 3: then I would be on the treadmill walking for like
Speaker 3: an additional hour. So I don't want to turn it off.
Speaker 3: I mean, I blogged my problem became getting off the treadmill.
Speaker 4: It's a better problem than getting off the couch.
Speaker 3: At least that speaks to its efficacy as a solution.
Speaker 4: Exactly, exactly. That's great.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you used it yourself and found it helpful.
Speaker 3: So temptation bundling is one, you know. I love this
Speaker 3: idea that you talk about, And I think what you
Speaker 3: said there that I want to highlight is that we
Speaker 3: really underestimate how important this is to try and make
Speaker 3: what we're doing fun. It's why I feel like my
Speaker 3: exercise life has been a history of like forty different
Speaker 3: types of fitness over the last twenty years. It's because
Speaker 3: after I get bored, I'm like, well, what can I do?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Boxing? That sounds fun? Currently it's rock climbing, you know.
Speaker 3: But I'm always looking for how can I do this
Speaker 3: move my body in a way that I enjoy and
Speaker 3: find stimulating in fun. And I think, you know, asking
Speaker 3: ourselves those questions around everything we're trying to do is
Speaker 3: really helpful. How do we make this better? The other
Speaker 3: thing that I found, and I wonder if you can
Speaker 3: speak to this either in the literature, your experience is
Speaker 3: if we can't quite get to making the activity itself enjoyable,
Speaker 3: can we bring the reward in as close to the
Speaker 3: event as possible. And so for me, what I've done
Speaker 3: with exercise is it's gone from being something that I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: it will help me when I'm sixty, which is true,
Speaker 3: and it makes me look better if I do it consistently,
Speaker 3: which is true to the very cot. I feel better
Speaker 3: immediately when I'm done. I feel better in my body
Speaker 3: right now. So I'm not waiting on a reward that
Speaker 3: I have to visualize a month, three months, three years,
Speaker 3: ten years. I've at least brought it in closer. Are
Speaker 3: there studies that talk about ways to do that.
Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of things that come to mind. One
Speaker 1: is just that actually am the importance when we have
Speaker 1: a big goal of breaking it into sub goals so
Speaker 1: 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, et cetera. But one
Speaker 1: of them is that you start to see progress and
Speaker 1: you can give yourself a pat on the back for
Speaker 1: those sub goals that you've you've achieved, instead of having
Speaker 1: to wait for the reward you'll feel when you get
Speaker 1: to the end of the super goal. Another thing, though,
Speaker 1: that I think is related, which is sort of wrapping paper,
Speaker 1: just like this goal achieved and hurrahs. Wrapping paper is gamification.
Speaker 1: And so there's research suggesting that some of the bells
Speaker 1: and whistles of gamification, like being able to collect points
Speaker 1: and move up to another level if you're achieving more,
Speaker 1: or you 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 a little different when an employer is trying to
Speaker 1: use these and it feels like a coercion tactic.
Speaker 4: To get us to change our behavior.
Speaker 1: But if we are interested in changing this behavior, I
Speaker 1: want to exercise more, I want to learn a foreign
Speaker 1: language on my own time, I want to meditate more regularly,
Speaker 1: And we're struggling to feel those milestones on a daily
Speaker 1: basis are meaningful. Then these kinds of gamification bells and
Speaker 1: whistles do seem to actually motivate us. And there's this
Speaker 1: wonderful study I talk about in the book about Wikipedia
Speaker 1: volunteers who are obviously very intrinsically motivated to be getting
Speaker 1: on Wikipedia editing, adding their knowledge and improving this encyclopedia,
Speaker 1: but a lot churn so, meaning they joined the platform,
Speaker 1: they start editing, and then they decide, well, you know, yes,
Speaker 1: I've been trinsically motivated to do this, but it's a
Speaker 1: little bit of work ed encyclopedia, and maybe all these
Speaker 1: something else that's even more fun in the moment. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: in one randomized controlled trial led by UCLA's Yiana Gallis,
Speaker 1: just giving people a small award like a star an
Speaker 1: adalvice flower. In this case, it was a study sheeted
Speaker 1: in Switzerland to acknowledge their contributions. She randomly assigned some
Speaker 1: people to get that acknowledgement. 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, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I lost out. It was just some people were alerted
Speaker 1: that there was a special thing and they'd gotten it,
Speaker 1: and others never learned there was such a thing in
Speaker 1: the first place. Getting that little reward, that little sort
Speaker 1: of pat on the back, a tiny bit of gamification
Speaker 1: increased how much time they spent on the platform for
Speaker 1: up to a year later, and pretty substantially, so I
Speaker 1: think that's another important thing we can think about. Some
Speaker 1: forms of gamification, and even small tokens that we give
Speaker 1: ourselves or others who are trying to encourage, can help
Speaker 1: bring rewards forward and make us stay more engaged with
Speaker 1: the things that have mostly long term benefits.
Speaker 3: We all know that good habits are ways that we
Speaker 3: bring what we value into the world, and we each
Speaker 3: have our own list of what matters to us. Maybe
Speaker 3: you want to feel more energetic, improve your relationships, have
Speaker 3: a tidy your home, cook more instead of eating out
Speaker 3: for nights a week. Whatever habit you want to build,
Speaker 3: it's entirely possible to make it happen. But if you
Speaker 3: feel under equipped and overwhelmed to make real sustainable change,
Speaker 3: you are not alone. And that's why I've made my
Speaker 3: free masterclass open to everyone and available to watch any
Speaker 3: time now. It's called Habits that Stick. How to be
Speaker 3: remarkably consistent no matter what goal you set. You can
Speaker 3: grab it at one you feed dot net slash habits. Again,
Speaker 3: it's free and you can watch it whenever it works
Speaker 3: for you. Go to one you feed dot net slash habits.
Speaker 3: This makes me think of a area of discussion in
Speaker 3: behavior change about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. There's this basic
Speaker 3: idea that intrinsic motivation is better than extrinsic motivation, and
Speaker 3: by intrinsic, I mean you do the thing because you
Speaker 3: simply want to do the thing, and that extrinsic motivation
Speaker 3: getting an award, being recognized all these other things is
Speaker 3: less good and can actually be harmful two people who
Speaker 3: are intrinsically motivated, And I think that's a superficial reading
Speaker 3: of the science. So from your perspective, and this may
Speaker 3: be too broad of a question, but I'm wondering if
Speaker 3: you could speak to how we combine intrinsic and extrinsic
Speaker 3: motivation in wise ways so that we're getting the best
Speaker 3: of boast.
Speaker 1: I love that you asked that question, and actually I
Speaker 1: want to also take a moment to say that I
Speaker 1: think there's been some misunderstanding of the literature on what's
Speaker 1: called intrinsic motivation crowd out. I think a couple of
Speaker 1: books have written about this idea. It's gotten very widely
Speaker 1: believed that if you add an extrinsic reward like cash
Speaker 1: payment for something, suddenly it crowds out intrinsic motivation. And
Speaker 1: if that cash reward is removed, people won't actually want
Speaker 1: to keep doing it because they've relabeled I wasn't doing
Speaker 1: 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 they get paid. That
Speaker 1: signals to them, Okay, I get it, it's work and paid.
Speaker 1: Kids weren't getting paid, you know, they're getting stickers, yeah,
Speaker 1: little rewards, and that was very clear. When there's ambiguity
Speaker 1: and you really don't know why am I doing this,
Speaker 1: which is rarely the case as adults, I think then
Speaker 1: there's some evidence in child development studies that it can
Speaker 1: be harmful to add bells and whistles and these extrinsic motivators.
Speaker 1: That's really the only finding that points to this outside
Speaker 1: of a laboratory environment. And there's a really interesting study
Speaker 1: by U Chicago's Oleg or Minsky that came out recently
Speaker 1: that points to a potential reason that we've mixed things up,
Speaker 1: and that when we look at behavior in the field,
Speaker 1: out in the wild, instead of in like survey studies
Speaker 1: with undergraduates, we almost never see any evidence of this
Speaker 1: intrinsic motivation crowd out from incentives. And yet psychologists are
Speaker 1: sort of obsessed with the idea because they sometimes think
Speaker 1: they find it in the lab.
Speaker 4: What he thinks is.
Speaker 1: Going on is if I pay you a lot to
Speaker 1: do something in a really controlled laboratory environment, you do
Speaker 1: it a lot of it because wow, you're getting rewarded,
Speaker 1: and then you get tired, and so then I take
Speaker 1: away the rewards, and you tend to be more tired
Speaker 1: than the person who wasn't rewarded.
Speaker 4: So for a little while you.
Speaker 1: Actually don't get quite as much done because you're so exhausted.
Speaker 1: But then if you know, watch for long enough, you
Speaker 1: kind of pick back up and you catch up because
Speaker 1: you get through that exhaustion. So he thinks it's just
Speaker 1: a burnout effect in the lab. We don't see it
Speaker 1: in the field. So anyway, that was a long tangent,
Speaker 1: but I do think it's really important because I think
Speaker 1: there's this common misconception that if I add bells and whistles,
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 exercise with the TV watching, give ourselves badges
Speaker 1: and stars, and still be just as motivated on the
Speaker 1: other end for almost all of these behaviors that we
Speaker 1: care about, because they're the ones that we're intrinsically motivated
Speaker 1: to do, and we don't have to worry about about
Speaker 1: that nasty side effect that has been I think overblown.
Speaker 3: Oh thank you, that's very good to hear. It's always
Speaker 3: seemed common sense to me. And I know common sense
Speaker 3: is not always a good indicator in human behavior, not always,
Speaker 3: but very often common sense maybe when you get to
Speaker 3: quantum physics is no good. But it's always seemed to
Speaker 3: me that if you can stack incentives, that seems positive.
Speaker 3: It seems to be the more reasons I have to
Speaker 3: do something like I work out because A I feel
Speaker 3: better right away. B I get a fancy badge. C.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be healthy when I'm sixty five. D my
Speaker 3: girlfriend likes the way I look like. All those like
Speaker 3: seems to me and in my life have always been
Speaker 3: helpful to make something more lasting. I feel like the
Speaker 3: more motivations I have the better versus trying to As
Speaker 3: you've said, seems very strange to pare it down to
Speaker 3: only the purer one.
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more. I guess the one bit of
Speaker 1: subtlety I would add to that is is that, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it does seem like not always are the benefits additive
Speaker 1: When we layer on twenty seven different things, they aren't
Speaker 1: just purely the sum of their parts, because sometimes you
Speaker 1: have decreasing marginal returns. Say if you're already if you're
Speaker 1: already pretty motivated, and motivation isn't your biggest barrier, it's
Speaker 1: say time. You know you just don't have time, so
Speaker 1: you just like keep layering on the extra reasons to
Speaker 1: be motivated, but you haven't solved the underlying problem. You're
Speaker 1: going to start hitting a wall on how much value
Speaker 1: you get out of it. So I do think one
Speaker 1: of the most useful things to think about when we're
Speaker 1: trying to, you know, throw the whole kitten kaboodle at
Speaker 1: a problem is the more diversity we deploy in terms
Speaker 1: of the parts of the problem, which is almost always
Speaker 1: multiply determined, that we solve, as opposed to trying to
Speaker 1: just solve one part of it really really well with
Speaker 1: a bunch of different tools. That diversity seems to add
Speaker 1: more value than throwing everything at one element of the problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that's a really good point. It's why
Speaker 3: I've always loved bj far Behavior Change Model. I don't
Speaker 3: know if you're familiar with it. What I like about
Speaker 3: it is it talks about prompts, It talks about motivation,
Speaker 3: it talks about ability. It really just makes it clear
Speaker 3: like you've got to work on all these different areas.
Speaker 3: And I think that's the other thing that your book
Speaker 3: does really really well is it points out, you know,
Speaker 3: again you've got to look for where is your weakness.
Speaker 3: If your problem is not motivation to your point that
Speaker 3: you just made, adding more motivation is not going to
Speaker 3: get you the result, because that's not where your problem is.
Speaker 1: Well. BJ Fog certainly has a lot of common sense,
Speaker 1: and as you said, I think common sense is a
Speaker 1: really important part of this equation. It's not we need
Speaker 1: sort of a combination of common sense and science guiding
Speaker 1: us in this domain.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, that makes me want to completely redirect this conversation,
Speaker 3: but I'm not going to do it. I'm going to
Speaker 3: resist the temptation. I'm going to resist the impulsivity to
Speaker 3: ask a ton of questions about that, because I want
Speaker 3: to stay focused on your work, not someone else's work.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about we've sort of hit on this a
Speaker 3: little bit by talking about adding these other devices, but
Speaker 3: in your chapter on procrastination you talk a lot about
Speaker 3: commitment devices, and I'd like to talk about commitment devices
Speaker 3: because I love the idea. But I particularly want to
Speaker 3: start there with the discussion you have about people who
Speaker 3: are either sophisticates or naifs. I don't know if I'm
Speaker 3: saying that word right.
Speaker 1: I would never have known either except for having taken
Speaker 1: a class where someone else pronounced it, and I assume
Speaker 1: they were right.
Speaker 4: They say naives naives.
Speaker 3: Okay, thank you for that, but we now may all
Speaker 3: be wrong. So I've often remarked that as somebody who
Speaker 3: did way more reading than anything else and still does
Speaker 3: more than I listened to podcasts more than I see video.
Speaker 3: Every once in a while, when I'm doing this show,
Speaker 3: I come across a word that I've read that I
Speaker 3: feel very confident. But I'm like, I have never heard
Speaker 3: it spoken before. How on earth do you say that?
Speaker 1: I have the same thing all the time. And anyway,
Speaker 1: we have some famous examples in my family. My favorite
Speaker 1: is my grandmother said place bow instead of placebo. And
Speaker 1: actually just this week, my dad was talking about an
Speaker 1: emmertis professor and I was like, do you mean emeritis,
Speaker 1: which is what you call professor after they retire. Anyway,
Speaker 1: there you go.
Speaker 3: Yes, So naives versus knives, as I said it, let's
Speaker 3: talk about sophisticates and knives.
Speaker 4: I think this is.
Speaker 1: Such a fascinating topic, and I should note that I'm
Speaker 1: borrowing from Matt Rabin 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
Speaker 1: everybody I'm sure, there's some weird example we could find
Speaker 1: somewhere in the world, but pretty much all of us
Speaker 1: are present biased, right, We've talked about present bias. We
Speaker 1: all overweight the now and underweight the latter, but we
Speaker 1: have different degrees of awareness of this problem. And by
Speaker 1: the way, I think we could extend this from talking
Speaker 1: about present bias to other barriers to change and other
Speaker 1: limitations of the human mind. But present bias was the
Speaker 1: topic they were interested in. And so those of us
Speaker 1: who are aware of our present bias and interested in
Speaker 1: fixing it, taking steps to actually resolve the conflicts that arise,
Speaker 1: so that we make good decisions, so we save for retirement,
Speaker 1: so we don't smoke, so that we you know, stay
Speaker 1: fit and healthy 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.
Speaker 4: 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 an 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 pint that I put in
Speaker 1: the refrigerator at one sitting, I'll be able to resist
Speaker 1: that temptation. The next time I won't scream at 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
Speaker 1: temptation that sort of slap our hand if we do
Speaker 1: the wrong thing. So the incentives are aligned to do
Speaker 1: the 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: going to get a speeding ticket if you get caught.
Speaker 1: So a sophisticate is going to look to set up
Speaker 1: the same kind of structure on themselves that government has
Speaker 1: set up with speeding tickets. Look for a way to
Speaker 1: prevent themselves in the future from giving into temptation, and
Speaker 1: will be interested in things like a bank account that
Speaker 1: you can't take money out of until you've reached a
Speaker 1: predetermined savings goal. That would be interesting to a sophisticate.
Speaker 1: To someone else, they'd say, you'd better give me a
Speaker 1: higher interest rate if you're gonna not let me out
Speaker 1: my money. But someone who recognizes they might be tempted
Speaker 1: to take money out early may say, I would love
Speaker 1: a bank account that I can't get into until I've
Speaker 1: reached a goal. That sounds great, it's gonna help me,
Speaker 1: So you'd start seeing products pop up. That's the prediction
Speaker 1: of their model that cater to people eager for this
Speaker 1: kind of commitment. Another product famously predicted by this model,
Speaker 1: that of course it does exist in many states is
Speaker 1: gambling self exclusion lists. People can sign themselves up to
Speaker 1: not be allowed into casinos if they know they have
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, that the smell of
Speaker 1: alcohol vomit if you have a sip. Why would you
Speaker 1: do that, Well, because you recognize you might be tempted
Speaker 1: to start drinking if you haven't, and you want to
Speaker 1: prevent your future self from giving into that temptation. So
Speaker 1: commitment devices are tools that sophisticates find appealing that anyone
Speaker 1: else would look askance and say, why.
Speaker 4: Would you do that? Why would you take somebody that's
Speaker 4: going to make you vomit.
Speaker 1: Why would you restrict your access to a gambling establishment
Speaker 1: that's just giving yourself less places to have fun?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Why would you do these things? But a sophisticate has
Speaker 1: a rational. So commitment devices are really powerful. I think
Speaker 1: we under use them. And my favorite kind is just
Speaker 1: a really simple cash commitment device where you can penalize
Speaker 1: yourself with money if you don't achieve your goals. And
Speaker 1: there are various websites where you can put money on
Speaker 1: the line that you'll forfeit and declare a referee who
Speaker 1: will hold you accountable for achieving those goals, and they work.
Speaker 1: So there's a great study actually on smoking showing that
Speaker 1: when people who wanted to quit smoking were randomly assigned
Speaker 1: to one of two groups. One gets sort of the
Speaker 1: traditional here are the tools for quitting. Another gets those tools,
Speaker 1: plus is told you can put money into this account,
Speaker 1: your own money for the next six months, as much
Speaker 1: as you want. If you fail in nicotine or cotinine
Speaker 1: you'ur intest. Then in six months, though that money is
Speaker 1: going to just disappear. We're going to take it away.
Speaker 1: And having just access to that opportunity to put money
Speaker 1: on the line that they would forfeit if they didn't
Speaker 1: achieve their goal help people quit smoking. They quit at
Speaker 1: a thirty percent higher rate in that group than in
Speaker 1: the group that only had traditional tactics. So that's where
Speaker 1: sophisticates and knives lead. I think it's a really valuable insight,
Speaker 1: and that the more sophisticated we can get, the more
Speaker 1: strategic we can get, the more we can recognize we
Speaker 1: can manage ourselves and help ourselves succeed when we face
Speaker 1: present bias. By building some constraints and incentives that align
Speaker 1: with our long term goals, the better off will be.
Speaker 3: As you said, if you are a sophisticate, you should
Speaker 3: intentionally lead yourself to commitment devices and yet given how
Speaker 3: many people actually do, leads to the conclusion that we
Speaker 3: may be more naive than we think we are.
Speaker 4: I think that's right.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a one thing in between two, which is
Speaker 1: I know I have these challenges, I know they're real,
Speaker 1: but maybe I don't think I need this strong of
Speaker 1: a commitment. Maybe I think if I just tell my
Speaker 1: friends I'm going to do it, you know, maybe if
Speaker 1: I just post on social media, that's enough that we
Speaker 1: aren't willing to put the teeth the incentives behind it,
Speaker 1: maybe at as high a rate as we should, given
Speaker 1: the huge added benefit of making those kinds of hard commitments,
Speaker 1: because backing out is tougher when it's a hard commitment.
Speaker 1: I think we over rely on soft commitments tools like shame,
Speaker 1: where we, you know, tell other people and then we're
Speaker 1: embarrassed that we didn't follow through. And maybe not often
Speaker 1: enough do we clonk down ten thousand dollars that'll go
Speaker 1: to a charitable organization. We hate our life savings if
Speaker 1: we don't achieve a goal, and you know, of course
Speaker 1: that could have really bad consequences.
Speaker 3: Right, You may not be that committed.
Speaker 1: You might not be committed enough that it's a good idea.
Speaker 4: Actually, it depends how important this.
Speaker 3: Goal is exactly. I think it points to the two
Speaker 3: things you talked about there. I think one is that
Speaker 3: I'm not at certain of how much support I need,
Speaker 3: you know, and then the other being I'm not that
Speaker 3: committed yet. I think that first point is a really
Speaker 3: important one because I have seen this over and over
Speaker 3: in recovery from addiction, which is that to me sometimes
Speaker 3: seems like I don't know that the nature of behavior
Speaker 3: change science would support this, which is, how do we
Speaker 3: get better at changing over time as we've tried to
Speaker 3: change something multiple times. I've seen this in again, this
Speaker 3: is anecdotal watching people in recovery and also working with
Speaker 3: people in coaching. Is that in recovery. I think for me,
Speaker 3: I came in and I was like, all right, this
Speaker 3: is a problem. Clearly I've got a problem. I'm going
Speaker 3: to do this thing that seems seems like a pretty
Speaker 3: big step. And then I do that thing, and maybe
Speaker 3: it works for a little while, doesn't work for very long, whatever,
Speaker 3: I have some mixed degree of success, which then leads
Speaker 3: me to go, oh, well, maybe I need to do
Speaker 3: a little bit more. And then the next time I
Speaker 3: realized I need to do a little bit more. And
Speaker 3: so it sometimes seems that the process of trying to
Speaker 3: change can lead us from a naive to a sophistic
Speaker 3: kid right where we realize over time like, oh I
Speaker 3: thought this was going to be easier to solve than
Speaker 3: it is. I need more support. I need more help,
Speaker 3: whether it's commitment devices, whether it's external people helping us.
Speaker 3: Is there anything in the science that sort of talks
Speaker 3: about this we get better at making the change the
Speaker 3: more we try it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a wonderful question. There is certainly evidence of
Speaker 1: learning around so many settings, and change, I think is
Speaker 1: no different than many others where experience builds wisdom and
Speaker 1: better outcomes. I'm trying to think of specific examples that
Speaker 1: I can point to where we have sort of large
Speaker 1: longitudinal studies and see people achieving better outcomes over life.
Speaker 1: There's certainly evidence that with age, many temptations aren't as alluring, right,
Speaker 1: and so you know, just like thinking about research on adolescents.
Speaker 1: Of course, 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 thing's going on for my students anyway. So
Speaker 1: there's wisdom, there's pre rendal cortex development. It's a little
Speaker 1: bit confounded, but we do know that with age we
Speaker 1: see better outcomes than so many walks of life, and
Speaker 1: in general that there are strong learning effects from experience.
Speaker 1: 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, I will deploy a
Speaker 1: tactic that is science backed, maybe from Katie's book, and
Speaker 1: then I will get straight to the finish line. They
Speaker 1: are going to be sorely disappointed because the nature of change,
Speaker 1: as you said, is you know, maybe like make little
Speaker 1: progress and you stumble, you need something else, You need
Speaker 1: 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 missed ups. 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's resolutions, one of the coolest things
Speaker 1: we've found is they come up really frequently, like every
Speaker 1: Monday is a fresh start, and it comes with this
Speaker 1: renewed optimism and a sense that you know, Okay, last
Speaker 1: week I didn't do it, but this week I'm more
Speaker 1: likely to be able to. Every time we can, even
Speaker 1: a small chapter break in life gives us that renewed optimism.
Speaker 1: And I'm really glad we have that because there are
Speaker 1: all these stumbles. I think it's probably really adaptive to
Speaker 1: be built with this resilience that shows us a new
Speaker 1: opportunity and the ability to give ourselves a clean slate,
Speaker 1: and we need to do that, I think even more
Speaker 1: often than we do naturally.
Speaker 3: I couldn't agree more. I say to coaching clients all
Speaker 3: the time, like you're going to get off track. The
Speaker 3: question is just when and how are we going to respond?
Speaker 3: And how long will you be off track. And I
Speaker 3: think with myself and things that I try and do
Speaker 3: very regularly, I still get off track. It's just that
Speaker 3: my degree of variance is smaller. It's instead of being
Speaker 3: off track for a week, a month, six months, it's
Speaker 3: like I'm off track for a day or two and
Speaker 3: then I back on and those things sort of come
Speaker 3: out that they are sort of rounding errors in the
Speaker 3: long run. But I think you speak to something that
Speaker 3: I kind of want to emphasize here that you emphasize
Speaker 3: in the book, which is that we need to keep
Speaker 3: working on behavior change. There's an idea we have. I
Speaker 3: think it's why habits sell so well, because there's an
Speaker 3: idea that if I can form a habit, then I
Speaker 3: will never have to think of this thing again, and
Speaker 3: it will be solved, and it will be on autopilot.
Speaker 3: And it seems that while some things may be that way,
Speaker 3: things that are very small like brushing my teeth, perhaps
Speaker 3: bigger things like move my body for forty five minutes,
Speaker 3: five days a week, those things, while I think habits
Speaker 3: are very helpful and make it easier. You talk very
Speaker 3: much in the book, and I think it's so important
Speaker 3: that in a life that isn't predictable and routine. Building
Speaker 3: a set it and forget it habit forever just isn't
Speaker 3: going to happen. And if we think it is, we
Speaker 3: actually can hinder our change. Say a little bit more
Speaker 3: about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love that you brought that up.
Speaker 1: We did this research actually trying to create exercise habits
Speaker 1: with about twenty five hundred Google employees. They all wanted
Speaker 1: to kickstart a lasting workout habit, and we tested two
Speaker 1: tactics for doing that, sort of competing hypotheses about the
Speaker 1: best way to help set someone up for a long
Speaker 1: term change. We basically had a month to kickstart this
Speaker 1: habit and then we were going to look and see
Speaker 1: what happened after the month was over. So, with different
Speaker 1: reward schemes, we got both groups to exercise at the
Speaker 1: same frequency, but one group went in a more consistent fashion,
Speaker 1: meaning their workouts were more likely to be always at
Speaker 1: the same time. So actually, in this particular group, eighty
Speaker 1: five percent of their workouts were at the same time.
Speaker 1: So they maybe picked seven am. That's when I go
Speaker 1: to the gym, and eighty five percent of their workouts
Speaker 1: over this month were at that time. The other group
Speaker 1: they go at the same frequency, but they mix up
Speaker 1: the timing more so in that case, fifty percent of
Speaker 1: their workouts only we're 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 the more sustained habit. Will
Speaker 1: it be the people who've built this really consistent routine,
Speaker 1: or will it be the people who've been more flexible
Speaker 1: in the way they approached habit formation. And eighty percent
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 when we
Speaker 1: looked at why, like, how could this be that those
Speaker 1: people who were less consistent in the way that they
Speaker 1: exercised 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'd been so routine had really brittle habits. So if
Speaker 1: it's a seven am exerciser that that was what they'd
Speaker 1: gotten used to. They're still going at seven am a
Speaker 1: decent frequency. But if they ever missed their seven am workout,
Speaker 1: that's it.
Speaker 4: They don't go. There's there's no hope for them.
Speaker 1: The folks who were more flexible, who were say a
Speaker 1: seven am normal workout person, they still go at seven
Speaker 1: am and a pretty decent clip actually, but when they
Speaker 1: missed seven am, they have a fallback plan because they've
Speaker 1: built flexibility into their routine. So, Okay, seven am didn't happen,
Speaker 1: but I'll go at noon or I'll go at five.
Speaker 1: And that led to more consistenty and their actual exercise
Speaker 1: habit because they understood life throws you curveballs and they
Speaker 1: were prepared for it, whereas these other folks had these rigid,
Speaker 1: brittle habits that weren't robust to life. Frankly, and I
Speaker 1: think it's just a really important lesson in general about
Speaker 1: the fact that our environments are not certain, they are
Speaker 1: not stable, and we need to have flexibility built in
Speaker 1: when we're trying to create something that will be sustained
Speaker 1: and have recovery plans when the first best option doesn't
Speaker 1: pan out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's so true. I always say to
Speaker 3: clients to build any sort of behavior that lasts over time,
Speaker 3: you need a particular blend of stubbornness and flexibility, Like
Speaker 3: there has to be a certain stubbornness, like I'm going
Speaker 3: to do this.
Speaker 1: Right and no matter what habit, as opposed to an
Speaker 1: only if habit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly, And you've got to be really flexible
Speaker 3: in how it happens. And particularly again, this gets to
Speaker 3: the nature of different people's lives, kind of taking us
Speaker 3: back to the beginning. A nineteen year old male may
Speaker 3: be able to structure his environment a way that he
Speaker 3: can make it to the gym most every day at
Speaker 3: seven am. A single mother of three children, on the
Speaker 3: other hand, almost assuredly is going to have interruptions to
Speaker 3: whatever routine she sets up. And so, you know, knowing
Speaker 3: the nature of your life and your circumstances speaks a
Speaker 3: little bit also, I think to which type of routine
Speaker 3: works better for you?
Speaker 1: Yes, no, that almost certainly has to be true. I
Speaker 1: will say we couldn't identify the single mothers and eighteen
Speaker 1: year old men in our study well enough to prove
Speaker 1: that we actually did want to see are there sort
Speaker 1: of different job types that have more or less flexibility
Speaker 1: and where we would maybe see a reversal of this pattern,
Speaker 1: And at least among the Google employees and our study
Speaker 1: there wasn't enough variability. We never saw a reversal. But
Speaker 1: it almost has to be true that at some extreme
Speaker 1: in the life that's truly, really, really rigid, that you
Speaker 1: might expect those consistent routines could have a different impact.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I think the other thing, and I know
Speaker 3: we've got to wrap up here in a second, so
Speaker 3: I'm going to just this will kind of be our
Speaker 3: last I think the other nuance to that, and why
Speaker 3: behavior people were confused by this study is that I
Speaker 3: think when we're trying to start something and absent other motivation,
Speaker 3: and this study you did had motivation that I think
Speaker 3: rewarded people to make it to the gym. So when
Speaker 3: you're trying to start something and with different motivations, in general,
Speaker 3: you're going to have more success if you're specific about
Speaker 3: what you're going to do when, But you have to
Speaker 3: evolve from that into the flexibility. So specificity at least
Speaker 3: seems to me a good starting tool absolutely, but then
Speaker 3: you've got to evolve into being flexible.
Speaker 1: And to be fair, actually everyone in both groups in
Speaker 1: the study had a plan around their ideal time to exercise,
Speaker 1: got reminders at that ideal time, and it was just
Speaker 1: a question of basically how much sort of pressure was
Speaker 1: put on always doing it at that ideal time versus
Speaker 1: sometimes doing it at that ideal time but having other
Speaker 1: times they.
Speaker 4: Tried as well.
Speaker 1: So absolutely, this is in no way an indictment of
Speaker 1: the importance of planning. And I am such a fan
Speaker 1: of planning, and if you read my book you'll discover
Speaker 1: an entire chapter devoted to that. Yes, it's really important,
Speaker 1: but yeah, as you said, after the plan, you need
Speaker 1: a backup plan.
Speaker 3: Really yep, and we have jumped around a lot. The
Speaker 3: book is wonderful. I mean, I just found it really
Speaker 3: brought a lot of different studies together in a really
Speaker 3: helpful way. So i'd encourage listeners to check it out.
Speaker 3: And Katie, thank you so much for taking the time
Speaker 3: to come on. I've really enjoyed this.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. This has been
Speaker 1: tremendously fun. I really appreciate the invitation.
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