The Art of Manliness - The Best Tools for Personal Change

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast now there's no

00:00:11.240 shortage of information out there on how to change how to lose weight exercise more curb

00:00:15.980 your anger quit smoking and every other kind of habit someone might want to pick up or drop

00:00:20.220 but despite this avalanche of information you're probably struggling to change just as much as you

00:00:24.360 ever did what you need is an actual strategy you need to identify what particular barrier

00:00:28.880 is keeping you from a particular goal and a specific solution to that specific roadblock

00:00:33.060 my guest today is well positioned to help you cut through the voluminous noise around personal

00:00:36.920 change and hone in on both sides of this equation her name is katie milkman and she's a warden

00:00:41.040 professor who spent her career studying behavioral economics and she's also the author of the book

00:00:44.840 how to change the science of getting from where you are to where you want to be on the show today

00:00:49.580 katie and i walked through common reasons people aren't successful in changing and the best research

00:00:53.840 back tools for turning uphill battles into downhill ones we discuss the ideal time to begin a new

00:00:58.860 habit and the power of fresh starts how to get motivated to tackle something when there's more

00:01:03.000 pleasurable things you'd rather be doing how to use commitment devices to stay the course while

00:01:07.120 giving advice to someone else can help you take that advice yourself and the crucial importance of

00:01:11.000 surrounding yourself with peers who are better but not too much better than you are after the show's

00:01:15.680 over check out our show notes at awim.is slash tools for change

00:01:19.220 katie milkman welcome to the show thank you so much for having me so you got a new book out called

00:01:32.900 how to change and basically these are all the insights that you've gotten from your career as

00:01:38.000 a behavioral economist on what works what doesn't work and helping people people change but i'd like to

00:01:44.080 talk about your background because you started off your academic career as a phd in engineering

00:01:49.540 and then you made the switch to behavioral economics and that seems like a big switch

00:01:53.900 it was a weird switch yeah so how did that happen and why the focus on behavior change

00:01:59.360 yeah thanks for asking those questions i was well one reason that it happened and i bet lots of

00:02:05.920 people can relate to this it's like i started graduate school too young and i didn't really know what i was

00:02:10.200 interested in i went straight from undergraduate where i studied engineering into an engineering

00:02:15.440 graduate program and i hadn't really found my passion yet i was just sort of doing the thing

00:02:20.660 that seemed kind of interesting and i was good at it i went to this graduate degree program it was

00:02:26.360 actually joint in engineering and business computer science and business and i thought you know the

00:02:30.960 internet is this cool new thing it seems like it's reshaping business maybe i can study something

00:02:34.900 related to that and it'll be interesting and i ended up having to take a microeconomics graduate

00:02:40.440 sequence just to get my degree it was a requirement and i walked into this class and i'd hated economics

00:02:47.120 as an undergrad i mean absolutely hated it i was like all the models of human behavior that i'm being

00:02:52.500 forced to learn in this class make no sense everything i'm being told is that people are optimizing machines

00:02:57.600 they're perfectly rational they do these cost benefit analyses at the you know at warp speed and they come to the

00:03:03.200 right conclusion and i was looking around at the people i knew and and myself frankly and saying

00:03:07.420 are you kidding me so in undergrad i'd hated it but in graduate school i was actually i was at harvard

00:03:13.440 and harvard was this hotbed for a new field which is behavioral economics which is a field that

00:03:18.980 basically says there are systematic and predictable ways in which people are imperfect

00:03:23.440 we can model them and we can capture what people will do predict what people will do much better

00:03:30.400 once we understand that so we can acknowledge that people are impulsive that they discount things

00:03:35.280 they'll get in the future dramatically and overweight things that'll happen now like you know i want the

00:03:39.720 cheetos i don't care if it's not good for me and i want to sit on the couch i don't care if it's not

00:03:43.440 good for me and we can we could model all sorts of other things and just like my mind was blown it was

00:03:49.320 like love at first sight once i encountered it and then once i fell in love i was able to convince

00:03:55.360 some of the people i was working with to be supportive and find some new people to add and get

00:04:00.160 involved with and and you know i was lucky to be in one of those phd programs where they're just glad

00:04:05.120 to have you being productive and they let me do my own thing and and my career has been following that

00:04:10.800 path ever since of of studying the peculiar ways that people make mistakes and then i got really

00:04:15.440 interested in trying to figure out how to help people change how do we how do we help them overcome

00:04:20.840 those mistakes make better decisions once we understand what the tripping points are all right

00:04:25.680 so let's talk about this book we talk about behavior change and i think everyone who's listening

00:04:30.560 this podcast has attempted at some point in their life probably multiple times some sort of behavior

00:04:35.900 modification in their life whether they wanted to lose weight start exercising quit procrastinating

00:04:41.280 uh stop drinking stop smoking you name it but most of those attempts fail so what do we know

00:04:48.820 what is the research stage what makes behavior change so hard well the answer is a lot of things

00:04:55.940 that's why we so often fail there's a lot of things and i think one of the biggest mistakes we make when

00:05:02.300 we're trying to change is that we ignore the litany of things that get in the way we don't focus on what

00:05:08.920 are the specific barriers we're facing and we look for sort of like you know bright shiny appealing

00:05:14.700 sounding strategies if any at all sometimes we just say you know i'm just gonna do it i won't even look

00:05:19.480 for a strategy but when we look for strategies we often look to you know sort of appealing jingles

00:05:26.120 like you know i'm gonna set big audacious goals or i'm gonna visualize success which offer a one-size-fits-all

00:05:32.480 approach and don't take into account what is actually holding you back what are the specific barriers

00:05:38.100 so the big thing that i have found in my career is that if if we actually step back and try to

00:05:43.980 diagnose what is specifically standing in the way of this particular change attempt and then tailor our

00:05:50.140 solution that we suggest to that barrier we can get much farther so let me give you some examples of

00:05:55.960 the kinds of barriers and that have very different solutions imagine that you're talking about somebody

00:06:02.680 who isn't taking their medication regularly and it's an important prescription that will you know

00:06:07.020 potentially prevent them from having a heart attack it could be that they're not doing it because they forget

00:06:12.980 they just can't remember they cannot keep track it could be they're not doing it because it has

00:06:18.100 a not so great side effect and even though they know it's really important to stay alive and that's a bigger

00:06:22.860 deal than this unpleasant side effect they just every day they'd rather not experience that side effect and they

00:06:27.420 keep not taking it the solutions need to be really different to those two

00:06:31.940 problems even though they it's the same fundamental problem so some of the common barriers to change

00:06:38.400 include just getting started you know finding the moment where you're gonna say okay i'm gonna do this

00:06:43.220 i'm taking the leap i'm gonna actually make the change another barrier that's really common is that

00:06:48.440 it's not instantly gratifying to do the things that are good for us in the long run so we

00:06:52.480 we give into temptations we procrastinate sometimes we forget as i mentioned and forgetting and flake

00:06:58.660 out i think are underappreciated people tend to say i'd never forget to do something that's important

00:07:02.860 to me and yet if it's not salient if it's not top of mind if it's not at the top of the list

00:07:07.220 we often don't get to those goals another challenge is whether or not we believe in ourselves like do we

00:07:13.900 really think we can and then finally you know are our peers supporting us our peers showing us what's

00:07:18.940 possible and and building our belief in ourself up or are they shutting it down so all of those

00:07:25.220 are really different challenges and they have different solutions that they that they need to

00:07:30.240 tackle them and each person can have a different challenge it's not one size fits all exactly and

00:07:35.660 and each person might have a constellation of those challenges right and so it's not it's also not like oh

00:07:41.040 you're you're a forgetting person like they're all different some some barriers sometimes some goals

00:07:47.320 there are multiple barriers that are standing in the way so it's all about figuring out which are the

00:07:52.060 things that are holding you back and then i know i know we'll get into this but then there's

00:07:56.380 different sets of solutions that science can point us to that'll help and make it so that those things

00:08:01.840 aren't such big obstacles so we can surmount them and also isn't it's not just different for each

00:08:06.100 person like within a person like different goals can have different obstacles like you might have a

00:08:10.180 problem right so it's situational and that's that's tricky too totally makes it trickier because you

00:08:15.980 think oh it works for you know when i did this thing it worked for you know getting up on time

00:08:20.140 but it's not working for this other thing well it's not going to work for that thing it's a different

00:08:24.020 obstacle exactly exactly and i think too too often we make the exact kind of misattribution you just

00:08:31.440 described like something works in one domain and we think we can just use that same tool somewhere

00:08:36.240 else because we're not recognizing the importance of diagnosing what's different here and now that i

00:08:41.860 understand that obstacle maybe i could actually figure out a solution that's better suited to it

00:08:45.960 all right so let's talk about some of these obstacles and like this potential solutions

00:08:49.960 for them and the first one you mentioned there just a minute ago was the obstacle of just getting

00:08:54.200 started so first off like what gets in the way of people just getting started with a behavior change

00:08:59.240 and what are some tactics that people can do to overcome that yeah it's such a great question

00:09:04.100 there's a lot of things that that keep us from getting started we don't really believe that we can we're

00:09:10.980 not motivated to do it right now this doesn't feel like the right time or we're not even

00:09:14.800 sort of looking up from the day-to-day minutiae of life and and thinking big picture about a goal

00:09:19.740 so i i got this amazing question about a decade ago when i was visiting google that led me to start

00:09:27.240 thinking about this particular barrier and the question came after i'd presented some of my research

00:09:32.120 on different tactics we could use to help people change for the better when it came to wellness and

00:09:37.160 health when it came to their financial decisions so i'd presented some of my research and an hr

00:09:42.080 leader at google raised his hand and he said okay katie totally convinced that we should be

00:09:46.500 using some of these tools to nudge changes and behavior but when should we offer them to our

00:09:51.380 employees is there some ideal time when people are going to be really chomping at the bit to

00:09:55.880 form exercise habits and you know start saving in their 401k and figure out how to be more

00:10:01.100 productive at work like when is the best time and i still remember the light bulb going off because

00:10:06.640 it was like one of those moments that was like oh my god it's such a good question and i really

00:10:11.420 didn't think that academics had answered that question so there was also a light bulb that went

00:10:17.980 off that immediately occurred to me like i had a i had a fast answer that might occur to you too and

00:10:23.460 that fast answer was like maybe new year's you know we know about new year's resolutions that seems

00:10:28.480 like a time when people are more motivated to pursue goals like 40 of americans make new year's

00:10:33.820 resolutions but what i realized as i started thinking more about that and got back to my

00:10:38.120 office in philadelphia and started talking to my amazing graduate student at the time

00:10:42.020 heng chen dai who worked with me on this and and jason reese another professor at the time who was at

00:10:48.320 wharton we were all struck by the idea that maybe new year's is just one example of a broader category

00:10:55.740 of dates or moments in our lives when we feel like we have a new beginning or a fresh start

00:11:01.500 and when we're more motivated to pursue our goals potentially and and we started doing some reading

00:11:06.160 about you know how memory works and how we think about time and how we think about our lives and it

00:11:11.060 turns out we tend to think about our lives as if they're novels and we think about the chapters in

00:11:17.220 our lives right like oh those were the college years and the boston years and the consulting years and so

00:11:21.960 on and and the chapter breaks in our lives are moments when we feel like we have a fresh start

00:11:27.560 and a new beginning and we're more likely to step back and think big picture about our goals we're

00:11:32.860 more open to starting something new we feel like you know maybe i didn't succeed at quitting smoking

00:11:38.820 you know before but this is the new me and the new me is going to be able to do it so we shed some of

00:11:43.780 that pessimism and we've shown that this can be the case in our research even with small chapter breaks

00:11:50.340 like the start of a new week or the start of a new month following a birthday following a holiday

00:11:55.140 um that feels like a fresh start like labor day or of course new year's even if we mention the

00:12:00.940 start of spring to people that can be motivating so we see it both naturally occurring in our data

00:12:05.320 so people are more likely to set goals on a popular goal setting website after those dates that i just

00:12:10.280 described they're more likely to go to the gym they're more likely to search for the term diet

00:12:14.560 on google and if we highlight dates like this for them when they're trying to choose a time to pursue

00:12:20.060 a goal that they find them more attractive and that's the time people gravitate towards

00:12:24.400 so if we invite someone to start saving for instance in a 401k and we say hey you know if

00:12:29.820 your birthday's in three months we'd randomly assign some people and say do you want to start saving in

00:12:34.180 three months another group would say do you want to start saving after your birthday and the group

00:12:38.440 invited to save after their birthday turns out to say yes a lot more and they save significantly more

00:12:43.860 over the next nine months because of that so there's all these different ways that we've found fresh

00:12:48.140 starts can be motivating and what's really interesting about them is i just described a bunch that are

00:12:53.400 purely psychological but of course they can be even more potent when not only do you have that

00:12:58.280 psychological chapter break but some sort of real refresh in life like you move to a new community or

00:13:03.760 a new job and now not only do you have that psychological fresh start and and sense that

00:13:08.820 you can begin again but you literally may not have routines or bad habits to trip you up and you can

00:13:14.680 start building new ones from a blank slate so the idea there is like if you're going to start a

00:13:19.840 behavior change like look for one of those fresh start dates it could be the start i mean big one

00:13:24.260 new year's birthday you know for me i i guess because i've just been so indoctrinated since

00:13:29.480 you know elementary school but like august september like the start of a school year yeah i still be

00:13:35.840 really potent it still is like potent like ah this is i'm gonna really hunker down and i don't i'm and

00:13:40.720 you're not even a professor like me yeah and i don't yeah for some reason i i still no school year

00:13:45.900 is a big one and in our study of undergraduate gym attendance the start of both semesters showed

00:13:51.760 these huge effects these big fresh start effects in terms of more more exercise but i i share your

00:13:57.600 feeling and that's sort of also a post-labor day effect we got used to that rhythm and ritual for

00:14:02.020 so much of our life of going back to school and just seeing other people going back to it and lots

00:14:06.040 of summer vacations or in august it always feels like a fresh start to people and so the what's going

00:14:12.320 on there's just like you just feel more motivated that's why you are more likely to follow through

00:14:16.620 on behavior change at these fresh starts yeah you feel more motivated you feel more disconnected

00:14:21.080 literally you feel like like a new person like the the past mistakes well you know that was like me

00:14:26.280 that was me before in this prior era and like okay you know it's a new year or it's a new i'm in a new

00:14:33.500 it's a new week and and that label actually comes with optimism because you can shed that those those

00:14:42.400 past failures you can like you can put them in the rearview mirror and you have that sense of a

00:14:46.160 clean slate any downsides to fresh starts yes unfortunately of course right with every with

00:14:54.720 every bit of good news there's there can be bad news um the thing about fresh starts that's dangerous

00:15:00.120 is that if you're really doing well right you're on a roll things are going well there they are

00:15:06.780 disruptions and they can they can disrupt a positive period you know right like things are going well

00:15:13.200 you're going to the gym regularly or you're achieving a lot at work and then you have a disruption in the

00:15:18.880 form of a fresh start it can it can break your stride so not only are fresh starts productive when we're

00:15:26.560 trying to achieve more but they can also be harmful and my favorite research on this was actually by my

00:15:31.800 phd student who i mentioned a minute ago heng chen dai she's now a professor at ucla heng chen's

00:15:37.940 dissertation work looked at the challenge of fresh starts when people have been really outperforming

00:15:44.800 and she has a number of experiments she ran in the laboratory with undergraduates where she looks at

00:15:52.420 this but my favorite study is actually of major league baseball players and what she did is she

00:15:57.120 looked at players who had a fresh start in the form of being traded to a new team so in the middle of

00:16:03.640 the season you're traded to a new team and she actually compared players who are traded across

00:16:08.340 leagues to players who are traded within leagues and the reason she did this is it's two people who

00:16:13.780 are both experiencing a change in life but one has more of a fresh start than the other so there's like

00:16:19.160 a lot of control there there's more of a fresh start when you're traded across leagues because

00:16:22.620 all of your season to date statistics are reset and you have literally a clean slate and you have to

00:16:27.720 sort of work to build up a record again and in comparison if you're traded within league you get to keep

00:16:32.620 your season to date statistics and what she found is that players traded across leagues who had been

00:16:37.380 doing really well they they suffered their their batting averages declined relative to players who had been

00:16:45.860 traded within league and got to hold on to their season to date statistics and they didn't have to

00:16:49.660 work those back up now just as i said earlier the fresh start was positive for players who were

00:16:54.120 performing poorly so those who had been below average well below average in the league and their

00:16:59.900 performance do well when they get traded across leagues that's better than when they get traded within

00:17:03.780 league because they want that fresh start but i think it's a really nice point to highlight that these

00:17:09.780 disruptions while mostly good because most of the time there's something we're not quite getting

00:17:14.320 right and we want we want that little jolt to give us a sense that we can we can start fresh if we're

00:17:19.500 on a roll they can be really harmful okay so another obstacle is sometimes there's something we know we

00:17:25.260 need to do that's good for us but we'd rather do something else that's more pleasant uh and i think

00:17:33.420 we've all you're describing all of my goals right so how do you overcome that what's some what's a tactic

00:17:37.860 there that could work yeah there's two different ways we can go about it but the carrot and the stick

00:17:43.800 and i want to start with the carrot because i actually i think i think this is so powerful and

00:17:48.340 it's so fascinating to me how often the intuition is wrong on this my intuition used to be wrong on

00:17:53.520 this too there's some great research by ayelet fischbach of the university of chicago and caitlin

00:17:59.340 woolley of cornell showing that most people when they have a big goal and they want to achieve it

00:18:05.220 they start off by trying to find the most effective way to pursue that goal so if you want to get to the

00:18:10.860 gym more regularly and and get fit you say you know i'm gonna do the most efficient exercise i can

00:18:16.480 you know i'm gonna hop on the stairmaster that's maximally efficient or you want to lose weight

00:18:21.480 they're you know like i'm gonna buy kale and carrots i'm gonna do it the most efficient way but

00:18:25.940 a small minority of people try to do it the most fun way possible so when they go to the gym instead

00:18:32.380 of picking the thing that'll be most effective they say what will i enjoy most oh you know i love zoom

00:18:36.520 zumba class that'll be really fun or if they're trying to lose weight they say you know i'm gonna

00:18:41.860 choose a diet but i'm gonna choose one that i'm gonna really enjoy like i love smoothies and i'm

00:18:45.820 gonna go on like a diet that's really heavy on the smoothies i'm i don't know your taste what they found

00:18:53.460 is that if they could encourage people to look for a fun way to pursue their goals they'll persist more

00:18:59.120 but again most of us don't do that naturally so trying to find ways to actually do things that are

00:19:05.520 good for us but that are fun is critical and i've studied one specific way to make it more fun

00:19:11.560 to pursue our goals and that's by doing what i call temptation bundling which is you link something

00:19:17.360 that you really enjoy and you actually look forward to with whatever it is that you need to do to pursue

00:19:22.060 your goals but that's a bit of a chore in the moment so as an example when i wanted to get to the gym

00:19:29.060 more regularly as an engineering graduate student but was finding it hard to motivate myself

00:19:33.220 i bundled a temptation with exercise i'm i'm a bit of a nerd i love page turner novels like

00:19:39.060 you know james patterson think james patterson novels alex cross series i'd only let myself listen

00:19:45.500 to audiobooks of alex cross while i was at the gym so i would come home from a long day of classes

00:19:51.800 find all i wanted was some indulgent entertainment and i would actually want to go to the gym because i

00:19:57.700 knew i could listen to alex cross guilt-free find out what happened next the time would fly while i was

00:20:02.640 at the gym and then i came back ready to focus on my my classwork and not in need of that temptation

00:20:07.940 at home anymore so that's one example but there's lots of different ways we can temptation bundle so

00:20:13.140 you can you know only listen to your favorite podcast while you're doing household chores or

00:20:16.420 cooking a healthy meal or you know watch your favorite tv show in the same circumstances or only

00:20:22.600 let yourself pick up your favorite indulgent treat on the way to hit the books at the library so there's

00:20:27.760 all different ways we can form temptation bundles and i've i've done some research showing that

00:20:31.600 when people are given the tools to temptation bundle they do achieve more so people exercise

00:20:38.660 more regularly if they can only listen to tempting audio novels at the gym for instance a study by some

00:20:43.800 colleagues showed that students actually did better and persisted longer on doing math problems

00:20:48.640 in school when given the tools to temptation bundle it with tasty snacks enjoyable music and sort of

00:20:55.360 colorful markers this was this was kids doing this even though their teachers thought that would be

00:20:59.560 distracting it actually led them to persist longer so there's lots of different ways that we can

00:21:03.860 temptation bundle effectively okay so tip number one if you're find your goal if your goal is to like

00:21:09.640 exercise more first one is just see if you can find exercise that you actually enjoy right that's

00:21:14.180 exactly that's the first yeah and then true of any goals right if you can find a path to it that

00:21:17.960 will be fun whether it's by making it social or you know just picking a different activity

00:21:22.360 that's exactly right no i think that's an important point because i think a lot of people when they

00:21:25.960 they decide they want to do behavior change they pick up a book or they go to a blog and they say

00:21:30.000 well here's what you got to do and they do it like this sucks and then they stop and then it's like

00:21:35.540 well no you like you gotta think about what's what's your main goal like keep keep your eye on that and

00:21:39.680 there's different ways to reach it that doesn't necessarily follow some guy on the internet

00:21:43.700 absolutely right and and find a way to reach it that you will find gratifying in the moment not just

00:21:50.580 because it's taking you towards your goal that's not enough it needs to actually be enjoyable while

00:21:55.260 you're doing it or you will quit and if you can't uh make trying something that's enjoyable

00:21:59.900 you then the next step is like temptation bundle like do add something to that non-pleasant thing

00:22:05.260 that makes it more pleasant exactly a spoonful of sugar as mary poppins would say right so like taxes

00:22:10.320 like i don't know anyone who enjoys doing taxes but you can temptation bundle prepping your taxes

00:22:15.220 totally do your taxes with your best friend bring some wine maybe some have a little bit of nice music

00:22:22.640 on in the background you know whatever whatever makes it fun for you intersperse a little trivia

00:22:26.900 it might might take a bit longer but that's okay because you'll actually finish it we're gonna take

00:22:32.140 a quick break for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show okay so another obstacle is

00:22:39.840 sometimes people they just they're not sure they can do it if they decide well i want to do this thing

00:22:45.780 but i'm not sure if i can or maybe i'm i'm not i think something will get in the way of me following

00:22:52.300 through on that commitment so you've actually found another tactic that's useful is called

00:22:58.080 commitment devices so what are some examples of commitment devices and where have you seen them work

00:23:04.160 yeah this is a great question and commitment devices are sort of the stick approach to to solving

00:23:09.280 actually it's related to the temptation problem when the fall and it's related to follow through

00:23:13.380 so there's something that you want to do but you keep not actually getting it done because you give

00:23:19.040 into temptation over and over again or you procrastinate a commitment device is a really

00:23:23.980 unintuitive thing that could be super valuable so we're used to it when other people create

00:23:28.540 constraints or reward systems to help us achieve what's good for us in the long run and a commitment

00:23:33.300 device is doing that for ourselves so you know you're familiar with being fined or even thrown in jail if you

00:23:38.860 speed on the highway or if you you know do heroin right but a commitment device is saying like i

00:23:45.440 there's some goal i want to prevent myself from falling down on the job when i'm trying to achieve

00:23:50.120 and i'm going to set up those constraints for myself so there's a couple different ways to do it let me

00:23:54.900 give you one example of a commitment device that's been studied that i found really interesting and this

00:23:58.540 is a commitment savings account so there's a study that was done of consumers and they were offered

00:24:05.040 different ways to save one was just in a standard savings account like we were all used to where you

00:24:09.280 can take your money in and out and the other was sort of like a financial chastity belt style savings

00:24:13.740 account so you put your money in and you can't take it out until you reach a predetermined date

00:24:18.260 or saving school and it offers the same interest rate so there's sort of no rational reason you would

00:24:25.040 ever expect anyone to take this account and put money in it but it turned out that 30 percent of

00:24:30.360 consumers who were offered this account put money in it and just having access to it increased

00:24:34.680 consumers savings about 80 percent year over year because it prevented them from dipping into savings

00:24:39.520 before they'd achieve their goal and leaky savings are a really big problem so every time there was

00:24:44.140 that temptation to you know go grab money oh there's a party or there here's this shiny object i want to

00:24:50.220 buy it's constrained so you actually couldn't give into that temptation and you can set that up for

00:24:55.200 yourself another kind of commitment device that's a little bit more flexible than

00:24:58.640 that particular example is a cash commitment device which is more of a fine rather than a

00:25:03.500 constraint so you can literally put money on the line that you agree to forfeit if you fail to achieve

00:25:09.480 your goals using a website like be minder stick.com where they let you define a referee after you've set

00:25:17.060 a goal who will report to the site on whether or not you've achieved your goals and you put some stakes

00:25:21.080 on the line and they'll go to a charitable cause if you don't achieve your goal and you can choose

00:25:26.100 you can choose a charity you like but that might be too much of a silver lining so they also have

00:25:30.480 charities that are contentious on either side of a hot button issue right like a gun control charity

00:25:35.920 and the nra and you choose whichever one you hate and you can put the money towards that and and then

00:25:41.120 that's going to make it really sting so you've basically increased the price of your vice and even if you

00:25:46.720 tend to overweight the present over the future you know now now it's not just a cheeto that you're

00:25:53.700 thinking about eating it's like giving 500 to an organization you hate that's on the line so you

00:26:00.300 may be more likely to stick to your your healthy goals or or any other goals for that matter and

00:26:06.200 then beyond that you can do like what you call a soft commitment device which is basically you make

00:26:11.200 a pledge like i say i'm willing to i commit to doing this and that can work as well exactly so soft

00:26:17.700 commitments tend to be less effective but they're also less risky right you don't have to worry about

00:26:24.280 giving hundreds of dollars to a cause you hate for instance one of my favorite examples of a study

00:26:28.860 showing that this kind of pledge can be effective did it in a really strong way and and it worked

00:26:35.120 really well it was with doctors who all wanted to prescribe fewer unnecessary antibiotics which are bad

00:26:42.160 for their patients and they're bad for society because unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions increase

00:26:47.420 drug-resistant bacteria they're able to develop more easily but lots of people lots of doctors given to

00:26:53.880 the temptation when somebody comes in with a runny nose and just wants a prescription they're hoping

00:26:57.880 it'll make them feel better and they say like oh let me give you some antibiotics maybe it'll work

00:27:01.280 so this experiment involved doctors who are randomly assigned to either a condition where they

00:27:06.840 signed a pledge that you know i will not give unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions i will not

00:27:12.460 give them for these symptoms which are not recommended to to have antibiotics prescribed and they put that

00:27:19.300 pledge up in their waiting rooms so their patients and staff all saw it and they saw it every day when

00:27:24.640 they walked in so that group is half of the people in the experiment the other half are randomly assigned

00:27:29.280 not to sign the pledge what they found is a dramatic reduction was caused by this in unnecessary

00:27:34.400 antibiotic prescriptions so it's an example that i think illustrates you know if it's a really soft

00:27:40.060 commitment like you just tell your friend i'm hoping to exercise more regularly there's not a ton of

00:27:46.140 evidence that's going to take you very far but if you if you put some a little bit of teeth behind

00:27:51.080 that soft commitment right ideally maybe you tell somebody who you'll be humiliated if you don't achieve

00:27:55.800 more about your goal and and have a way of them tracking you your boss for instance you tell them

00:28:01.980 you know i'm going to do x and they have a way to a visibility into whether or not you've achieved it

00:28:07.500 that is likely to be more effective and more effective still is the sort of soft commitment

00:28:11.740 where it's really public uh and it's somehow related to your identity like your professional

00:28:16.460 identity this reminds me we just wrote an article about some research that some psychologists at

00:28:22.080 mcewen university are doing about gandhi and this uh prussian prince named pukler moscow i think

00:28:29.140 it's how you pronounce his name about making unbreakable resolutions have you come across this

00:28:33.060 yet no i wish i could you could see my eyes are so big right now no tell me more so basically they

00:28:39.000 they they looked at gandhi and this prussian prince 19th century prussian prince and they found

00:28:45.120 that they had they they they did something they can make unbreakable resolutions by make so gandhi

00:28:52.200 did vows right so he says i'm going to vow to abstain from x and because he said it was a vow

00:28:59.060 like it became like a spiritual thing and so he's less likely to break it like he followed through

00:29:03.240 on it a different way of saying it yeah it's so interesting and then this prussian guy he called

00:29:07.860 his uh resolutions that he decided that they're you can't break it uh he called them grand expedience

00:29:13.420 and it's sort of like it's basically it's very psychological they're basically there they said

00:29:18.200 there's like a bright line boundary between just a regular type of resolution and unbreakable

00:29:22.560 resolution like it's in your head you say this is different yeah if i like a self-talk

00:29:27.620 yeah strategy yeah and it's like there's you actually put like stakes like like not just like

00:29:33.400 money stake but like soul stakes if i violate this then i'm like destroying myself it's a different

00:29:38.620 kind of price on your vice if you you know if you have a strong religious conviction and you know it's

00:29:43.580 like it's you know frankly it's like swearing on a bible right right yeah make up so when it's a

00:29:48.380 meaningful pledge it feels like it's connected to your identity you can see just like right like the for

00:29:53.120 the doctors a pledge when to their patients they're signing and putting in their office it's

00:29:57.940 like it's related to that professional identity these identities that we care so much about i think

00:30:03.080 are a really potent way to create stakes if if it's aligned with that so another obstacle you mentioned

00:30:10.220 is sometimes people just forget like they're not lazy they're not they don't hate their health but

00:30:16.600 they just they just forget so how do you overcome forgetting what tactics work for that yeah it's a

00:30:22.980 great question my favorite research that's related to this is on on something called implementation

00:30:27.940 intentions but i i like to talk about it as proper planning because implementation intentions are a

00:30:33.020 mouthful so there's this professor at nyu named peter golwitzer who studied this for his entire career

00:30:39.460 and it's really the best way to form a plan so you won't forget it most of the time when we make a

00:30:45.420 plan it's sort of like a vague intention right you say like i i want to get to the gym more i want to

00:30:51.320 learn a foreign language i'm gonna spend some more time on duolingo doing that but if we actually make

00:30:57.340 plans in a very specific form that he studied we're much more likely to take action in that form is

00:31:02.200 if the following circumstances arrive then i will take action so for instance instead of saying i plan to

00:31:11.000 spend more time on duolingo practicing spanish you'd say every weekday at 5 p.m i'll spend 45 minutes on

00:31:17.820 duolingo practicing spanish that would be an implementation intention where you've linked a

00:31:22.440 specific date and time queue with the intended action and it it helps with forgetting because

00:31:28.320 well one you're more likely to literally put it on your calendar which helps with forgetting you're

00:31:32.020 going to have a a reminder pop up and reminders are very effective but you also even if you didn't put

00:31:38.320 it on your calendar the way that we store information in memory is that it's triggered by

00:31:42.480 queues and now you have this association you formed a very specific association when it's 5 p.m i will

00:31:48.360 on a on a weekday i will do duolingo you notice that it's five o'clock oh this is when i'm supposed

00:31:52.980 to do that thing so if we form those kinds of if then plans it can be really powerful and it helps with

00:31:58.040 other things too it helps us think through any obstacles that might get in the way oh wait am i going

00:32:02.340 to be in a place where i can do duolingo at 5 p.m no i'm gonna be driving in the car that's not

00:32:05.900 going to work let me rethink that let me come up with a plan that'll work so it helps us think

00:32:10.480 through those obstacles and it also makes us feel like we've made a commitment and we like to be

00:32:16.780 consistent with our commitments we've talked a little bit about this already in terms of if we

00:32:20.680 make a commitment that's public that can be powerful but we also don't like being internally

00:32:24.480 inconsistent so once we've said i am going to do something at a specific time now we have

00:32:28.940 a concrete plan not just a vague intention and we're more likely to follow through on those

00:32:33.400 concrete plans so these kinds of implementation intentions you can form them yourself but you can

00:32:38.820 also prompt other people to form them to great effect so for instance i've done research showing

00:32:43.340 that if you ask people to write down the date and time when they intend to get a flu shot or

00:32:47.560 the the time and doctor with whom they plan to get a colonoscopy you can significantly increase the

00:32:52.740 rate of follow-through on those important health behaviors over and above just encouraging people

00:32:57.700 to do this and reminding them to do it so there's also work on voting you may have noticed there are

00:33:03.800 lots of people saying hey have you made a voting plan there's research showing that if you're asked

00:33:07.800 when will you vote where will you vote how will you get there that significantly increases the

00:33:12.680 likelihood that someone who intends to vote actually makes it to the polls it's again the same psychology

00:33:17.040 related to flake out and forgetting getting to top of mind salience that can be important in a lot of

00:33:22.640 cases well speaking of trying to help other people with their behavior change so oftentimes you see

00:33:28.600 someone who's having a hard time and then your natural you know tendencies like hey you should try

00:33:34.460 this and that actually backfires and the person's like no i'm not going to try that what do you think

00:33:39.900 i don't i don't have a problem leave me alone so if that doesn't work what does work i love that

00:33:45.780 example this really brilliant scholar lauren estrus winkler she's about to start a faculty job at the

00:33:51.560 kellogg school of management at northwestern university had this insight that maybe we have

00:33:56.700 the script wrong when when someone is trying to achieve a goal instead of putting our arm around

00:34:03.380 them and offering them that demotivating advice what if we actually asked them for advice about how to

00:34:09.900 achieve more what if we put them on a pedestal put them in the position of advice giver what if we said

00:34:15.040 hey high school student how would you encourage a younger peer or how would you advise them to do

00:34:22.000 better in school how would you tell them they could form more effective study habits and stay

00:34:26.300 away from distractions and get better grades what are your tips it turns out that by asking someone

00:34:32.140 else for advice we get them to feel really good about themselves hey oh somebody thinks i know what i'm

00:34:38.080 doing it's a confidence boost that i have something worthwhile to say on this topic it also leads them

00:34:44.160 to introspect and dredge up insights you know you don't ask someone for advice on how to do calculus

00:34:49.520 who doesn't know how to do calculus but lauren found in interviews that most people actually do

00:34:53.940 know how to achieve their goals if you ask them to think about it most of them have a few tips or

00:34:57.700 tricks that they can come up with related to goal achievement and they'll be personalized right so when

00:35:02.740 you are thinking about what might work for someone else you think about things that would work for you

00:35:05.960 and then once you've advised someone else it feels hypocritical not to follow that advice right so

00:35:11.880 all of those things make this advice giving effect really potent and we've shown in one random

00:35:16.820 assignment study with nearly 2 000 high school students that just asking students at the beginning

00:35:22.480 of the semester to give some study advice to their younger peers significantly improved students grades

00:35:28.680 over and above a control group that didn't get asked to give advice it improved their grades

00:35:32.600 specifically in math and in the class they most hoped to improve in that semester and it wasn't like

00:35:38.520 we turned you know c students into valedictorians it was a small improvement it it helped them

00:35:43.420 actually it was the third quarter grade specifically it's the beginning of the of the third quarter we do

00:35:48.700 this small activity where you're asked to give advice and by the end of the third quarter you you score

00:35:53.520 about one point higher in math and in the class you're most hoping to improve in but that's really amazing

00:35:59.400 for something that takes about 10 minutes just putting you on a pedestal asking you for that

00:36:03.540 introspection and advice can be so powerful so i've done that with my kids like with you know my

00:36:10.160 kids are 10 and 7 and if i'm like if i know they're having an issue with something like being patient like

00:36:16.880 you know hey i'm having some trouble being patient with this guy you got any advice and they're oh yeah

00:36:21.220 this is what you do blah blah so i that i think it does work but how do you how do you get asked advice

00:36:27.640 right like how do you get the benefit like right so like i say i want to get the benefit of yeah

00:36:32.200 being asked advice but i can't go around and start giving advice that's just gonna annoy people

00:36:36.640 so how do you yeah you can but you won't have a lot of friends left right so how do you yeah have you

00:36:41.300 got any things that work for that yes absolutely you know i realized i i had done this inadvertently

00:36:48.280 and now i feel like i'm trying to convince lots of people to do this on purpose when i was a junior

00:36:53.780 faculty member i formed an advice club with a couple of colleagues who were facing similar

00:36:58.920 challenges but had similar goals and we decided you know when we were getting invited to do things and

00:37:04.480 we weren't sure you know is this is this gonna help me achieve my goals this is the right use of my

00:37:08.220 time is this the wrong use of my time we would email each other and ask for advice and it was amazingly

00:37:15.660 valuable for so many reasons right it was really valuable to get that outsider perspective when i was

00:37:21.280 soliciting advice right you want solicited advice it's the advice that's unsolicited that annoys us

00:37:25.920 and makes us feel bad by the way solicited advice is great so i got all sorts of insights but i also

00:37:30.980 realized i got this huge benefit from giving advice because every time i was asked my opinion i sort of

00:37:37.600 realized oh like i actually do have good ideas about what the right answer is and what the right

00:37:42.400 choices to make for your career under these circumstances like here's what i think you should do built my

00:37:46.960 confidence that i could make those choices for myself when i faced them without having to lean

00:37:50.380 as much on this group and it also it also made me want to walk the talk so when once i'd advise

00:37:57.120 someone else oh no i don't think this is a valuable use of your time then when i got a similar ask i knew

00:38:01.660 the answer and i felt confident giving that advice so so i think advice clubs are actually an underutilized

00:38:08.280 tool we should be creating them more often with peers at similar stages with similar goals so that we

00:38:13.620 both can coach each other and benefit from that and benefit from each other's insight and the social

00:38:18.240 support that it builds so that that's my number one piece of advice on how to become an advice giver

00:38:24.980 so in your research you found that our social group has a big impact on our behavior and whether

00:38:33.580 we are able to successfully change or not change any examples from behavioral economics that show the

00:38:39.860 power of you know our social groups yeah so i've only studied this a tiny bit but there's a huge

00:38:46.340 research literature that i i've drawn on and learned from on this topic and one of my favorite studies

00:38:53.400 is is one we can probably a lot of us at least relate to which is looking at college roommates and

00:39:00.180 it shows that the college roommate you're randomly assigned to affects your grades if you have a college

00:39:04.880 roommate who had higher verbal sat scores your grades are going to be higher if they're lower if

00:39:10.300 their sat scores are lower your grades are going to be lower so that's one result that i find sort of

00:39:15.080 amazing just that person who were plopped into a room with uh your first year in college has that

00:39:20.380 big effect but but it's true in all different areas of life as well so it affects how likely you

00:39:25.800 are to save for retirement if you're around other people who are savers it affects whether or not you

00:39:31.300 are you know more likely to be energy efficient if you find out what your neighbors are doing so

00:39:37.180 we're really influenced by our peers both naturally when we just watch what they're doing and also when

00:39:43.060 when people communicate to us about our peers directly and say hey most people are doing x we

00:39:48.340 tend to want to follow the herd and what that means is it's actually a related message to the sort of

00:39:53.840 advice club message but it means we want to select our peers carefully whenever we can find peers who are

00:40:00.060 showing us what's possible look for look for role models but look for people who also by watching their

00:40:05.860 example you can learn from them and you can literally this is something i have studied try to copy and paste

00:40:11.800 really deliberately like oh here's a life hack that i noticed is working for this other person who has

00:40:16.340 a similar goal let me see if i can try to use that too there's so much information in the actions of

00:40:22.160 our successful peers that there's benefits of surrounding ourselves with people who can show us

00:40:26.820 the way and make us believe it's doable because we see them doing it and that makes us think oh this

00:40:30.840 is feasible for someone like me but also we can literally watch what they do and emulate it

00:40:35.200 well i think the caveat you made with that bit of advice people hear that okay surround myself with

00:40:40.000 really successful people well it can't be too successful because then they're what you get from

00:40:46.380 them won't be useful like me hanging out with bill gates or you know i i lift weights that's right

00:40:51.960 so if i hung out with a guy who can deadlift a thousand pounds i was gonna say i bet bill gates can't

00:40:56.780 lift weights that well it wouldn't be that intimidated right so if i if i said i'm gonna i'm gonna do

00:41:00.720 what eddie hall does and this guy can deadlift over a thousand pounds that won't be very useful

00:41:05.000 because i'm not anywhere near that you don't want to gulf it needs to be people who are roughly you

00:41:11.400 know within your in your league if it's if the gulf is too large it actually can be demotivating right

00:41:16.960 so if you're for instance there was this really interesting follow-up to the college roommate

00:41:21.080 study i mentioned where the same researchers tried scott correll's leading these efforts he's a

00:41:26.260 ucsd economist he said like what if i engineer roommate assignments so that we can put the top

00:41:31.720 students with the bottom students and hopefully the bottom students who are the most at risk of

00:41:36.280 dropout and really having a tough semester will be pulled up strategic you know let's do it

00:41:42.060 strategically and that actually backfired that actually led students to do worse because it

00:41:46.140 was polarizing so those those pairings led people to feel like they didn't have enough in common they

00:41:50.880 didn't socialize at all and all the underperforming students ended up hanging out with each other

00:41:55.060 and not having good relationships with their roommates and all the top performing students hung out with

00:41:59.280 each other and and so it backfired so there needs to be some relatability you don't want to be hanging

00:42:05.680 around with people who are so out of your league that that you feel like there's nothing in common

00:42:11.220 and you can't learn from them right so find someone just a little bit better than you yeah a group of

00:42:17.280 people to hang around where there's some there's some folks who are over achievers and you can learn

00:42:23.760 from them but yeah exactly they're not too far ahead so how do you bring all this stuff together

00:42:30.200 um so i mean like how do you figure out which tactic you should be using and when you should

00:42:34.960 stop using a tactic any insight there well well there well there's two parts to that question the

00:42:40.760 first part i'll say is i think a mistake we often make is think like oh um when should i stop using this

00:42:46.600 tactic like once i've made some good progress i can sort of stop using this crutch and you know i'll stop

00:42:51.520 temptation bundling i'll just get myself to the gym naturally or whatever it is and that is a common

00:42:56.560 mistake because all of the barriers to change that i just mentioned are barriers that persist they don't

00:43:04.780 go away magically so we really do need to keep doing whatever it is that's working indefinitely like as long

00:43:12.320 as we want the change to persist as opposed to thinking it's a short-term game to figure out these

00:43:17.560 these hacks in terms of understanding which tactics are likely to work for you of course just like

00:43:23.820 anything else there's probably a little bit of experimentation required right just like when you

00:43:28.540 are trying to figure out any solution you need to play with it a bit but my hope is that in in my book

00:43:35.460 and um and hopefully also in this podcast i've laid out some of the key barriers that are most common

00:43:43.060 and that you'll recognize yourself in them you'll say oh yeah you know actually i totally get it is

00:43:48.880 that i just forget it's not you know it's not top of my list and i keep not getting around to it and so

00:43:53.740 maybe i need to make more concrete plans or you know it's not fun i really don't enjoy it or it needs

00:43:58.860 teeth or i have the wrong social support group and i i just don't believe that i can do it i don't

00:44:03.800 believe in myself i need to find a way to believe in myself so once you start to understand like

00:44:08.260 what those barriers are it's easier to diagnose and match and you know you don't need an expert

00:44:14.560 to help that's the nice thing about this like it's not like you need to go to the doctor and

00:44:19.340 have a diagnosis it really is something where you'll see yourself in it and understand that's

00:44:25.080 exactly what's keeping me back in this particular case i'm really having that challenge and then

00:44:30.120 hopefully there's a solution that science has proven can help well katie this has been a great

00:44:36.280 conversation where can people go to learn more about the book and your work yeah thank you this

00:44:40.300 has been so fun the best resource is my website which is katiemilkman.com and it's katie with a y

00:44:46.060 like katie perry and there's more information about the book about all my research about the research

00:44:50.360 center i run the podcast i host called choiceology and even my newsletter which is called milkman

00:44:56.840 delivers my students convinced me i had to give it a funny name so that's that's what i came up with

00:45:03.140 and there's lots more information there well katie milkman thanks for your time it's been a pleasure

00:45:07.120 thanks for having me this was really fun my guest today was katie milkman she's the author of the

00:45:12.140 book how to change it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you'd like to find out

00:45:16.060 more information about her work check out our website at katiemilkman.com also check out our

00:45:19.760 show notes at awm.is slash tools for change where you can find links to resources where you delve deeper

00:45:23.960 into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the awm podcast check out our website at

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00:46:20.040 you

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

The Best Tools for Personal Change

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