How to Change: Getting From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be with Katy Milkman

just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. We hope you'll enjoy this episode from the archive. Thanks for

joining us. Our guest on this episode is Katie Milkman, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, host of Charles Schwab's popular behavioral economics podcast Choiceology, and former president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making. She's also the co founder and co director of the Behavior Change for Good Initiative. Today, Katie and Eric discuss her book, How to Change the Science of Getting from Where You Are to where you want to Be.

will start like we always do, with the parable. There's a grandmother who's talking with her grandson and she says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandmother. He says, well, grandmother, which one wins?

And the grandmother says the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

the key to success. And that parable highlights the importance of recognizing there's options, there's choices that if we make the right choices, if we make choices that are strategically wise, then we'll end up with outcomes we'll be pleased with.

approach we're using is going to attack that challenge. I see this with organizations, I see it with individuals trying to create change. Too little time goes into that diagnosis phase because there's an assumption that, you know, if this method that sounds good has been proven, it will work for us too, it will work for me too. And the answer is it depends. It depends if the barriers that led it to work in one situation because this was a solve for that problem, are also the ones

you face. So that's really what I mean by that, And the book is structured around and a lot of my work is structured around trying to identify, Okay, here are the most common barriers, and here's what science has to say if you're facing that challenge about what you can best do to achieve greater success.

an eighteen year old man, right. I mean, there are again commonalities that we can look at, but we've got to really look at each of those and their lives individually to know what's going.

But what would make it less of a burden in the moment, would make it a joy is going to be incredibly different for each of them. Right, So it's the same barrier, but even with the insight they might need to get through it, they're going to have to apply it differently.

stopped so many times. The reason I want to go kind of tail around to that is that what we were just talking about, which is that if we can have confidence in that we know our own life, and we know what we like, and we know some things about us, and we know some things that might have worked for us in the past, maybe in different situations that we have at least part of the recipe that we need, and only we can provide part of that recipe.

So say a little bit more about the role of confidence in our ability to change.

we get much farther. It's part of the reason, by the way, that the placebo effect is so powerful, a well known effect where if your doctor prescribes a sugar pill, it actually makes you better when it comes to almost just a remarkable range of different disease states and kinds of pain because you believe it will improve your outcomes.

in Northwestern University. And she had this great insight and it relates to what you mentioned, which is that a lot of people know more than they appreciate about what

will take to help them change. She was interviewing people who were struggling in all different walks of life, from salespeople to students, to try to understand what were commonalities and their experience, what did they know about change, And she was startled to find actually how many had really great insights when they were pushed and when she probed them for what they thought might be an effective tool

for them. And she started to wonder if the way we typically encourage change approach change when someone comes to us and tells us they're struggling, might be backwards and actually harmful given what we know about the importance of confidence. Specifically, she noticed normally when someone comes to you and says, you know, this isn't going right in my life, we sort of put our arm around them. We start giving them advice just off the cuff, because we think, gosh,

I must know things that'll be useful to them. That kind of unsolicited advice can actually be really demotivating. It can just reinforce the message people have already been hearing internally that they just don't have what it takes. This person who I just met and just told my story immediately thinks they know something I don't know and is going to solve my problem. Gosh, they must think I'm

so foolish. She wondered if we should actually flip the script, and she thought, what if instead of offering advice when someone is struggling, we put them on a pedestal and ask them what they think would work to help someone else who's facing a similar challenge. What if we turn them into a mentor a coach, an advisor to others in a similar position, ask them for the their own advice. Maybe that would be actually really valuable. Because she'd figured

out they actually know a lot. If they're pressed to dredge up those insights, it's going to boost their confidence to be told I think you know something and can help others. It's going to cause them to introspect more than they would usually, and again she knew that from her background research that introspection lead to great insights. And finally, once you have given coaching advised someone else on how to change, you're going to feel hypocritical if you don't

follow that advice yourself. I think it's a really brilliant formula she realized.

So we can think of lots of other ways that we might boost confidence as well, and we can talk about others if you'd like. But I thought that was a good one to begin with because it's truly one of my favorites on the most counterintuitive.

immediately they are in that role. And one of the things that I think AA stumbled on and was so right about was the reciprocal nature of help in a twelve step program, the person who was a week sober talking to the person a day sober, they both got equal benefit absolutely right away. They they saw that. They saw right away, like you know, doesn't matter matter whether you're the giver or the receiver, you get equal benefit

in this. And that was an insight I think that they had right and certainly was, you know, in my case so true. I can just think to early in recovery, the more that I talked to other people who were new coming in, the more convinced I was that A. I knew what I was doing, be that I was going to stay sober. I mean it really does work.

think is so wonderful about Lauren's work. But you know, I think the insight is more of us and more parts of our lives, not just when it's a crisis, should be relying on the power of advice giving and recognizing that we can do things like forming advice clubs, just you know, even for simple life goals, people who have similar objectives, who both mentor each other and get wisdom from each other. So we've got that back and forth going, and you benefit from both sides.

as it's known more in the literature, you know, present bias. Right, So talk to me a little bit about impulsivity, and then let's talk about what's a little counterintuitive in some of what you're saying, and how we can work with impulsivity.

that instant hit of gratification. We overvalue that relative to the downstream consequences, which we tend to undervalue. And this obviously has all sorts of important implications and leads to lots of mistakes made in life if you look more globally, But it's also a major barrier to behavior change. Is the fact that we value so much what we're getting now and discount so much what we'll get later.

And I think you're head in this direction. But I was sort of thinking, you know, how much is even recognizing we're making a choice important in the overall equation.

that I'll talk about to affect positive change. But you're absolutely right, often this choice most of the time, I would say it's implicit rather than explicit, Right, You're not, at least I'm not. When I'm reaching for dessert, maybe I feel I might feel a little guilt, right, and maybe, oh well, maybe I should'tat the whole thing, and then

I just eat the whole thing. But I'm not literally thinking most of the time, like, let me calculate the probability that this will increase the difficulty of fitting into my favorite pair of jeeps. It's not that kind of calculation. But of course, economic modeling abstracts away from all of that and just tries to capture a descriptive model of behavior.

And it's descriptively shown and study after study that roughly sixty percent of downstream value is captured in the decisions we make now, and forty percent we just sort of throw right away. So we discount pretty dramatically anything in the future. As soon as I have to wait a day for it, it's worth sixty percent as much. That's

kind of a rough ballpark statistic. But again, this is all boiling down a very complex phenomenon to a really simple mathematical equation, which is losing a lot of richness.

One of them and they both involve changing the calculus of the choice. One of them is to try to make the behavior that you know is good for you in the long run more instantly gratifying, so there's not

a tension anymore. And this is something that I l At Fishbach of the University of Chicago and Caitlin Wooley of Cornell University, I think have done absolutely brilliant research on showing that most of us don't get that it's important to make it fun to do whatever aligns with our long term goals.

And I've done some research on a very specific way to do that, which I call temptation bundling, and that's literally linking something you love, something you crave, with a behavior that you know is good for you in the long run to create a hook so that you'll do that chore. So for me, I'm using a lot of exercise examples, and you can get away from that if you want, but at least now there's continuity.

that's gone because you're not allowed to anymore. You're only getting that temptation while doing something else could do with your favorite podcast and household chores, drinking a glass of wine while cooking a meal for your family, and favorite treat, heading to hit the books at school.

really helpful. How do we make this better? The other thing that I found, and I wonder if you can speak to this either in the literature, your experience is if we can't quite get to making the activity itself enjoyable, can we bring the reward in as close to the event as possible. And so for me, what I've done with exercise is it's gone from being something that I'm like, well, it will help me when I'm sixty, which is true, and it makes me look better if I do it consistently,

which is true to the very cot. I feel better immediately when I'm done. I feel better in my body right now. So I'm not waiting on a reward that I have to visualize a month, three months, three years, ten years. I've at least brought it in closer. Are there studies that talk about ways to do that.

more concrete. You have a plan, et cetera. But one of them is that you start to see progress and you can give yourself a pat on the back for those sub goals that you've you've achieved, instead of having to wait for the reward you'll feel when you get to the end of the super goal. Another thing, though, that I think is related, which is sort of wrapping paper, just like this goal achieved and hurrahs. Wrapping paper is gamification.

And so there's research suggesting that some of the bells and whistles of gamification, like being able to collect points and move up to another level if you're achieving more, or you see a streak, get a badge, get a star, those things, especially when it's something we're intrinsically motivated to do. It's a little different when an employer is trying to use these and it feels like a coercion tactic.

whistles do seem to actually motivate us. And there's this wonderful study I talk about in the book about Wikipedia volunteers who are obviously very intrinsically motivated to be getting on Wikipedia editing, adding their knowledge and improving this encyclopedia, but a lot churn so, meaning they joined the platform, they start editing, and then they decide, well, you know, yes, I've been trinsically motivated to do this, but it's a little bit of work ed encyclopedia, and maybe all these

something else that's even more fun in the moment. Interestingly, in one randomized controlled trial led by UCLA's Yiana Gallis, just giving people a small award like a star an adalvice flower. In this case, it was a study sheeted in Switzerland to acknowledge their contributions. She randomly assigned some people to get that acknowledgement. Others who were doing equal work didn't. They didn't learn that others had gotten it.

That's a really important component, right, so they were like, oh, no, I lost out. It was just some people were alerted that there was a special thing and they'd gotten it, and others never learned there was such a thing in the first place. Getting that little reward, that little sort of pat on the back, a tiny bit of gamification increased how much time they spent on the platform for up to a year later, and pretty substantially, so I

think that's another important thing we can think about. Some forms of gamification, and even small tokens that we give ourselves or others who are trying to encourage, can help bring rewards forward and make us stay more engaged with the things that have mostly long term benefits.

you are not alone. And that's why I've made my free masterclass open to everyone and available to watch any time now. It's called Habits that Stick. How to be remarkably consistent no matter what goal you set. You can grab it at one you feed dot net slash habits. Again, it's free and you can watch it whenever it works for you. Go to one you feed dot net slash habits. This makes me think of a area of discussion in

behavior change about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. There's this basic idea that intrinsic motivation is better than extrinsic motivation, and by intrinsic, I mean you do the thing because you simply want to do the thing, and that extrinsic motivation getting an award, being recognized all these other things is less good and can actually be harmful two people who are intrinsically motivated, And I think that's a superficial reading

of the science. So from your perspective, and this may be too broad of a question, but I'm wondering if you could speak to how we combine intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in wise ways so that we're getting the best of boast.

payment for something, suddenly it crowds out intrinsic motivation. And if that cash reward is removed, people won't actually want to keep doing it because they've relabeled I wasn't doing it for myself, I was doing it for the money. There is almost no evidence that that's real. So there's one really good study with kids who didn't really know yet whether or not puzzles they were doing were something

that was work or fun, and they get paid. That signals to them, Okay, I get it, it's work and paid. Kids weren't getting paid, you know, they're getting stickers, yeah, little rewards, and that was very clear. When there's ambiguity and you really don't know why am I doing this, which is rarely the case as adults, I think then there's some evidence in child development studies that it can be harmful to add bells and whistles and these extrinsic motivators.

That's really the only finding that points to this outside of a laboratory environment. And there's a really interesting study by U Chicago's Oleg or Minsky that came out recently that points to a potential reason that we've mixed things up, and that when we look at behavior in the field, out in the wild, instead of in like survey studies with undergraduates, we almost never see any evidence of this

intrinsic motivation crowd out from incentives. And yet psychologists are sort of obsessed with the idea because they sometimes think they find it in the lab.

in the field. So anyway, that was a long tangent, but I do think it's really important because I think there's this common misconception that if I add bells and whistles, if I'm not doing it for the purest of reasons, if there's money attached to it, it's going to ruin this sort of beautiful balance, and I'm not gonna do

it for the right reasons anymore. And happily we can, it seems, actually, add the bells and whistles, you know, link the exercise with the TV watching, give ourselves badges and stars, and still be just as motivated on the other end for almost all of these behaviors that we care about, because they're the ones that we're intrinsically motivated to do, and we don't have to worry about about that nasty side effect that has been I think overblown.

I'm gonna be healthy when I'm sixty five. D my girlfriend likes the way I look like. All those like seems to me and in my life have always been helpful to make something more lasting. I feel like the more motivations I have the better versus trying to As you've said, seems very strange to pare it down to only the purer one.

say time. You know you just don't have time, so you just like keep layering on the extra reasons to be motivated, but you haven't solved the underlying problem. You're going to start hitting a wall on how much value

you get out of it. So I do think one of the most useful things to think about when we're trying to, you know, throw the whole kitten kaboodle at a problem is the more diversity we deploy in terms of the parts of the problem, which is almost always multiply determined, that we solve, as opposed to trying to just solve one part of it really really well with a bunch of different tools. That diversity seems to add more value than throwing everything at one element of the problem.

If your problem is not motivation to your point that you just made, adding more motivation is not going to get you the result, because that's not where your problem is.

Let's talk about we've sort of hit on this a little bit by talking about adding these other devices, but in your chapter on procrastination you talk a lot about commitment devices, and I'd like to talk about commitment devices because I love the idea. But I particularly want to start there with the discussion you have about people who are either sophisticates or naifs. I don't know if I'm saying that word right.

are present biased, right, We've talked about present bias. We all overweight the now and underweight the latter, but we have different degrees of awareness of this problem. And by the way, I think we could extend this from talking about present bias to other barriers to change and other limitations of the human mind. But present bias was the

topic they were interested in. And so those of us who are aware of our present bias and interested in fixing it, taking steps to actually resolve the conflicts that arise, so that we make good decisions, so we save for retirement, so we don't smoke, so that we you know, stay fit and healthy and don't have awful arguments with loved ones that could be avoided. We're sophisticated, So everybody listening, you're officially sophisticated.

present bias. They're just you know, hoping for better in the future. Naively, what's really interesting about this is as soon as we recognize that at least some subset of the population, and probably a decent subset, everyone on this listening to this podcast has some sophistication that sets us up to think about, Okay, well, what will a sophisticate do. What will a sophisticate value to get around these problems?

You know, they're going to be looking for solutions to present bias and actually want to create constraints on themselves to help provide a higher probability of a good outcome in the future. So we're very used to society, you know, our manager at work, our parent, our government creating structures that set us up to succeed in the face of temptation that sort of slap our hand if we do the wrong thing. So the incentives are aligned to do

the right thing. So think about like speeding tickets, for instance. Right, we all might be tempted to speed. It's not really good for us. It's certainly not good for others if we do, because there's this risk it imposes. But we might be tempted to do it, but we know we'll get slapped on the hand because there's a constraint you're going to get a speeding ticket if you get caught. So a sophisticate is going to look to set up the same kind of structure on themselves that government has

set up with speeding tickets. Look for a way to prevent themselves in the future from giving into temptation, and will be interested in things like a bank account that you can't take money out of until you've reached a predetermined savings goal. That would be interesting to a sophisticate. To someone else, they'd say, you'd better give me a higher interest rate if you're gonna not let me out

my money. But someone who recognizes they might be tempted to take money out early may say, I would love a bank account that I can't get into until I've reached a goal. That sounds great, it's gonna help me, So you'd start seeing products pop up. That's the prediction of their model that cater to people eager for this kind of commitment. Another product famously predicted by this model, that of course it does exist in many states is

gambling self exclusion lists. People can sign themselves up to not be allowed into casinos if they know they have challenge with gambling and you know, to be walked off the premises. And that's a very funny thing. Why would you want to prevent yourself from going in, Well, because you're sophisticated, you know you have a problem, and you

want that temptation to be taken away. There's a drug you can take called ant abuse that alcoholics sometimes choose to take that makes you nauseous, that the smell of alcohol vomit if you have a sip. Why would you do that, Well, because you recognize you might be tempted to start drinking if you haven't, and you want to prevent your future self from giving into that temptation. So commitment devices are tools that sophisticates find appealing that anyone else would look askance and say, why.

So there's a great study actually on smoking showing that when people who wanted to quit smoking were randomly assigned to one of two groups. One gets sort of the traditional here are the tools for quitting. Another gets those tools, plus is told you can put money into this account, your own money for the next six months, as much as you want. If you fail in nicotine or cotinine you'ur intest. Then in six months, though that money is going to just disappear. We're going to take it away.

And having just access to that opportunity to put money on the line that they would forfeit if they didn't achieve their goal help people quit smoking. They quit at a thirty percent higher rate in that group than in the group that only had traditional tactics. So that's where

sophisticates and knives lead. I think it's a really valuable insight, and that the more sophisticated we can get, the more strategic we can get, the more we can recognize we can manage ourselves and help ourselves succeed when we face present bias. By building some constraints and incentives that align with our long term goals, the better off will be.

a commitment. Maybe I think if I just tell my friends I'm going to do it, you know, maybe if I just post on social media, that's enough that we aren't willing to put the teeth the incentives behind it, maybe at as high a rate as we should, given the huge added benefit of making those kinds of hard commitments, because backing out is tougher when it's a hard commitment. I think we over rely on soft commitments tools like shame, where we, you know, tell other people and then we're

embarrassed that we didn't follow through. And maybe not often enough do we clonk down ten thousand dollars that'll go to a charitable organization. We hate our life savings if we don't achieve a goal, and you know, of course that could have really bad consequences.

committed yet. I think that first point is a really important one because I have seen this over and over in recovery from addiction, which is that to me sometimes seems like I don't know that the nature of behavior change science would support this, which is, how do we get better at changing over time as we've tried to change something multiple times. I've seen this in again, this is anecdotal watching people in recovery and also working with

people in coaching. Is that in recovery. I think for me, I came in and I was like, all right, this is a problem. Clearly I've got a problem. I'm going to do this thing that seems seems like a pretty big step. And then I do that thing, and maybe it works for a little while, doesn't work for very long, whatever, I have some mixed degree of success, which then leads me to go, oh, well, maybe I need to do a little bit more. And then the next time I

realized I need to do a little bit more. And so it sometimes seems that the process of trying to change can lead us from a naive to a sophistic kid right where we realize over time like, oh I thought this was going to be easier to solve than it is. I need more support. I need more help, whether it's commitment devices, whether it's external people helping us. Is there anything in the science that sort of talks about this we get better at making the change the more we try it.

There's certainly evidence that with age, many temptations aren't as alluring, right, and so you know, just like thinking about research on adolescents. Of course, there's other things going on there too besides wisdom. Literally,

your prefrontal cortex is not fully formed. It's my friend Angela Duckworth, who actually has some training in this area, likes to remind me until you're like twenty five, which is mind boggling, but also helps me understand college better and all the things that I did wrong, and you know, all the thing's going on for my students anyway. So

there's wisdom, there's pre rendal cortex development. It's a little bit confounded, but we do know that with age we see better outcomes than so many walks of life, and in general that there are strong learning effects from experience. So I resonate very strongly with everything you just said.

You said something really important about the nature of change that I just want to double click on, which is it's not a linear If anyone expects I'm going to decide I will make a change, I will deploy a tactic that is science backed, maybe from Katie's book, and then I will get straight to the finish line. They are going to be sorely disappointed because the nature of change, as you said, is you know, maybe like make little progress and you stumble, you need something else, You need

something more. This wasn't quite right, You need to adjust. Change is really hard, even with all the best science available at your fingertips, even when you know everything there is to know. You know, human nature is working against us in a lot of ways, and there's going to be missed ups. And it's not always just up to you. You're embedded in a social context. There's temptations that come up that truly may be impossible for a human to resist.

Sometimes you're going to make mistakes, and so recognizing that, being forgiving to yourself and being ready to step back up to the plate. One of my favorite things that I've studied is the concept of fresh start, that there are moments in life when we're more motivated to make change, and they're actually new beginnings moments that signal new beginnings.

But one of the coolest things about them that may sound intuitive and you might say like, yeah, I know, I make New Year's resolutions, one of the coolest things we've found is they come up really frequently, like every Monday is a fresh start, and it comes with this renewed optimism and a sense that you know, Okay, last week I didn't do it, but this week I'm more likely to be able to. Every time we can, even a small chapter break in life gives us that renewed optimism.

And I'm really glad we have that because there are all these stumbles. I think it's probably really adaptive to be built with this resilience that shows us a new opportunity and the ability to give ourselves a clean slate, and we need to do that, I think even more often than we do naturally.

my degree of variance is smaller. It's instead of being off track for a week, a month, six months, it's like I'm off track for a day or two and then I back on and those things sort of come out that they are sort of rounding errors in the long run. But I think you speak to something that I kind of want to emphasize here that you emphasize in the book, which is that we need to keep

working on behavior change. There's an idea we have. I think it's why habits sell so well, because there's an idea that if I can form a habit, then I will never have to think of this thing again, and it will be solved, and it will be on autopilot. And it seems that while some things may be that way, things that are very small like brushing my teeth, perhaps bigger things like move my body for forty five minutes, five days a week, those things, while I think habits

are very helpful and make it easier. You talk very much in the book, and I think it's so important that in a life that isn't predictable and routine. Building a set it and forget it habit forever just isn't going to happen. And if we think it is, we actually can hinder our change. Say a little bit more about that.

what happened after the month was over. So, with different reward schemes, we got both groups to exercise at the same frequency, but one group went in a more consistent fashion, meaning their workouts were more likely to be always at the same time. So actually, in this particular group, eighty five percent of their workouts were at the same time. So they maybe picked seven am. That's when I go to the gym, and eighty five percent of their workouts

over this month were at that time. The other group they go at the same frequency, but they mix up the timing more so in that case, fifty percent of their workouts only we're at that sort of ideal time for them, say seven am. So the question is which of those groups, right has the more sustained habit. Will it be the people who've built this really consistent routine, or will it be the people who've been more flexible

in the way they approached habit formation. And eighty percent of psychologists at top universities who we surveyed and asked to make a prediction said, it's the routine. You want that consistent queue, the consistent time. It's what we thought too, And when we dug into the data, we were surprised to find we were wrong. It was actually the group

that had formed a more flexible habit. And when we looked at why, like, how could this be that those people who were less consistent in the way that they exercised ended up going more often after this month long period, the sort of kickstart period were out of their hair, They're on their own. They just had formed this lasting habit around exercise. What we saw was that the people who'd been so routine had really brittle habits. So if it's a seven am exerciser that that was what they'd

gotten used to. They're still going at seven am a decent frequency. But if they ever missed their seven am workout, that's it.

And that led to more consistenty and their actual exercise habit because they understood life throws you curveballs and they were prepared for it, whereas these other folks had these rigid,

brittle habits that weren't robust to life. Frankly, and I think it's just a really important lesson in general about the fact that our environments are not certain, they are not stable, and we need to have flexibility built in when we're trying to create something that will be sustained and have recovery plans when the first best option doesn't pan out.

whatever routine she sets up. And so, you know, knowing the nature of your life and your circumstances speaks a little bit also, I think to which type of routine works better for you?

there wasn't enough variability. We never saw a reversal. But it almost has to be true that at some extreme in the life that's truly, really, really rigid, that you might expect those consistent routines could have a different impact.

rewarded people to make it to the gym. So when you're trying to start something and with different motivations, in general, you're going to have more success if you're specific about what you're going to do when, But you have to evolve from that into the flexibility. So specificity at least seems to me a good starting tool absolutely, but then you've got to evolve into being flexible.

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