430. Unlocking the Secrets of Behavioral Change with Dr. Katy Milkman (Refreshed Episode)

Welcome to episode 430 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy Today's episode is all about how to change a conversation with Dr. Katie Milkman. Ready?

Let's get started.

You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello.

Hello everyone.

My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's episode is all about how to change this was such a fun conversation with the wonderful Katie Milkman, which originally aired in May 2021 when both of us had books coming out and I'm so excited to refresh it for you here today. This episode is on theme with a few that I've been sharing over the last few weeks. Talking about defaults and habits, learning and how to get better at anything and then capping that off with understanding of how we can be most likely to really live those changes and succeed in getting more of the right things done. I really love Katie's work and this conversation. I hope you enjoy it and get as much out of it as I do. Don't forget there are links for my top related past episodes and books waiting for you in the show notes for this episode which are found within the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 430 all right, let's talk about how to change Dr. Katie Milkman, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Yeah.

So audience, if we sound like extra energetic, we've been chit chatting for a little bit in getting ready and I know corresponding over email and this is the first time we've met in zoom person. So it's kind of fun where we've been chatting for a year or something I think leading up to this over social and then email and our books are coming out one week apart and so just seemed like a fortuitous situation to kind of come together. So I've definitely talked about you on the show before, but in case this is anyone's first episode or just to share a little bit, can you tell a little about your background and who you are for those who are listening?

Sure, yeah, of course. I'm a professor at the Wharton School where I also co direct the Behavior Change for Good Initiative which I co founded about five years ago with Angela Duckworth to try to figure out how to. If we could crack the code on what creates enduring behavior change. And I'm also the author of the book how to change the science of getting from where you are to where you want to be and host of my own podcast called Choiceology, about the behavioral science of everyday life.

All the things is what you've got going on.

Just a few.

Life is mostly pretty boring. Not a lot going on. Yeah, yeah. Just.

Just hanging out.

It's fun. It's all such fun.

Oh, yeah, totally. Well, I have been a fan of yours for a long time, and so it's a joy to have you on the show. And I feel so just as the primer for those listening that. So Angela Duckworth, her book grit and her TED talks and everything. I mean, I love her stuff. And so for anyone who's already a fan of Angela Duckworth and her style, I could, like, feel it was a similar, like, voice quality in your book where I can tell why you guys get along where it's nice storytelling and kind of like drawing the reader in with those experiences instead of just being this kind of academic of like, fake point, point, point. You know, you do a really nice job of weaving the book together with really conversational tone and, like, the story behind the research, which I very much love.

Thank you. And it's the highest honor imaginable to be compared with Angela, who's one of my closest friends and also certainly a role model.

Well, and so that's where I would say so first open. And I'm opening a digital book because obviously I got this early. But then you read the dedication forward at the beginning from Angela Duckworth, who has won a MacArthur genius award. And she says, katie Milkman is the smartest person I know in your book.

Like, that's a big, big deal.

So for people who are, like, listening and thinking, you know, who is Katie Milkman? Like, she's. She's a smart person doing really amazing things, and she talks about how you are not superhuman, but a superhuman, which I think is such an interesting way to show how you've over the years done some me search to help change the way you do behavior and then helping others now to do the same with your amazing book, how to change. So that's my. Like, this book's awesome. Katie's awesome.

I'm blushing fluorescent red for your listeners. Can't see me. But Angela wrote a very kind forward. And you know, of course I am not the smartest person she knows, but it was very nice of her to say that. And we have a lot of fun together and are very, I think, good team and well matched in the way we approach the world.

Well, now that I have potentially thoroughly embarrassed you a little bit. Thank you. I purposely didn't tell you I was going to say any of that before we started talking, but feel like it needs to be acknowledged because it's a big deal. And so let's just jump in a little bit about the research and me search that you've done. So I have already had an episode on Temptation Bundling specifically.

I saw that. It was so exciting. Thank you for covering it, of course.

And have talked about the Fresh Start effect, though it doesn't have its own episode yet, but I'm sure that will be coming. So if you think about like, what's the most important of this is I know the hardest question of like, say the most important research you've done, but like, if something was more most foundational when you're thinking about change for people, you know, what's the most eye opening or something that you like to start with?

Sure. Well, if you've knocked off Temptation Bundling and Fresh Starts, which are two of my favorite topics, you can talk about.

Them now too, for sure.

Well, okay, let me do a. I can do Fresh Starts briefly, because that would probably be my answer. But I'll give you a third treat that isn't. I mean, it's work I've gotten to collaborate on, but it's really an insight from someone else that opened my eyes and surprised me. Okay, let me start with Fresh Starts. The research I've done with Heng Chen Dai and Jason Reese on Fresh Starts all started. Its Fresh start was about a decade ago when I visited Google and I was there for a conference of HR leaders at the company and academics who were interested in studying work and how to make it better. And I got this amazing question from Prasad Sethi, who is in the audience. He was a, you know, a VP of HR at Google and actually a Wharton alum. And he said, katie, we're totally sold on this idea that we should be using behavioral science to change behavior for the better at the organization. You know, we want to help people be more productive, exercise more regularly, save more for retirement, quit smoking, you know, you name it, we're in. Let's figure out the behavioral science tricks to do it. But when should we actually deploy these programs? Is there some ideal time? And that was such a great question that it like just changed my career. I went back to Wharton and to my student at the time, Hang Chen Dai, who's now a professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Management. And to my friend Jason Reese, who is visiting professor. And we sort of couldn't stop talking about it, frankly, for years or working on it. And what we ended up discovering through both reading past research and doing our own original work, was that there are moments throughout our lives that feel like new beginnings. And we're very familiar with the New Year's effect and how that feels like a new beginning. But there are others too, I think actually the end of the pandemic, not that there will be a moment when it ends, but sort of as we're slowly seeing the end coming. And I don't think it has to be literally like a date that feels like a new beginning, but you can have the experience that I'm, you know, something new is starting, a new era is beginning. Starting a week, a Monday, celebrating a birthday or, or bigger things, right? You move to a new job, you move to a new community, you have a child. And all of those things make you feel like you're opening a new chapter in your life. And what we found in our work is that at those moments you're more motivated to change, you're more open to change. And when there's like a physical change that accompanies it, say, moving to a new place, it's actually easier to change because your routines have been disrupted and you have more of a blank slate to work from. So both, there's the psychological effect where just the start of a new week makes you more motivated, more likely to say, create a goal on a goal setting website, or visit the gym, or even search the term diet on Google at a moment like that. But also if you have a physical disruption, because whatever the old haunts were that you used to go to where you had some bad habits, those are no longer on your path, that can be really helpful. So our research on fresh starts and the power of those moments to change our motivation and therefore our ability to, to make an impact for the better on our lives. I think that's sort of like the biggest aha. From my research. I'm really excited to share that with the world. You know, I've shared it already, but I'm excited that that's a big message from the book. Okay, so that's one. But let me pause. I don't know if you want me to keep going.

No, I was just going to say that I love that the. Like I was saying, I've obviously read that paper multiple times and other articles of yours Researching for my own episode and for my teaching and stuff. But having the story behind that, where you've shared some of it here. There's even more detail, of course, in the book, talking about how you're uncovering these things. And I think it's such an important point to make for people too, which might be getting at, I think something else that might be the surprise nugget that you're going to share. But it feels like we read the paper and you think like, oh, cool, they figured that out. And because it's such an obvious thing, it feels like it was just a quick thing to figure out and then. And you can't help yourself but think it was like, oh, I just decided one day these matter. And then ta da, it became a research paper. Yay me. But like, really, like you said, that's years of conversations and dedication and multiple team members and studies and all these things going together to make that happen. And so helping to bring some context to this being a longer term experience to find some of these answers is I think really important. So from that first question that you got while you were at Google, and I love a great question to me too, yay to the paper that you know, first, like publishing the Fresh Start effect paper and you know, coining some of these terms and things, how long did that take? Even like approximately.

Oh gosh, that's a really good question. I should know maybe two or three years, probably from the first conversation. Maybe two years. It was actually pretty fast in that I've had projects that take seven, eight years and this one was a little speedier because as you said, it wasn't subtle. When we started analyzing data, it was one of those things that just leapt off the page. And so sometimes when you're probing a question that's a little subtler about human nature, it can take a while to find the right context to have it leap out or the right study design to demonstrate and to get at the underlying mechanism, which is part of what you have to do when you publish in a scientific journal, or at least the kinds that I tend to publish in. This was just, it was so clear that I think it was a little faster than usual. So. But anyway. But that's probably terrifying that two years is pretty fast.

That's what I was gonna.

That was warp speed. It's warp speed.

I think it shows so much the difference of just even the approaches or angles at which you and I work in behavioral science. Right. So coming from the academic side, where you sit two years and be like, whoa, it only was two years. That's amazing. And I'm working with people in business. Like, two years, you're out of your mind. That's forever. Right?

Like, I'll be fired by then if.

I don't have my right.

I have three months to make that happen. So I think it's just a great balance of showing one having some patience and maybe whether it's priming or properly framing the message with your team before, when you're talking about if I get a lot of questions about starting nudge units in a business and how do we do that? And I say whatever you think your test should be to get started, make it 1%.

Yeah. Less ambitious.

Do some little things, get some small wins first.

Totally. To build up momentum. For what it's worth. Even though it took two years to get to the final polish paper, that is the fresh start effect paper that sort of started a research stream on this. You know, we had some results and it was clear what we had learned within a few months. So just to be fair to anyone who's like thinking about a career in academia and is about to throw in the towel, it's not like you don't answer your questions for two years or seven years. You normally have a pretty good answer. It's really the refining and the total, you know, the really deep understanding of the why and the boundary conditions. And that's what we go after as scientists to be able to publish the seminal paper. So that's what takes two years rather than the insight and documenting some evidence of it. We were pretty sure we understood that there was something real there quite quickly. Right?

Yeah. And then it's just digging in and make sure there's not, you know, is this actually a causation versus a correlation? And how do we do all these? Is there something we're not thinking of that's causing this impact? Yeah, definitely. Okay, so what's the other story, tidbit topic that you were going to bring up?

Oh, the other story? Yeah. Well, I didn't give you the counter. I didn't give you anything counterintuitive about fresh starts because they are not counterintuitive. But let me jump to the other thing that I think is really interesting that's in the book. And fresh, this is a project that I got to be sort of a tag along on that was led by Lauren Eskris Winkler. She's a brilliant postdoc at the University of Chicago who's about to join the faculty of the Kellogg School of Management and she had this insight when she was Angela Duckworth's doctoral stud that if we wanted to create, she was trying to figure out how to make people grittier. Like, what. What is the equation? What's the formula that makes a person gritty? And how can we help people get grittier? And in trying to answer that question, she did all these interviews, she's talking to all these people about, you know, what, what could help you, like, see students, struggling, salespeople, like, what. What's missing? Like, what's the missing ingredient? And she had this interesting experience of listening to them talk about what was missing and realizing they had tons of wisdom about what, what they should be doing. It wasn't like a C student didn't know they should study, care. You know, they should start studying for the test a week in advance. They should put their cell phone away, like, not go out the night before, get a good night's sleep, eat healthy, go to all of the review sessions, like they know they're just not doing it. And the other thing she could tell is that it was really demoralizing for them to be getting, like, tons of advice from other people when they knew already what their challenges were. And so she had this insight that I think is really brilliant, which was, what if instead of basically flooding these people with suggestions and, like, sort of patting them on the back and obnoxiously being like, well, son, if you just buckle down, you know, instead of us giving them all this advice, if we're trying to figure out how to encourage folks to succeed who are struggling, what if we flip the script? What if we put them in the position of advice givers because they're constantly being demoralized and confidence is starting to be part of the problem. And if we ask them to actually be role models and offer advice to their peers who are also struggling, a few things might happen. One, it might boost their confidence immensely because now all of a sudden we're telling them, we think you aren't so clueless.

We think you've got what it takes.

And confidence is a big barrier to success for some people. The second thing she realized is it was going to force them to do introspection and dredge up insights that she knew from her interviews they actually had lying around that just maybe they hadn't really thought deeply about before. And so there might be knowledge buried inside them. And of course, those insights, if they're trying to tell someone else what to do, they're going to be insights based on their own experience. They're probably going to work pretty well for them. So like personally tailored insights. And then finally there's something called the saying is believing effect that she thought might help, which is when I say something to you, when I tell you something or communicate something, I start to believe it. Especially if I'm proselytizing about something, I'm telling you to do it. It's going to feel hypocritical if I don't do it myself. She had this insight like, what if we basically use asking people for advice as an intervention to help improve their outcomes. She did a series of laboratory studies showing that when people are asked for advice, it improves their motivation to achieve in that domain. And then together we ran this big experiment with high school students in Florida, along with Angela and Dr. Dina Groh, all of us. It was this big partnership with nearly 2,000 students who were randomly assigned to either give advice to a younger peer at the beginning of the semester on how to improve their grades in a class they cared most about. Then they were left alone. So it took about eight minutes for them to answer these questions and give this sort of peer advice. And there was a control group that didn't get asked for advice. But otherwise everything was the same about them. And we measured at the end of that quarter what the grades were of these students, the ones who had given advice to their peers and the ones who hadn't. And we measured their grades in the class they said they most wanted to improve in math, which were the two variables we'd predefined as our goals. We were hoping we would see movement on them. And almost miraculously, giving advice to other people improved these students outcomes significantly on both of those measures. Now, it wasn't like we turned C students into valedictorians. These are small effects. It was an eight minute intervention. But it did significantly improve their grades about one point higher. So if you were going to get an 85 on average that semester, you're up to like an 86. But it takes eight minutes and it.

And it significantly improved grades.

And it was sort of amazing to me. It was surprising how powerful it is and that our intuition is wrong. Most people think it'd be more helpful to get advice than to give it and don't see the value in that. And I think there's like a few programs, if you look at Alcoholics Anonymous, not only does every new member get a sponsor, someone who's going to coach them and mentor them, but those mentors are existing members, so they're getting something out of it too. So I think that you see this happening in the real world a lot where organizations have somehow tapped this in their mentoring programs, but maybe not deliberately in all cases. And there's this huge power, I think, in recognizing that when you coach others, you're helping yourself.

Right. Well. And that you might think like, well, that person hasn't made it to the level that they're good enough to be a mentor yet, so we'll just keep them as a mentee. But you might be inadvertently, like, getting them stuck in that problem forever, where if you give them that chance to mentor someone, they can actually grow themselves and really level up in a way that I think is just as with all these sorts of things, the best research or, you know, where I've done work on brand naming or taglines, and when you come up with the one where it's just so obviously where it feels like, well, that probably took 10 seconds and that's how. But you know that those are actually some of the hardest things to uncover and figure out. So because we just assume this, there's this, like, known truth, I like to say, on the other side, where we just assume change is hard or like, people want to be that way or it's because they aren't educated enough is the problem. I. Last year, the Nobel Prize, some of the Nobel Prizes that went out were about helping students to learn more in. In Africa and in rural parts of Asia. And where they assumed. The problem is that they don't have access to books. They need books.

Ta da.

Right. And so many people would just jump in. That's obviously the problem. We should set up a nonprofit or a foundation and get them all these great new books. Yay us. Pat on the back. We did it. Thankfully, they did some research and found out that it was not the books. It was that the teachers weren't motivated to show up for class. And so incentivizing those teachers to come made the difference in the grades. And the classes that were given new books did not have a benefit in the same way. And so taking that time to, like, we were already saying, like, dig deeper, look more can help you find this little thing that's actually pretty easy to do. It's easier than some of the other stuff might have been. And it can make a really big difference.

I love that you went in that direction because I think, you know, I know you've read my book, but one of the key messages of it is really that too often we don't take the time to figure out what's the actual barrier to change and to do that work. Instead, we sort of slap a universal solution on it. Like, you know, a lot of self help books just have a recipe that sort of here's how you build habits or here's how you set the most audacious and effective goals. But it's not always the case that the barrier requires that solution. And if it's, you know, if it's confidence challenge, you do something different than if it's a self control challenge, which is something different than if it's like a hassle factor or forgetting challenge, and which is also different than if it's a habit challenge. So that's a major lesson, I think, of my roughly two decades of studying behavior change that I hope readers of the book will take away. And I think the story you just told about that work on schools is a great illustration of how powerful it is to make sure you're not solving the wrong problem before you deploy your solution. It's very costly to deploy the wrong solution.

So I always say it's really easy to find the right answer to the wrong question and so making sure that it fits for you and not getting sucked in. I think even on survivorship bias, which ends up being a problem where somebody's looking back on what they think was most effective for them and so they write that, you know, book or self help.

Yeah. And it's, it's a pernicious issue. So I'm, I hope, hope people who read my book will find that useful.

I am sure that they will. And because all that research is back there and you have those stories and it flows in a, like, do this and then consider this. And also, what about this sort of thing? You know, walking through that journey is nice. I mentioned the me search at the beginning, but I don't think we actually defined it. So I think that's a really important part of why this book is so impactful. That instead of just getting sucked in on the survivorship bias, bit of that, of like, oh, I became successful because I get up at 5am or whatever and, you know, work. However much instead of say, this is an interesting thing, I'm going to dig in. Can you tell a little bit more about me search and what that's done for you?

Yeah. Yeah. So I love that you asked that question about me search. I think one of the things that has made my career really fun is that I realized the problems that plague me and the people I care about were legitimately important problems to study because they're so common and they can accumulate to matter so much. For instance, I was blown away to learn that 9% of premature deaths in the world are due to inadequate physical activity. And I always struggle to motivate myself to exercise enough, for instance. And I thought, like, if I could figure this out for myself, that'd be so great. And then I realized, well, if I could figure it out and help some other people, that might be even better. And now I understand that actually if we can figure out these kinds of behavior change problems, we can really save lives. So it's not, you know, there's the individual insight that often comes from introspection and looking at what works for you. And that nugget often informs things that can be really valuable. And that's been extremely rewarding for me to see, like how we can go from this is a thing that annoys me about myself and my friends. And wow, there's a big opportunity here. I mentioned the 9% of premature mortality is due to physical inactivity. It turns out 40% is due to decisions that could be changed about everything from eating to drinking to vehicle safety. Just really big opportunity for impact. But it all can start with just recognizing what are the challenges any individual is having. Because we're all the same. We're all wired the same way. So anyway, I find it really exciting that there's a way to have a big positive impact that can begin with just an insight about yourself or the people around you.

I think it's such an important reframe.

On the brain too.

So typically. So I am a person, I know I'm alone in this. That has struggled with my weight and eating for a long time. Right?

Yeah.

Like, it's just me out here.

Yeah. There's no one else.

Shoot. Okay, well, so having that and knowing that a lot of other people deal with that and it can feel very. Even though you know it's hard for people, but you want to. And you have this optimism bias that this time is going to be different. And even like where you say, you know, you have your fresh start, but it might not be.

It's not.

Just if it was only the fresh start that could do it, you know, every New Year's resolution would stick, but.

A lot of them don't. Thus my book does not end after that chapter. Ta da.

We did it.

Yay.

So but with that, you end up in this state where you are just. And I think it's getting back even to that confidence where you're saying about the C students like, we know what we should do and it's so just like I am bad. Like I know other people can do this really well. There's something wrong with me me that I need to fix and it's a me problem. And what I really love about what you show in the book and what your research goes to show is this, by reframing that just a little bit. And to say, if I have this problem, I know a lot of people struggle with this as well. I'm going to figure out the why for all of us. Like, why do we do this and how might we change that and make it better? And finding just one really powerful why can give you a purpose. And that it then applies some of that, you know, teaching others and learning along the way and when you have that underlying motivation can help you to feel really positive about yourself instead of being demoralizing in a way that keeps you stuck. So even like that tiny shift of finding the thing that's motivating for you can change everything.

I love that way of putting it. I agree.

Thanks.

Oh, I feel like I said a thing that there wasn't additional response. It's like, like woo. Like yay. How exciting.

You nailed it. Knocked it out of the park. Nothing more to say.

Well, thanks. I appreciate that. So along those lines, I did have a couple other where I was like making notes of things I wanted to ask or bring up. And we've already talked about most of them. One of the other pieces that. And so we sort of touched on this, but to kind of bring it home was your feel like I'm gonna pick the wrong name. So I'm not even gonna try.

But.

Thinking about like a treating like a chronic illness instead of a rash, which I think was a great point.

It was funny. I remember when Angela read that, she was like, I don't know about the rash. The rash comment.

She was like, oh, so think about a rash. I was like, well, it's working for me.

I'm gonna stick with it.

I get it. I like it.

Thank you. Thank you.

That's my voice.

Apparently it's a little different than Angela's. She was like, I wouldn't go with the rash. One of the more frustrating findings of my career, I will say, is that Angela and I, when we co founded this center, the Behavior Change for Good initiative, our big mission was to figure out what creates durable behavior change. And one of our first massive projects was a partnership with 24 Hour Fitness on a project where we tested, I mean, so many. We tested over 50 different strategies that in a 28 day program different scientists had designed that were meant to deliver long term behavior change. So we did this big experiment with 60,000 24 Hour Fitness gym members.

I was one of them.

No, that's so cool. Oh my gosh, I love you.

Now I want to know what treatment condition you were in.

But that's. Anyway, I know the problem is I don't know enough. You don't. Of what the other ones were and specifically what was being tested. But we could talk through some of it and see.

So cool that you were in our study. Okay, so we ran this huge study and got all this data back to see what changed behavior and. Okay, let me start with the good news. The good news is like a ton of things worked. They were really inexpensive that they increased gym visits by up to 30% at the cost of like 75 cents a person for a month.

So that's great.

We were feeling good about that. But here's the crummy part. We had this program, it lasted a month. Then the program ended. And the hope, the wish was that magically the habits we had established in that time would last forever. And we looked at the follow up period and a few things were sticky, but almost nothing was. On average, maybe 30% of the change we had produced lasted. But there were no like, you know, runaway winners. It was really the case that there was a lot of fall off. And that was such a bummer to us. We were both so disappointed. And I remember calling Kevin Volp, who's this brilliant Maryland PhD at Penn, who runs a group called the center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics and who's just like always a source of wisdom and talking to him about this and.

I was like, Kevin, it didn't work. We didn't change people forever. You know, our 28 day program didn't change their lives and completely fix whatever was wrong with their gym habits.

And he said, and anyway, I really was probably that dramatic. I know that was a ridiculous voice. I just didn't.

It wasn't. It actually reminded me of something I did in my undergraduate like call where I got a, was like in the. Got caught in the curve and got like a C on something and I came home, was like, I'm average.

And about it sometimes it's.

Yeah, there was these moments.

So anyway, the voice, you have to use the voice to express. I was really, I was really upset. So I called Kevin.

I was like, what, what have we done?

What's wrong? And Kevin, in the way that he's just a very thoughtful person, he sort of paused and he said, you know, Katie, like, was that a reasonable goal? Think about the way that we treat chronic diseases. If someone is diagnosed as diabetic, we don't put them on insulin for a month and then take them off and expect them to be cured. Like, why do you think behavior change is any different? Why do you think it's something where it's like one and done? It's like a rash and you slap ointment on it? No, it's actually, it's a chronic. All of these problems, the human condition where we struggle with self control, we struggle with confidence, our motivation waxes and wanes, we have bad habits and they tug at us. All of those things. We forget they aren't going away in 28 days. So why would you think you only need a 28 day cure? And I was like, slap in the face moment. Duh. Okay, thank you, Kevin, for like, I'm so grateful for. And it was like, yeah, of course. And I think when you look at the research, there's just so much evidence supporting the idea that if we don't drop out of people's lives, if we find something that's working for them, but keep them going on it, that's where you see the durable change. There's no need for our program to end after 28 days.

It should have been a lifelong program.

And I mentioned Alcoholics Anonymous earlier, which is of course an incredibly successful program for an incredibly challenging problem.

It doesn't.

You're always in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's not 28 days. And so I think, like, we have to have more realistic expectations when we want to change behavior. That if you want to create durable change, it has to be a durable commitment and durable solutions instead of something temporary.

Well, I think it brings it back to just to the shadow side, we'll say, of the fresh start effect. Right. So you go through, you think of like the contestants on the Biggest Loser and they lose their hundreds of pounds or whatever it is, and they're in great shape and they know exactly what they should do. But then there's this big marked shift that their trainer's gone and they're not at the gym all the time and the distractions from home come in and you just fall like way off the wagon. Yeah. And so where like with your. I think it was actually in the temptation bundling studies that. Then there's Thanksgiving break and all the progress. We're like, yay. And then you go, oh, man. Like, yeah, exactly.

That's exactly right. And Hang Chen Who I mentioned earlier, who led the work on the fresh start effect for her dissertation, she had to write a paper by herself. And she ended up biting off this piece that we've been circling around, recognizing that not only can fresh starts be good, but they can be disruptive. So when you're trying to start something new, a disruption, and that sort of sense that, okay, it's a new chapter, a new beginning, that's really motivating, but when you're doing well, it's exactly the opposite, because now you feel disconnected from the progress you've made. I have to start again. You know, if you're in a new setting, you have to figure out the path that dodges the Dunkin Donuts to work from this new. From your new home. You'd already figured that out in your old home. And I have to do it again. And this time you might not find it fast enough before the Dunkin Donuts cravings win. I feel bad that I'm picking on Dunkin Donuts a little bit because anyway, any donut shop. So it can be really disruptive to have a fresh start if things are going well. And it's really hard to hold on and keep making progress. So constant vigilance. I think actually there was a period. I don't know if you're a Harry Potter fan, but I love.

I'm so glad I was gonna bring up Harry Potter and, like, will she be bothered if I bring up Harry Potter? So. But. Okay, go ahead.

You were gonna bring it up.

It was. I was in context.

Not actually in the same context, I don't think, because we haven't gotten there. But I read that your temptation bundling was because, like, the Harry Potter books being part of what you were wanting to read to just like, yes, I can ask this about Harry Potter. The listeners know I'm a big nerd for it, for sure.

Oh, yay. I was so glad to have an excuse to mention Harry Potter in my book. Yes. I love Harry Potter. I love fiction in general. And obviously Harry Potter is, like, as good as it gets in the fiction. Well, you know, in the, like, story. Yes. In the fun fiction category, there's also lots of highbrow, wonderful fiction, but it's all great. It's magnificent. I actually, I was an American Studies minor in college. And anyway, this is like a weird tangent, but I. Speaking of temptation battling, I was an engineering major, an American Studies minor. I had to write a senior thesis to graduate, and I wanted to do something fun so that I would like it and What I ended up doing was a statistical analysis of 10 years of new Yorker fiction because I wanted to the excuse to read for my thesis instead of just crunching numbers.

Nice.

It was the most fun thing ever. Anyway, so back to Harry Potter. Yes, I love Harry Potter and the constant. I think it's. Anyway, it's probably irrelevant to say the.

Constant vigilance thing now hopefully.

No, I love it. Bring it.

Lots of this. Okay. In the chapter of my book where I sort of talk about the need for durable solutions to create durable change rather than thinking you're going to find out a quick fix. One of the things I point out is sort of like constant vigilance which is a Harry Potter ism. Actually the bad guys are saying it but I do think it's true. If we want to change, we have to remain vigilant at some point. That was my chapter title, Constant Vigilance and I think maybe it was a little too aggressive. Got swapped out.

I love it. So what I was going to ask and actually this is perfect timing for it because as we're closing out here where it's kind of fun to. So in case you couldn't tell, I don't like to have just the same conversation with people that especially you're promoting the book. You have a lot of people asking you the same type of stuff and you're probably telling the same story. So talking about something that's like a little bit different but fun for you, fun for the audience. So I like to do that. But what I wanted to ask is in this like knowing a little bit more about Katie Milkman, are you as big of a Harry Potter nerd as I in that? Do you know which house you're in? Have you done the test to be sorted into a house and if so, which house are you in? And if not, do you have one that you like?

I know that there was a test and now I obviously am going to go Google that.

Links coming your way. Don't you worry.

I didn't know the test.

I have a five year old who I have not yet read Harry Potter to. I will say it was not a small part of my motivation to become a parent that I was thinking I get to read Harry Potter again cover to cover and like with fresh eyes and ears involved. So yes, I don't maybe probably Ravenclaw, I would think. Ravenclaw.

I was actually like officially sorted into Ravenclaw. So welcome to the house. We're honored to have you.

That's where all the nerds hang Out.

Totally. That's where we should be. My husband. And by the time this comes out, 8 year olds are both Gryffindors and are brave.

Right, Brave, Right.

And then the adventurers. Yeah, the almost five year old. It has not quite been at the age where we can start because it asks you really specific kind of questions of would you choose this or that? You can also find out what your patronus would be like.

What's your patronus?

Mine is like a chow chow dog. Like a big pet chow. Like a giant Pomeranian. Which is funny because I actually had a Pomeranian for a while. That was just the best dog. She wasn't yippee and obnoxious. She was great. So it was like a really big version of her.

Do you know who Danny Oppenheimer is? Ring a bell?

I feel like the name rings a bell.

But yeah, he's a brilliant cognitive psychologist at Carnegie Mellon and he's a huge Harry Potter fan and he somehow has figured out how to do these. Like he's one of the best speakers in academia and he has done a number of talks where somehow every one of his cognitive psychology studies he's able to link to Harry Potter. You should have him on the show. He's super fun to talk to and you can nerd out on Harry Potter stuff. Yeah. I turned fluorescent red earlier in this interview, but no one could see. But he came at some point and I had like said, you know, he had his opening slide up and it was clear that this was going to be a Harry Potter themed cognitive psych talk. And I said to him like, I love Harry Potter. I love that you're doing that. And at the beginning of his talk in front of like 75 of my senior colleagues, I was a 27 year old assistant professor at Wharton with, he's.

Like, Katie loves Harry Potter. And I was so read, so embarrassed. I was like, can I sink into my.

But anyway, I do love Harry Potter. Now I'm more confident.

As do I. Well, if it makes you feel any better, when I was in my undergrad and it's like were still, you know, Harry Potter books were kind of coming out and a thing I used to tell people, like, I'm going to marry Harry Potter. Like and not Daniel Radcliffe, but like Harry Potter. If this ends up being a person, like that's a thing for me. So yeah, total ridiculous nerd on Harry Potter. And when I used to ride the bus to work as a temptation bundling thing, I guess I would just listen to the audiobooks because even if I fell asleep. I tried to listen.

We're so. They're so wonderful. There was some great New York Times coverage of the guy who does all of them. And he has, like, 180 different voices and he has the recordings of each one so that if he has to come back to a character, he listens to the way he did the voice the first time and gets it exactly right. I mean, it's. And it's so amazing. It's. Anyway.

Well, we'll have to have other times to talk Harry Potter. Thank you for going on a tangent with me. I appreciate it.

I am assuming probably got most of that thus far.

No way.

The episode will actually be called.

We Go.

We're gonna talk about Harry Potter.

Wait. Okay. I know you probably have, like, one minute left. I'm good.

I'm good. Yeah, tell me.

I'll tell you one Harry Potter thing that did not make the book. There's this wonderful scene, I'm sure you know, well, where. Let's see if I'm gonna come up with it. What's the. It's the lucky. What's the Lucky potion?

Oh, yeah, it's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, not in my.

I can't think of it.

Okay.

Yeah, there's a. There's a potion that makes you lucky in one of the books. And there's this wonderful moment where Ron is nervous about playing in a Quidditch match. And Harry, through some sleight of hand, leads everyone to think that he put this potion into Ron's breakfast so that he would perform well in his first Quidditch match. And, in fact, he didn't. But Ron believes that he's had the potion and so does everyone else. And Ron has this amazing performance, and I actually love that because a chapter of my book is about how if we are led to believe something and your mindset has this huge impact on what we can achieve. And the advice giving work is really, I think, very related to that, too. Like, being asked for advice gives us the mindset and the belief that we are worthy of giving advice. And so we must know what we're doing, doing and what we're talking about. So, anyway, I love that there's, like, little bits of brilliant psychology and brilliant behavioral science insight in Harry Potter, too. And that's one of my favorite moments in that.

Totally. And I think. And I think I got it as we were talking. I think it's Felix Felicis. Felicity's.

Oh, my God, you're totally right. Felix Felici. Felix Felicis. Yeah, it's that. And it's like golden and there's just a little of it. Yes, Felicis, something like that.

Yeah. Pronunciations of this sort of thing is not really my jam. I was telling my membership group earlier this week that. So I interviewed somebody about their book and the Hype Handbook by Michael F. Shine, which is really cool book. And he's got this. One of his strategies is to become a magus, which is like magician, right. But like I would always use the word magician and not type out M A G U S as the word to which I had to look up because it's like I'm going to say this wrong and people are going to like reach out on the podcast to tell me how dumb I am. And so I looked it up and, you know, listen, how to pronounce is like my thing I go to all the time and this is magus. And the first thing I thought was, oh, like animagus is.

Yes.

Which I was a little embarrassed for myself. But I also am now telling everybody.

I guess so it helps. It's whatever. Learning through association.

Yes.

How the Mind works.

So as we wrap up, it's been such a joy to speak with you. Of course there will be a link to the book in the show notes and we already have, you know, for behavior change for good and Choiceology. But what's the best way for people to find more about you and if they wanted to connect to talk about, you know, Harry Potter maybe, but probably some of your research, where should they go?

Www.katymilkman.com is the best place to find me. And there's information about the book and you can listen to episodes of Choiceology there and all my research papers are there and op eds and you name it, it's all there. So also a link to my newsletter, Milkman Delivers, in case anybody wants to hear from me monthly.

Who doesn't want to hear from you monthly? I don't know. And for those who want to see even more, I would recommend following Katie on Twitter as well, to which we'll put a link to that in the show notes.

Thank you.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much again for joining me. It has been a delight and I think we've shown you. I could just talk to you for all time, but we'll let it. We'll. We'll take a pause until next time.

This was so fun. Thank you for having me. I look forward to the next time. And congratulations on your book as well. Super excited about it and can't wait to can't wait to hold the copy in my hands.

I know. Exciting.

So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about how to change today? For me, I've enjoyed all the conversations over these last few weeks looking at defaults and habits and how we can change and get better at anything we want to. It's been an inspirational theme this month that makes me feel very energized. What about you? I would of course love to learn more about what you're planning to change and or get better at. So come share it with me on social media. You'll find me as the brainy biz pretty much everywhere and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. And of course, if your work, career or job are part of that equation, you definitely don't want to miss this upcoming Friday's episode with Christopher Wong Michelson where we discuss his new book Is your work worth it? Which he co authored with Jen Tosti Karis. If you aren't already subscribed to the Brainy Business podcast, now is a great time to do so to ensure you don't miss that one or any other episode. There are of course links in the show notes to make it easy to subscribe, connect on social media, as well as to check out my top related past episodes and books like how to Change and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and atthe brainy business.com 430 and just like that, episode 430 on how to change with Dr. Katie Milk is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with Christopher Wong Michelson, co author.

Of Is your work worth it?

It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me. And remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness. Com.