Behavioral Scientist's Take on Accountability, Temptation Bundling & Creating Lasting Habits w/Katy Milkman Part 2 EP 1152

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This is episode number 1152 with Katie Milkman.

Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur and each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

Jack Canfield said if you get clear.

On what you want, the how will.

Be taken care of.

And Stephen Richards said the true measure of success is how many times you can bounce back from failure. I'm excited because this is part two with Katie Milkman, who is an award winning behavioral scientist and and professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and she hosts a popular behavioral economics podcast called Choiceology and she's the co founder and co director of the Behavior Change for Good initiative. Her research is regularly featured in New York Times, Wall Street Journal and npr. And in this interview we dive into the sum of the research of her new book how to the Science of getting from where you are to where you want to be. Such a powerful interview that I made it into two parts and you can listen to the first part by going to the previous episode or to lewishouse.com in the first part we talked about the biggest internal barriers holding you back, the science of believing in yourself, why setting big goals is actually hurting your ability to succeed, and why you shouldn't do this, which I thought was interesting because it's something I've always done, and commitment devices and how they lead you to a better life. And in this episode we discuss the number one thing we need to know about changing ourselves for the better, what science says about how to prioritize your goals, making pledges and why they're the key to accountability, how to temptation bundle and why this skill is so important for creating new habits, why we need to be more flexible with our goals, and so much more. And again, if you're enjoying this at any moment, please spread the message of greatness to a friend, text someone, post it over on social media and subscribe to the School of Greatness here on Apple Podcasts or Spotify as well as leave us a review of the part you enjoyed the most. And I want to give a shout out to one of the fans of the week. This is from Care Bear Joy who said, I'm so grateful to have stumbled upon your channel and podcast after seeing your interview with Marissa Pier. The greatness you are sharing is a great reminder to never give up and for that I'm truly grateful. Again, big thank you Care Bear Joy for your review over on Apple Podcast and would love to see more of your reviews out there. So let us know for your chance to be featured as a Fan of the Week. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Katie Milkman.

What would you say is the number one thing we need to know about changing our behavior for the better?

That is a big question. I think the number one thing is like a high level thing as opposed to a tactic. And that high level thing is really what I built my book around. And that is the importance of not just sort of taking any of these different tactics off the shelf willy nilly that we've been talking about, but trying to figure out what are the barriers for you and match the tools that you put together to build your strategy to what's holding you back. So if you're struggling with I just dread doing this activity, then find a way to make it fun. If you don't believe you can, then you need a new social structure and set of supports and you're going to. Maybe everybody can benefit a bit from all of these things. If you're procrastinating, create a commitment device, like fine yourself if you put it off any longer so that you'll no longer consider doing that. So what is the barrier? And then make sure you double down on creating the structures that will be relevant to it. Because everything we've talked about is good, it's all useful. That's what you need, that's what you're gonna get the most out of.

So how do we create an assessment for ourselves to see what we need the most of? Maybe we feel like we're not procrastinating, but actually we are procrastinating. Maybe we feel like we're confident person but actually lack confidence. Or maybe feel like you're not lazy, but actually you are. Like, how do we. What's the assessment? What's the list of questions to ask ourselves? Or just things to be aware of so that we know, okay, I need to dive into like the confidence problem and start applying these things. Or I need the commitment devices.

Yeah, you're like, and you've got my books, chapters are organized. You've got them open in front of you. And I organized the book very intentionally around sort of these are the different barriers. And here's what all the science says about how to overcome them. And so we've gone, we've been jumping around across chapters. You know, one of the things that I think is really wonderful about this particular topic is that I don't think there's as much self deception here as there is in other domains. I think it's easier to diagnose just from a very simple understanding of what the barriers are. Almost like if you look at the table of contents in my book, you'll see yourself in it. Or read a couple, you know, a page and you'll understand. Like, what do I mean by laziness? I mean like you're taking the path of last least resistance. You tend to fall back on habits. Okay, if it's like bad habits that are really getting in your way, then here's the set of strategies. So I don't think there's as much self deception. I think it's fairly straightforward and people.

Will see it, you'll see it quickly.

And their own challenges.

What's the biggest thing you want to change in your life right now?

Oh my God, I have to choose the biggest. There's so many. I do a lot of me search, by the way, like this whole Career. A lot of it came from realizing that I wasn't optimizing in my own life and that there were hacks and scientific strategies that could be applied to improve. And I'm constantly. Anyway, I think there's sort of like two categories of scientists who study this stuff. The superhumans. And they are out there who are like so self controlled and amazing and they look around at like all the little ants around them and they're like, what? What's wrong with you? This is so peculiar. Let me study it. And then there's the other group which I fall into. Just the people who are sort of like, God, I'm a mess.

Let me improve myself.

Yes.

What's the solution?

Yeah, like let's find scientific. So I'm the messy category right now. I think the thing that I am struggling with most is work, life, balance. And it's been a really tough year on that for so many reasons. I have a five year old who was out of school for a long time and needed to. He was doing homeschool pre K, which over zoom goes about as well as every five minutes.

It's like, oh, get back on there. Yeah, yeah.

Yes. It's about as tough as anyone would imagine. Zoom pre K. So that was tough. And then I had this book that I wrote and was really. I put so much of myself into and that was a tug. And then I do research primarily about health behavior change. And in the last year and a half.

And your health was struggling.

Yeah, well, yeah, we've needed some health behavior change in the world as the global pandemic struck. I've studied vaccines and encouraging people to take vaccines and I felt like there was more need for my expertise than ever before and that I wanted to give as much as I could. And I have lost work, life, balance to some degree. Like you know, many late nights at the computer instead of stepping back. Many missed like, you know, outings with family. Because this is so important. I have to do this now.

Your mission is important.

Yeah, but there has to be a balance. And so that is the biggest thing I'm trying to change.

What would you fall into then? Which category would you.

Procrastination.

Procrastination towards spending more time taking care of your health and being with family and downtime. So procrastinating, being lazy. Not that way.

Yeah, but it's right. We all have our own. I've talked about the idea of wants and shoulds. So wants being like the things that provide us with sort of more. The instant hit of gratification and shoulds being the things that are good for us in the long run, but they're not always candy and salad, right? Sometimes some of us get mixed up on those wants and shoulds. And for me, the want this year has always been like, oh, I feel like I have this mission and it has overtaken some of the things that are really important and really should be at the center. Having a five year old, having a family and making sure that that's a priority. So having more balance is my biggest challenge right now.

So the procrastination problem, is that what it is? What would you what in that chapter on the procrastination problem, what tool should you be looking at more and how should you be applying that tool from the moment you leave this interview for the next couple months? How could you integrate that tool into your life?

I think accountability and commitment are some of the things that are probably the most powerful here. So one of the studies that I talk about in that chapter has to do with pledges and the power of doctors who were over prescribing unnecessary antibiotics to their patients ended up doing that less. So when they put a formal pledge up in their office saying when you come in, you've got a stuffy nose and you're begging me for your antibiotic. I don't do that. It's not recommended by, by best practice. And I follow. Best practice is not what I should be doing. That pledge reduced that dramatically, I think, sort of pledges. My partner is someone who I can have holding me accountable, setting hours and sort of planning around what, what are those hours and what are they going to be allocated to? Like am I really going to work on Friday and Saturday night until 11pm Instead of taking time for myself and my family? Those are the kinds of tools and sort of. I've already instituted this in part because of these issues. Like my phone goes away during dinner with my family when we're out doing activities. It needs to be away because otherwise I'll be tempted to check and see, oh, is there something coming up from work that I should be responding to? So it is a little bit backwards, but the tools apply whether or not the things that are tugging you in the wrong direction are pizza and junk food or work.

So what is. Have you already been implementing all these things or is it something you need.

To have a concentration? I'm implementing some of them, but not as many. We're actually, I'm about to have a fresh start. So Friday, tomorrow is a Friday and then I go on a vacation with my family for a week, which I'm really looking forward to. I haven't had a vacation in I don't know how long.

I just had one two weeks ago. And I don't know. It was like, I can't remember last time.

Years.

Five years.

It feels like years also. Pandemic stretches out time.

Taffy, you know something I did that was an incredible. I don't know if this is possible for you, but this is probably four or five years ago. I was like, I really feel like I need to get away on a vacation. And I realized at the time, for 15 years of my life, because I got a cell phone when I was 17 or 16 or something, for 15 years of my life, I had my cell phone on me every single day. Like, there was never a day I didn't have my phone near me at some point. Like, I checked it every day, and I was like, that just doesn't feel right. Like always. At least one point of the day, I touch my cell phone for 15 years. And I said, what's the thing that scares me that I think can help a reset? And. And my producer at the time, Christine, she was like. I was like, I'm gonna go to Hawaii, and what I'm gonna do is she'll leave the phone in the hotel room when I go out. And she's like, what would it look like if you didn't take your phone or computer with you on the plane? And I was like, I don't even know if I could do that. But I actually ended up doing that for five or six days. Left all electronics at home. And it was the scariest thing the first day, but then it was like, freedom, freeing. It's incredible.

That's how I take vacations, too.

Really?

You leave all the stuff at home?

I don't bring a computer. I normally do bring my phone, but.

It'S, like, stored away in the safe.

Stored away in a safe. And I take email off of it. So social media and email or whatever, right? All the things that would be a drag, they're gone.

It's just a phone.

It's just a phone.

Call me, and that's it.

Yeah, yeah. So, no, I think that's absolutely critical. And that's a commitment device, right? You put constraints on your own access to things that would tug you into a place that's not good. You'd be tempted to do this thing that's not good for you. You've created a commitment device when you.

Interesting, right?

And it is weird. Like, you are Constraining access to tools that you normally value. That is a very weird thing if you sort of step back and think about it. But it helps. And there's a lot of ways we can create constraints that help us achieve more.

What about non negotiables? Like creating a non negotiable, like every, like for dinner. Non negotiables, I put my phone away or on Friday at 6 o' clock I turn my phone off for the weekend.

Totally.

Is that something that works in this or is that absolutely.

It absolutely works in this. That's a kind of commitment device or the non. That is a commitment device. Those are boundaries, rules, constraints. And I've got it down for dinner. I mostly have it down during the day. On weekends. My real remaining problem is like late nights once my son is in bed.

After dinner, you're back from working until midnight. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So anyway, those are things I'm working on.

Interesting.

Okay, what are you working on?

Oh, man. What am I working on right now? I think I put a lot on my plate. I have a lot of big goals and big dreams and aspirations with my mission in terms of the people we want to reach and impact with the business, business goals, building the team, financial goals with my health and like, okay, you know, I was training with the USA national team for the last nine years to try to make the Olympics and team handball. And that's just a big time commitment to now. It's like I'm taking on the marathon and being in intimate relationships and wanting to spend, quality time with, you know, people and having friendships and just travel. It's just so many wanted to write a book that I was talking about. It's like, well, it's a lot of the big goals and seeing like how can I continue to not limit myself so expanding the plate in which I can add things to it, but also feel a sense of peace and balance with the expansiveness. So what does that look like? Empowering teams or maybe letting go of certain things that aren't as important and focusing on the other things. Having seasons of my life where, okay, for the next three months I'm not going to do this. And it's this because I'm going to go all in on these two things. But I can come back to it in three months and trying to manage that process. Yeah. So. And it's like, you know, I'm also taking Spanish lessons three days a week because I want to be fluent in Spanish. It's like all the things that I'm.

Trying to do you sound like a workaholic, too.

I'm.

I'm. I'm a passionate human that wants to develop more skills to serve the world better. And. And also, you know, being in therapy and learning about myself more and healing and all this stuff, it's like, I want to do a lot. So it's figuring out how to manage it all while not, like, letting people down or upsetting people and, you know. Yeah, just all of it.

Yeah.

So the chat, the opportunity is how do I continue to set up, structure, accountability, schedule, and also eliminate things that aren't important for me to do in my business? Like, okay, why am I holding on to doing these tasks that I don't need to be doing? So it's kind of like eliminating tasks that aren't as meaningful for my skills by bringing in other people to support with that. Letting go of things that I've maybe done for years that have helped me get here but won't help me get there. You know what I mean? It's kind of letting go of those things that you've been used to doing that I've been used to doing and that I'm good at, but I don't need to do anymore. So it's constantly in that, like, moving.

From sous chef to master chef. Right.

Exactly. Where it's not like why I'm so used to writing all my social media and so used to replying to comments on all my emails, but it's like, I don't need to do that. I should be more strategic thinking and creating the menu or whatever, you know, not like doing this, like, pounding the fish and like, making the rice or something, you know, so thank you for sticking. You know what I mean? I'm not sticking with your analogy here. Yes. So making the miso soup or whatever it is. Yeah, so it's. It's eliminating certain tasks and doing the bigger strategic things. Only the things that I could do. Like, yeah, I should focus on being a great interviewer and, like, building the relationships with the guests and making it a great episode. I shouldn't be doing everything else around it.

It's a really interesting point, and we haven't talked about this yet, but I love that you took us into sort of prioritization and how many things at once. And one of the most interesting studies that's been done on planning and like, we talked about if then plans earlier in the last decade, I think, was a study that showed if you actually make too many if then plans, and too many is like two plus. It's Harmful.

Give me an example again of an if then plan.

So it's like, you know, well, it's just mapping out the details really of how you're going to get, you know, within marathon. Like, what am I going to do when each. For this goal on each day of the week, when you start doing that for a bunch of goals, you sit down and do them all at once.

It's a lot.

It's overwhelming. And you get demotivated. It's too much. And I actually. You talked about the seasons of your life, which I think is a beautiful way of describing. Describing one of the strategies that can get around this problem that has been pointed to and that is like, you know, one at a time. Do the planning.

Yes.

And then we talked about routines and putting things sort of on autopilot, like Spanish lessons. Probably at some point you had to sit down and make a plan. Like, how am I going to become fluent in Spanish?

Exactly. And I schedule it at 8am Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And it's like, I've got it scheduled. I paid for the teacher in advance, so I put the money in. I got it scheduled on my calendar for the whole year or for seasons of time. I actually might take like the month off because now I'm doing marathon training and I'm like, well, that's gonna be. Well, that's gonna be done. Well, then I gotta get 6:30am and can I transition fast enough? Probably not. And also do two interviews a day and have energy and focus and clarity and want to have a dinner two nights a week with friends. Like, maybe not.

Yeah. So it's like, okay, so sometimes you do prioritize. I was actually gonna say you like, had it set up and then you could move to sort of add the next thing. But once you've already got that going. But it's also really great to know when you have to take it off and then you know how to come back to it and probably be easier to start up again because you've got the plan.

And I know this would be done in November. So it's like, okay, the marathon's over in November. It's three months. It's a season. I look at my life in seasons. Always since I played sports, I couldn't play football and basketball at the same time. You've got to be all in on that sport for that season. Now, I did do track and baseball in the same season one time. It was very challenging. I would run track meets and then I would go pitch in baseball games and just pitch games. My, my junior year in high school and it was doable, but I wasn't at the highest level at either one. I was good, I was effective, but I wasn't the best I could be at either one. And that's why I also like, okay, I'm going to be doing this marathon, something I need to schedule, create new time somewhere else or let go of something for the next three months or do it less, something like that, and know that I'm not gonna get my best potentially so that I can at least not kill myself in a marathon. You know, it's like, so that's the way I look at it. And there's in sports, inside of a season, there is typically a preseason, the season, the playoffs, and then the postseason. In the postseason is always a time to reflect. Do I want to do this next year? Do I want to retire from this? What are my goals for next year? How am I going to train to prepare for the preseason and then the season? And I think that's always a good time as well, is to take that time, whether that's the holidays where you take time to reflect on the next year, the fresh start to see what are my goals again.

And there's lots of fresh starts in sports. And I think it's no accident, right? Including like, you know, and then your season to date stuff, statistics reset, like so many things that give you the chance to have that clean slate. It's really interesting hearing you talk also about the two I was a tennis player, which comes up a fair amount in the book because there's a lot of lessons from that sport that have shaped my research. But I also found it hard to be all in on multiple things. I played very seriously and played Division 1, but I actually quit tennis about halfway through college when I realized I want to be an academic.

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Too many competing pressures to do. I. I could do school well, well enough, you know, to get good grades. But when I realized that's what I wanted to commit my life to, I didn't want to have a second priority of, you know, playing Division 1 sports.

Where'd you play again?

At Princeton?

Princeton.

Not, you know, still competitive. Not Stanford?

Yeah, yeah, still competitive.

It was a serious.

Division one is still competitive.

Yeah, no, it was a serious. It was a serious, you know, and it takes.

And you can't compete at Division 1 level with an hour and a half of training a day. You can't.

No, no. You know, many, many hours a day. It's a huge commitment, right?

Yes.

Taking certain kinds of classes that meet in the afternoon wasn't really feasible. And to do it all well, if you want to really excel at everything. I found at the very highest level, to me, I wanted more focus.

Yes. Or it's like, okay, I'm going to be an elite tennis player. I'm going to be elite in academics and have no friends and family.

Right? That's right. Like, something had to go. And I wanted to. I also. That's a good point. I also wanted to have a social life. So I could have crossed that out and I could have done.

And I think you could do that. Like, when I was in college, I really didn't have much of a social life. I didn't have one sip of alcohol. I didn't do any drugs. I didn't do anything because I was so committed to obsessing over sports. I should say I had more of a social life than I had an academic life because I didn't put any energy into academics. I was like, I'm not that good at this. I don't care about school. I care about girls. And sports was kind of the main thing when you're in college. Right. And that was like, okay, let me go all in.

For me, those weren't exactly.

But it was like obsessive over the goal. And I had to put so much energy and thought I would go to sleep for about 45 minutes to an hour before every night. I would watch videos of the greatest athletes in that sport. And then I would the decathlon my senior year and I would just watch pole vault videos over and over again and visualize myself at night before going to bed of me being able to look and have the form of these other athletes going upside down and over the pole. And I'm just obsessed about it, you.

Know, it's like you have to put your whole self into that. Right? And that's the seasons, I think.

And I knew it was a season. I was like, okay, the national championships is six months away. That's the goal. I got to qualify for that. And so I got obsessed until I otherwise, then it's done. I'm graduating school. So I think we got to look at our life like that in the seasons as well. And really, I love the research behind the accountability and the commitment, the pledges. I think that's a really cool idea. How could we apply pledging in our life around a relationship, your finances, or your health?

Well, I mean, actually, interestingly, society is already set up with a lot of pledges involved in relationships without us even getting involved. Right.

I'm engaged. I need to get married. This is my boyfriend. I'm not single anymore.

Right. We're talking about sunk costs, wedding rings. These things are all, all related. Right. And it's interesting that these structures have bubbled up, even though the research that sort of proves how effective they are came decades, hundreds of years later in many cases. But, you know, a lot of the things that exist that help us be true to each other or, you know, even if you think about taking professional pledges, when you become a doctor, the Hippocratic oath, a lot of these kinds of pledges, they're already there. But one thing the research points to is, can we build more of them and how can we use them, and how can we create ways that even when there isn't a structure. Right. Maybe you're not going to get engaged to your coach in this marathon, because that's not a thing in marathons. But is there something from that idea that you can build, like, can you commit or pledge to each other in some way that will make your commitment to each other more meaningful and more powerful? So anyway, it is interesting to see how society and has already built some of this in and then think, can we take inspiration from it and from the research to build more of it in other places?

Right. Can you talk to me about temptation bundling and what temptation bundling is and how we can utilize it for our lives?

Yes. This is the very first bit of me search. I did me search.

I like it.

This is my me search. So, okay, this idea came and then sort of I got to this field later. I was a graduate student actually getting a PhD in computer science and business, which was. The classwork was not that fun, I will admit. And there were a lot of classes I had to take that Were tough. A lot of problem sets. And I was exhausted when I would come home. So focused all day and try and understand what everybody was saying and make sense of all these different. To me, it was almost like a different language to think that way. So I'd come home, I was tired. I didn't want to pick up my problem sets and get the work done. All I wanted to do is what any sane person wanted to do. Like curl up on the couch and binge watch tv.

Exactly.

Like any reasonable human, I was also a former athlete. And, like, feeling physically healthy and active was important to me for identity, mental health, physical health. But I couldn't drag myself to go to the gym, which I also knew I needed to be doing because I was just so drained. And I realized there was a way maybe I could solve those problems all at once. What I started doing, and I'm certainly not the only person who had come up with this solution, but I might be the only person who's named it and studied it, is I decided I was only going to let myself enjoy indulgent entertainment while I was exercising at the gym, Right?

So if I really want to watch the Kardashians, I need to be on a treadmill or doing it here, where I can enjoy it while moving my body.

You got it. So for me, turns out I've already admitted I'm a nerd, so no one's gonna be surprised to hear this. And also, like, I can only handle so much sensory input. So I did it with audio novels. TV was, like, too much. I couldn't follow the characters. So, like, you know, James Patterson, Alex Cross style. Actually, Harry Potter. I love Harry Potter. And like, Voldemort. What's gonna happen next? So I would only let myself listen to those books at the gym. And I would find myself then coming home from this long day of classes and craving a trip to the gym.

Excited.

So excited. What's gonna happen to Alex Cross next? Is he gonna get, you know, is he gonna escape? Is he gonna get the bad guy? And then I'd get to the gym. Time would fly while I was there, because the workout isn't painful. It's fun. I didn't even notice. Sometimes I worked out too long. Cause I wanted to hear what happens next. And then I come back when I'm done, I'm refreshed, I'm rejuvenated. I've had my break. I was ready to dive into my classwork. And I turned around. You know, my grades improved a lot, thank goodness. Because I Was having a tough time there for a little while in grad school. And it was just all better because I had figured out by linking a chore with a temptation, I could make it fun. And we already talked about the importance of making it fun for persistence. This is just a tactic for doing it. So I've since done research showing I'm not that weird. A lot of my research is like, oh, look, I'm not weird. It works for other people too. So we ran large, randomized controlled trials and showed that teaching people the temptation bundle, giving them temptations to hook with a chore, improves outcomes in terms of exercise. You can think about porting it to other places. Like, only listen to this podcast if it's somebody who loves your podcast. While you're cooking your family a homemade meal, or while you're catching up on household chores, or while you're going for a run, what is the thing that you sometimes don't do? Put off because it's not instantly gratifying. Can you link something you love with it? A snack you only let yourself pick up when you're heading to hit the books. Social. Make it social can be a way to make something fun. Right? That can be the temptation bundle. I only get to see my best friend when we're going for neighborhood walks and getting in our morning exercise, right? Like what? And we'll gossip only at that time. That's where we'll reserve the gossip for the exercise walk. So what are the ways that you can find something that you love?

The guilty pleasures with a healthy habit.

You got it.

When is the best time to start a new habit?

Yeah, this comes back, I think, to what we were talking about with fresh starts and these chapter breaks. And so psychologically, those break points are a great time for starting something new because we have that renewed enthusiasm, optimism, the ability to say, okay, yeah, I couldn't do it last time, but I can be optimistic now because I've turned the page on a new chapter. But actually, another thing that can help beyond just that psychological chapter break is a physical change. Especially if a habit that. That's not such a good one has been associated with a place or location.

So, like, you went through a breakup and you're living with the person for a year, two or 10 years, it's actually moving into a new physical location and kind of creating a new environment and fresh start by physically moving, is that what you mean?

Totally. And that's gonna sort of any of the things that had you in a rut that you wanna sort of Rip away. It's gonna be easier to pull them apart. I think the easiest example would be like say you have a habit of picking up a Dunkin Donuts on the way to work every morning. Like three donuts. And you realize that's maybe not great for me or even one maybe not great for you. Sorry if that's news to anyone. So you want to break that habit. If you're like moving to a new job, you are literally not going to walk by the same Dunkin Donuts on.

The way to work.

Right. Or if you take a different route.

If you take a different route, you can give yourself a fresh start, but so you can create changes that make it easier to break habits if you move out of living with. Right. So just think about how this is an insane example, but you're in a relationship with someone, it's not working out. You could imagine you don't move out, you just say like, well, we'll cohabitate and we'll move into different rooms. That would be a terrible idea. Terrible, terrible idea. Right. And that's part of though the thing that we do when we're trying to change other habits is basically still living with the environment that was holding us back. So thinking about are there breaks in the environment that can help shape change is great. And there's this research by Wendy Wood showing that when people college transfer students, when they're transferring to a new college in a totally new community versus just like basically going down to a different, you know, they're still living in the same environment with the same habits and friends and just going to a different. You know, I used to go to this college down this street. Now I'm going to that college. The more disruption there was to your environment, the more that habit disruption came along with it. And people were able to build better and different exercise routines and really like.

Improvement in change would happen more easily.

When there's that shift, the drastic change.

The drastic physical change, the environment change.

Yeah.

Interesting, huh? So moving like in a different state or a different climate or a different just like all around environment will help you shift those.

Or a different job.

Gotcha.

Different set of place you hang out. Whatever it is, the physical change can actually sort of help. In addition to that fresh start psychological change is what I think the research points to.

And this is Wendy Wood's research talking about, right?

Yes.

Sounds like someone I should interview.

You should interview Wendy, which is amazing. Yes, she's here, everybody. I've talked about one of the things that's really fun about Behavioral science is. We have this. I co direct this initiative with Angela Duckworth called the Behavior Change for Good initiative. We have 150 scientists in our network around the world who all study behavior change and have like, you know, their different areas of expertise. Wendy is.

Adam and Ethan are in there too, I think.

Running in there. Exactly, exactly.

Ethan told me about this. Yeah, yeah.

Wendy's down the street at USC and she wrote a great book, Good Habits, Bad Habits.

I'll have to read that. Yeah. Okay, cool. What else do we need to know about behavioral change to support us in accomplishing and achieving our goals? Trying to think about besides everything in your book.

We've covered a lot.

Covered a lot?

Yes.

We've covered a lot of ground. You know, we have. We talked about it at a high level, but I want to come back to something. We talked about a high level that I think is one of the most important insights in the book. And that is flexibility. And I think we should talk a bit about flexibility. Maybe we should even talk also a little bit about recovering from failure.

Oh, I like this. Yes, let's talk about it.

Okay, so to talk about flexibility, I'm going to tell you about an experiment that surprised me and maybe I'll. Well, now I've told you, it's surprise me. So I won't set you up and ask you to guess because you'll know. I ran this experiment because I thought I knew enough about habits to help people form lasting habits with a tactic that ended up not working. So it was an experiment I ran at Google. Ran it with John Beshears of Harvard Business School and a few other collaborators. We wanted to get Googlers to build a lasting exercise habit. So we had 2,500 of them who signed up. They all said, I'm in. I want to build. It's called the Fresh Start Challenge. The beginning of the new year, they're all ready to go to the corporate gym more regularly. And we randomly assign them to different groups. We thought we had a formula for helping them build a lasting habit based on sort of a month program. We were going to get them to kick start this habit during this month. Okay. So one group is told, we want to focus you on consistency in your routine. You tell us the ideal time for you to work out. Say. They say 7:00am we say, great, you're gonna go to the gym at 7am as consistently as possible. You'll only be rewarded when you hit the gym right at around 7am Go for it. You're a 7am workout person. For a month. And after a month of this sort of reinforcing that, you're gonna have a habit and we're gonna let go and we'll see that you keep doing it. Okay, the second group, we say, okay, what's your ideal workout time? Let's make your plan. Say this person says 7am too. And we say, great, 7am is a good time. Go 7am sometimes, but we want you to mix it up. Go whenever you want, just do it a lot for the next month. And when the month is over, we think you'll have a lasting habit. Flexibility is key. We thought the people who we got going consistently, we actually, we thought that was probably best.

Consistency is the best way. We do it consistently every time, every day. You're going to be able to stick this habit. You're going to be a robot, right?

You're going to keep going? Yes. A machine. A machine is better than a robot.

Yes.

So, so we thought that was the thing to do. Both groups in our experiment ended up going to the gym at the same frequency during this month long kickoff period, but in different patterns. The group that we'd said, routine, routine, routine. 85% of their workouts are at the same time. The group we'd said, flexibility, flexibility. Only half of their workouts are at that same time. So then we let go. The month where we've been really holding their hand is over. And what we really care about is who's going afterwards. Like who's built a habit that lasts.

For the next month, six months, year, year.

Yeah. We're looking at the data and we're sure it's the routine. People. We analyze the data, it's not flexibility, Flexibility.

Flexibility is key, not consistent.

Flexibility was key. And we're like, what? What's going on? So we dig in, we're analyzing this data, we're like, what's going on? The people who had gone more consistently at their regular time, they did keep going a little bit more often at their special time. So if you're a 7am person, you're going a little bit more at 7am if you were in that rigid group than if you're in the flexible group. But they're rigid. That's the key word.

It's almost like if you miss that time, I'm not going at all.

That's right.

I missed the day, so I'm not going to go at noon or 5am they don't go.

If they miss their 7am, that's it. They're just, they give up on themselves. It's only under these circumstances kind of habit. The flexible people, they go a tiny bit less at their regular time, but if they miss that time, they have another time. They have a backup plan, they have a backup plan after that. So they're going to the gym. More net. Net. Because they've built this flexible strategy. Like they have their first best, their second best and their third best. They've built a no matter what habit.

If you will, I'm gonna do this at midnight if I have to, or 11pm as long as I get it in.

They've learned how to roll with the fact that life is not consistent. And so they have a most regular time, but they also have a next best time and so on instead of an only rigid routine. And I thought this was so interesting to me and I write about this in the book. It brought me back to tennis because. And we sort of talked about this a little bit earlier when I was saying flexibility. You never practice a sport only under perfect conditions.

Right, right.

Like I never trained and hit forehands. Always standing at the baseline, perfectly aligned. Like, you know, I just.

Shining at 78 degrees. Yeah, yeah.

But if that's all you do in your training regimen, you're. You're hosed. Because that's not what you're going to find in the real.

When you're out environment.

Yeah. When you're out on the court in a real match, you're gonna have to be able to run backwards and forwards and you have the sun in your eyes at a different angle. And so I think that's what we learned from that. It's so important if we're trying to build good habits, if we're trying to build routines that will last, to understand that we need to, okay, have a first best, but have a second best and third best and practice being flexible as we're trying to build up that performance. So you're actually talking about your. I think it's different if you're meeting with your Spanish coach at 8am every day. There's nothing wrong with that. But probably practicing Spanish and saying, I'm always gonna do it at 5pm and otherwise, no matter what. Sometimes there's no one holding you accountable. You're not meeting, you know, with your tutor. So you're gonna want to say, like.

I'll try for 5pm But I'm practice at some point.

Yeah, practice at some point. Even if 5pm falls apart, then I've got my 9pm backup plan.

Right, Right. Or if life happens and I want to Do a dinner at five with someone friend and. And then I can do it afterwards or before.

It's related to failure.

Yeah.

Which was the other thing I said we hadn't talked about. Because flexibility is about.

You don't fail because you can shift it.

Exactly.

Whereas if I have to do it at 7am and I don't make it and I'm done for the day I failed. That's interesting. So tell me more about failure. That was the next thing you were to say.

Right.

I think some of the tech, first of all, I think the thing I want to study most next and sort of. That I think is the most important understudied topic in my field is recovery from failure. And that, you know, of course we've got Carol Dweck thinking about like failure is growth. I'm saying Angela Duckworth thinking about grit. It's not like it isn't studied. I just think there's so much that we need to know because almost inevitably we fail when we're trying to achieve anything ambitious. And a lot of people don't get back up again and figuring that out.

Why do we not get back up? Because it's so defeating or it's deflating or we told people we were gonna do this and then we let them down or we let ourselves down or.

All of the above, you know, all of the above. Or we don't have a growth mindset or, you know, we think maybe something else will be easier.

Perfectionists. And so then we procrastinate if it's.

Not perfect or there's a million reasons. That's the, that's one of the challenges and that's what makes it so hard to solve. But we know a little bit and, and flexibility seems to be one of the key things. You know, having a growth mindset. So you can say that failure isn't diagnostic of me, but it's an opportunity to grow and learn and I can get better and do better the next time. So these are some of the things. But I think we need a lot more. One study I really like and we're saying I'm talking a lot about exercise studies, even though it's just, you know, part of this world. But there's a lot. It's like the fruit fly of habits, like going to the gym. Marissa Sharif, who is a professor at Wharton with me, has this really cool research on what she calls emergency reserves. I call them mulligans. She wanted to go to the. She wanted to work out every day. So she was doing some research and she realized, okay, I want to set a tough goal, like every day. That's good for me, but sometimes I'm going to fail. And she knew about something else called the what the hell?

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Named, when you have a small goal failure, people often throw up their hands and give up and then, you know, abandoned completely.

Small goal failure.

Yeah. So like, I'm only going to eat 1500 calories today. That's my goal. And then I see donuts at the, in the coffee room, I eat it, and then I'm like, what the hell? And then I have pizza, everything. Yeah, I go crazy. So that's the what the hell effect. It was originally studied, related to dieting. I'm not saying it's healthy to have those kinds of goals, but anyway, that's where it was studied. So we do this what the hell effect thing all the time. So she was like, how do I balance these two problems of I want to have a tough goal, but if I have a tough goal, I'm going to have some goal failures and I'm going to get what the hell? And I'm going to quit. So she came up with this strategy for herself, which she then studied both with productivity and also with exercise goals and all different settings for her dissertation work. And the idea was she's going to set that tough goal, but give herself some emergency reserve. Some sort of like, if you play Monopoly, like the get out of jail free card that you save for the real emergency, but you've got it in your back pocket, and then you can declare like, everything's okay, I'm gonna use this now.

So three times a month I can call emergency card. Like, I'm exhausted. I didn't sleep well last night. I got too much on my plate today. So these are one of three days that I can say it's okay and.

I'm not a failure and it's gotta be limited.

Right.

So it doesn't become like, well, every.

Day is the hardest thing.

I never work out. Yeah.

And she thinks calling it an emergency emergency is important, even though I like to call it a mulligan, because you don't want to be tempted to use it. She says she actually almost never takes it. But what she does is she sets like seven days a week goal, but she gets two emergency reserves. She almost never takes them each week, two a week. And then she's done this research showing, like, if you do that kind of structure, right, the seven day a week tough goal, she compares that to what about just a five day a week goal, which is structurally the same as seven days with two get out of jail free cards. Or you get the seven.

Which one's, which one's better?

Seven days with the emergency reserves. Crushes the other two. Just much better performance because you're striving for that tough goal, but you don't give up on yourself if you have a miss. And so that makes up for that, makes it better than everything else. And so I think this is something we can do, is like, can we give ourselves a tiny bit of wiggle room? Not so much that we'll wiggle all the time.

I wonder if this is kind of like, this might be a bad analogy. It's like knowing if I'm not married, but it's like knowing if you're married and you had, like, a hall pass or whatever they call it, like, where it's like, okay, my celebrity crush. I know I could go do this if I wanted to, but since I have the freedom and flexibility to. I actually don't use it. You know what I mean?

You know what I mean? It's like, I wouldn't want to do that research study. I feel like I would have trouble getting the ethics approval, I guess. I guess.

Sort of like knowing you have that.

Within bounds and that, like, you have some permissiveness. Yeah. I don't know if the relationship analogy perfectly works, but it is the same idea that by knowing you have a fallback, it can get you through something that's stressful because you're like, if it's really an emergency, I could do this.

Or even it's like, okay, I have one cheat meal a week or something. I one day eat whatever I want. But I know I could have pizza two nights a week if I wanted to. But you're like, well, I know what? I know I could eat it this night, but as an emergency, but I know it's coming in three days, so I'll just wait. Something like that.

I don't know.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And she's done it. Looking at productivity, too, like, you need to. You need to do a certain task every day, and your goal to make your big, you know, the most income is if you do it every time. But, you know, if we set different goals and give you different emergency reserves, you can get more productivity from the same workforce, from the same individuals, because they feel like, you know, it's not overwhelming. They see the wiggle room and they're able to keep pushing themselves.

So having the Mulligan method or approach to your recovery from failure strategy is a good strategy, is what I hear you say.

Yes. Yes. I think that understanding and appreciating the value of things like cheat meals, emergency reserves, it lets you forgive yourself and that's the fundamental thing, like failures happen. Understand how to forgive yourself. It can be through flexibility, which we talked about, sort of having the backup plan to the backup plan to the backup plan instead of the if only plan. And it can be with these kinds of sort of thinking about how will I give myself an emergency reserve or a mulligan so that being prepared for life to throw you curve balls in different ways, I think seems really important to success.

How else do we learn how to recover from failure?

That is great.

So we don't beat ourselves up. I'm a horrible. I'm a loser.

I suck.

I'm no good. I can never do this because I keep failing over and over again. Yeah, I think a lot of us are in beat up mode.

I think you're right. I think besides these structures that we've talked about, I actually think I'm gonna go back to social because I think that's another thing that helps with recovering from failures. If you have, if you've built your team and your support structures and you know, recovering from failure also has to do a lot with confidence to know that you can get back up and that there is another chance and that it's okay. I think that social support can be an important part of recovery as well.

It's so interesting you say that. And I wanted to bring this up earlier when you were talking about your mentor. Was it in Max?

Great memory.

Yeah, well, I take a lot of notes, so I try to remember that way, otherwise I wouldn't. But where you mentioned that he does something really integral where he essentially has you coach someone else or kind of coach yourself in the question as opposed to him giving the advice. Simon Sinek, I'm not sure if you're familiar with him. I was asking him about because I believe self doubt is one of the killer of dreams. When we doubt ourselves, it's hard to go after the goals and take the risks and be consistent and all these things and, you know, without the belief at least. And I was asking him, what do you think is a great way to instill belief in someone who doubts himself? And he was like, well, I have a good example. I have this friend of mine who's kind of been down on her luck for many years. She's very talented and smart, but for whatever reason she wasn't believing in herself. And I would try to tell her I believe in her and give her the confidence and say these things, but it just. Nothing was working. Then one day I said, you know what, I asked her if she could Coach me on something. And she was like. He was like, I'm actually really struggling with this area of my life, and I think you're really smart and talented. This. Can you coach me? And him switching it around from giving her advice to saying, will you coach me on helping me improve this. He saw her confidence go through the roof. And so I think it's pretty cool that your mentor does the same with you and your team of colleagues, where it's like, okay, you guys coach each other on how you would solve this problem, and it builds that confidence with each other. So I think it's cool. In terms of building confidence, we should always be coaching others, even if you feel like you don't believe in yourself.

Absolutely. And of course, it's this slightly tricky tightrope to walk in that if you're always coaching others and they don't want it.

Right, right, right.

Destroying their confidence. That's one of the things I like about this idea of, like, advice. Clubs, circles of friends who all want the coaching from each other, they come and solicit it, and they also. So they build each other's confidence in multiple ways by saying, hey, I want your advice. I'm soliciting and I believe in you. And then you get the chance to coach. But also when you're struggling, you can go to them and solicit advice. So it's this beautiful circle, and I think it's really related to what Simon Sinek was saying.

I love this. I'm excited about all these strategies and the research here. I want people to get your book, how to Change A Science of getting from where you are to where you want to be. Make sure you guys get a copy of this book. Get a few copies. Lots of good strategies for change and transformation. I've got a couple final questions for you. This is called the Three Truths Question. It's a hypothetical scenario. So I'd like you to imagine you get to live as long as you want to live, but for whatever reason, it's your last day on earth and you've created and accomplished everything you want to create and accomplish in your life many years away from now. But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your work with you or it's got to go somewhere else. All your written work, the audios, the videos, the research papers got to go with you somewhere else. But you get to leave behind on a piece of paper, you get to write down three things you know to be true from all your lessons in life, whether it be from research and Academics or just life lessons. The three things you know to be true that you would want to kind of share with the world, and this is all we would have to remember you by. Are these three truths or three lessons. What would you say would be those for you?

Wow. Okay. I mean, I think we've talked obviously about a lot of the biggest truths already. I have to pick three. I think number one would be if you want to achieve your potential, if you want to achieve your goals, find a way to make the path to achievement fun. It cannot be painful in the moment. It has to be enjoyable to get there, or else you're not going to persist and achieve as much. So to me, I think that's number one. Number two is probably about fresh starts. I think I would want to leave people with the realization that life is full of these moments that give us renewed confidence in ourselves, renewed motivation, a sense of a new beginning and a clean slate, and that by looking for them, by looking for opportunities to create chapter breaks when things aren't going right, we can get further. I'd like to do even more research on this to prove this in a million different ways. But what we know already is it's clear these moments arise. They help us pursue our goals. We can call them out and help people achieve more. So the fresh starts are there, they're real, they're coming, and they can give us the opportunities we need to grow and give us that psychological immune system boost that we need. Okay, so make it fun. Fresh starts. I think my third comes back to what we just talked about, about the importance of flexibility, that you have to create flexible approaches to achievement, that you cannot be too rigid, that rigidity is the enemy of habit and success because life throws you curveballs constantly. And, you know, of course, routinization, we all understand that there is sort of a habit loop and when we want to build, but we have to build it with a recognition of the real world and the real constraints we'll face. So I think those are my three.

Those are cool. I like those. I want to acknowledge you for a moment, Katie, before I ask you the final question. For your commitment to obsessing over this research and figuring out how can I help as many people as possible with the data, with the. The science, the research studies, and leaving something you loved behind, which is, you know, sports, to go all in. In school and then continue to be in this pursuit for however many years you've been doing this now and making this your life's mission because it's making a Lasting impact on a lot of people. One tool that someone could get from this book or this interview could really support someone in overcoming a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, a lot of dissatisfaction, of being stuck in something could prevent them from dying sooner than they need to, from changing a habit or routine, psychologically or physically. So I really acknowledge you for being committed to your mission and doing it in a fun way. I appreciate and acknowledge your efforts here. And again, I want people to get your book how to the science of getting from where you are to where you want to be by Katie Milkman. I think you'll be very inspiring. So make sure you check this out. You are also on social media. Which. Which platform would you say are you on the most that you. Gosh, that's your. Your go to Twitter. Twitter.

I'm on Twitter the most.

Katy Underscore Milkman.

Right.

On Twitter. And you're also Katie Milkman on Instagram and. And Facebook. You can find you there as well. But Twitter is your go to where you'll be most active, lurking, most reactive and active. Yes, exactly. So if you want to connect with Katie.

Retweeting.

Yeah. If you want to connect with Katie, you'll see a lot of people's comments there. Share this podcast or the YouTube video over on there and tag her and let her know what you enjoyed most about this. You've got a podcast as well called Choiceology with Katie Milkman, right?

I do.

So people can check that out. You can go to katimilkman.com for all more information about the book and all the different things you're up to as well. Anything else that we should be aware of or supportive for you.

For anyone who's really into the academic stuff, I run this initiative with Angela Duckworth called the Behavior Change for Good initiative, and we put out a lot of research papers. And so that might be another place people who want to get into the nerdy stuff, the nerdy data, see the data. That's another stuff.

Where is that? If they go to katiemilkman.com was that there?

Go find it. Or bcfg. Upenn.edu. university of Pennsylvania. That's another place to find out about our center.

We got to get Duckworth on here as well. Yeah, got to get her on. I've had a few people try to make the connection for that, but I think she's not traveling right now, so.

She'S just getting back.

Okay, perfect.

So soon. I'm sure you can find her at a time when she's in La.

Perfect. Okay, Katie, final question. What's your definition of greatness?

Oh, my goodness. It's such a good question. I should have prepared for this, huh? I think my, my definition of greatness is people who are. There's a North Star, something, a purpose and meaning and mission that's driving them forward creates greatness to me. And that's when I see someone who has that clear North Star, that purpose, and they've built their life, created the structures to support it, and are sort of leaning towards it in all aspects of themselves. To me, that's greatness. And it can be seasonal, so the North Star can change seasonally. But seeing someone who's really lined up everything because they have that North Star and purpose, that's when I. That's when I feel like I'm in the presence of greatness.

Love it. Okay, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Thank you. This is really fun.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode.

I hope you enjoyed it.

If you did, please share this and spread the message of greatness. This is all about learning, implementing and sharing this or teaching this to someone else. So please share this episode and let them know what you enjoyed most about it. Again, if you want to listen to part one, go to Lewishouse.com 1151 or just go on your podcast platform of choice and click the episode below so you can hear that again. Leave us a review. We'd love to hear your thoughts on what part you enjoy the most, or maybe something that surprised you the most that you're going to take action on in your life. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. And I want to leave you with a quote from author Shannon L. Adler, who said, a life out of balance is a person that doesn't believe happiness can be achieved now or in the future. It is as fleeting as the wind. I want to make sure that you're taking care of yourself, that you're taking. Taking care of your life, that you're finding balance when you need to find it. One of the reasons why I continue to do this show after eight and a half years is not sometimes because I need to learn new things, but I need to be reminded of the things I already know and stay accountable to them myself and constantly be in the conversation. You know, sometimes we need to hear the basics over and over again, so we continue to do the right thing to help us in our life. And I love learning new things, I love learning new ideas, hearing new strategies. But sometimes we already know a lot of these things. We just need to be reminded in a new, fresh way of hearing it. So I hope you enjoyed this episode.

I hope you got a lot out.

Of this science and the research here. I loved what I'm learning today, and.

I want to remind you if no.

One has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter and you know what time it is, it's time to go out there.

And do something great.

At Capella University, learning the right skills could make a difference. That's why our business programs teach you relevant skills you can take from the courseroom to the workplace. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella. Eduardo.