The Science of Identity, Believing in Yourself & Setting Goals w/Katy Milkman Part 1 EP 1151

This is episode number 1151 with behavioral scientist Katie Milkman.

Welcome to the School of Greatness.

My name is Lewis Howes, a 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. William Shakespeare once said, We know what we are, but not what we may be. And neuroscientist Abhijit Nalcar said, Global harmony is only the reflection of humankind's internal harmony. I'm excited about this. Katie Milkman is an award-winning behavioral scientist and professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and she hosts the popular behavioral economics podcast choiceology. She's the co-founder and co-director of the behavior change for good initiative, and her research is regularly featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and NPR. And in this interview, we dive into some of the research of her new book, how to change the science of getting from where you are to where you want to be. It's such a powerful and enlightening conversation that we made it into two parts. And in this first episode, we discuss the biggest internal barriers holding you back from changing your life, how our sense of identity helps and hurts us. This was huge for me. What science about how to believe in yourself more, why setting big goals is actually hurting your ability to succeed, what commitment devices are and how they lead you into a better life, and so much more. And if you're enjoying this, make sure to share this with someone that you think would be inspired by this as well. And a quick reminder, click the subscribe button over on Apple Podcast or Spotify to subscribe to the School of Greatness so you can stay up to date on the latest and greatest from this content here. this podcast. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Katie Milkman.

Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast. Very excited about our guest. We've got Katie Milkman in the house. So good to see you.

So good to be here.

Thank you. Very excited. I've been excited to learn more about your research, all the science, all the studies you've done on how we can really change from where we are to where we want to be. And I feel like a lot of people are stuck in their lives. whether it be relationships, finances, or just in their own mind of feeling lazy and not motivated. And you've been breaking down the science for a while and I'm excited to dive into this. There's a stat that I saw, a recent survey by one poll that said 80% of people feel stuck in their lives. I'm curious, why do you think it's so hard for people to want to change and create the life that they truly want, the desires they have, the dreams? Why is it so hard? When there's that many people feel stuck to actually make those changes?

That's a great question. And I think there's sort of two categories of barriers that are important. One of them is structural and social and sort of outside of your own control. We've got inequality. We have just the world is tough and it throws a lot at us. There's not as much we can do about that in this conversation. So I want to focus on the second category because that's what I study and that's the internal barriers that can prevent us from reaching our goals. that can make us feel stuck. And internal barriers, one of the biggest actually is status quo bias. This is something that behavioral scientists have been studying for many decades. It's a tendency to want to stick to whatever path you're on, to feel like any deviation from it will be a loss, it's frightening, it's overwhelming. And so it leads a lot of us to keep doing things that aren't productive, to stay in ruts. And the book I wrote in the Science I Do is really focused on, okay, Say you want to change and status quo bias is working against you, what are the tools and techniques that you can then use to figure out how do you get escape velocity from that status quo bias?

So give me an example of, or I'll give an example of, there seems to be a lot of people who are in relationships that aren't fulfilling them, or maybe they talk about their partner or their spouse to their friends and family often about what's not working and what they don't like about this person, them thinking about getting out of it and they're doing this for months or years. But maybe they're so used to the pain or they're just comfortable with the frustrations that they stay in it because it's less painful than the unknown of something else or being alone. Would that fit into the status quo bias?

Yeah, no, it absolutely would. It would also fit into escalation of commitment, which is another bias that has been extensively documented. The tendency we have when we're on a path to stick to it in part because we tend not to ignore sunk costs. So a sunk cost is like something that you can't recover. It's like three years of my life.

Of this person, all this time invested, I can't get that back. That's right, you can't get it back.

All the birthday presents that you purchased and obsessed over.

The house we bought together, the trips we've taken on, the family integrations.

All of those things that they're irrecoverable, they're historical, they're behind you, you can't get them back. So maybe the house you bought actually is recoverable. Why not call that a sunk cost? The time. the time, we tend to wait that and we shouldn't. What you need to do is think about what are my options going forward? What are the costs and benefits of either path? Staying with this person or moving on? What are those cost-benefit paths? But we focus on these sunk costs and think, oh, I can't give that up. But you're not going to get it back no matter what, whether you stay.

In it or not.

It's in the past. It's in the past. And so this is a really pernicious bias, and I think it's part of the reason that we would stay in a relationship or in a job that isn't working out Escalation of commitment is really common and the sunk cost bias.

Is a big part of that. Escalation of commitment, status quo bias. So what's the biggest interior internal barrier.

That holds us back, would you say? Oh my goodness. Well, I mean, this is the barrier in the sense to deciding you want to change, right? So right now we're sort of like before I even write my book, which is about how to change once you've decided to, there's a lot of people who haven't decided they want to change. So I would say status quo bias and escalation commitment are like sister-brother biases. They're really closely related. They're both keeping us stuck in the mud. And then where most of my research comes in is, okay, you actually have already raised your hand and said, I know I need to change. It's time. How do I do it? And so that's a whole different set of barriers actually that become challenges because even once we decide we want to change, even once we've ignored the sunk costs and gotten over the status quo bias, now we have a whole bunch of things holding us back from actually getting to where we want to be.

What are those things?

Yeah, okay.

What are those things?

Let's go, let's do it. Okay, so there's a whole bunch of them. The first one is actually literally the getting started.

Yes, yes.

So you know you want to change, but when are you really going to do it? When are you going to jump into the deep end? So that's a first barrier. And I open the book with that, because obviously where are you going to open a book about change? It's with getting started. Then I go to probably the next most important, and that is impulsivity. The fact that we tend to overweight the instant gratification we'll get from our decisions, like it's going to taste so good to eat this, or it's going to feel so great to scream at this person, or, you know, it's going to be really exciting to buy this instead of setting aside money for retirement. All of those kinds of we focus on the present at the expense of our long-term benefits. That's another major barrier, figuring out how do you get through that Procrastination is related to impulsivity. We put things off because they don't feel great in the moment. So I think of that it's a closely related but it's another barrier. Then we've got forgetting, which I actually think most people underestimate the importance of. But we forget a lot of important things and we don't get to things because it's just not at the top of the priority list and we don't put it there and we mean to put it there and we don't. So forgetting, I think-- what do you mean by forgetting?

What's an example of that?

So another way it's often talked about is like flake out. Like, you know, I'm gonna start focusing on retirement savings. I'm gonna set up the auto deduction eventually. I'm gonna get a colonoscopy. I know I need to get one of those, but I haven't gotten to it and I just keep flaking out on it. It doesn't come to top of mind when I could do something about it. We put it off, we put it off, and suddenly we're at retirement without accumulating any savings. And suddenly, you know, we're having an exam and we find out if only we had early detection, we would have had a better outcome, right? So those, that's what I mean when I say sort of forgetting or flake out. So it's another category of barrier that can forget change. It's like sort of on the priority list, not high enough that you ever make it at the top and you keep putting off and forgetting.

So that's another-- why is it so hard for us to get started once we know, okay, now it's time to make the change, but it's still hard to actually get started in doing that. What holds us back from that starting step?

Yeah, well, our motivation to make change is actually just like our motivation to do anything, by the way, tends to be sort of, you know, It ebbs and flows. There are times when we are in a more reflective, action-oriented, change-oriented mode, and times when we're more pessimistic or just sort of going with the flow because we're in the middle of things. And so actually, I've done some research on something I call the fresh start effect. This is with Hengchen Dai, who's down the street at UCLA, my former student and Jason Riis, senior fellow at Wharton. And what we have shown in our work is that There are certain moments that feel like a new beginning in life. Like when?

So, one that you know about already.

New Year's or? Yes, exactly. Right? Like you didn't need me to come here and tell you about any fancy science. You're like, yeah, I know about New Year's.

Birthday, New Year's.

Yeah. Yeah, there are moments that feel like.

Okay, I'm turning a page. An anniversary, a graduation.

Move to a new community.

A new job.

A new city. You got it. Those are all fresh start moments. Actually, There's trivial ones too, but they can matter. Like the start of a new week can feel like a fresh start.

That's true.

You sort of sit down, you go into work maybe for the first time in a couple days, you feel fresh at your desk, ready to sit and think about what are my priorities in a way that you wouldn't in the middle of a week, start of a new month following celebration of certain holidays, particularly the kind that we associate with fresh starts. So those are all moments when we feel like we've opened a new chapter. and we have a couple things that go on at those moments. One is that we feel like, okay, this is a moment when I want to step back and think big picture about things because you recognize that there's that break point. You think actually about your life, like you're a character in a book. That the way we organize our memories and structure them, it's not linear completely. Instead, it's like, you know, the college years, the years playing sports, the years living in Boston, whatever they are. that's how you structure your memories and that means there's actually implications for the way you live your life. Because when you get to one of those chapter breaks, that's when you do this big picture thinking.

Interesting.

And you also tend to feel like your identity is shifting, right? So you step into a new role as you, I'm turning 40 in the year ahead and that feels like a big break to me. I will be in a different age category. When I became a professor, I vividly remember, that was a huge shift in my identity. I felt like a different okay, I have a different set of expectations and roles and ways I should sort of dress and talk. And that identity shift that can come, even if it's something as small as, you know, you're stepping into a new year and you feel like the new year, new you, you can look back and say, well, you know, last year, my old job, when I was a graduate student, I didn't manage to eat right. But that was the old me, and this is the new me. And so you feel this sense of optimism and disconnect from those past failures. Right.

I've had this belief, maybe correct me if I'm wrong, or maybe you have some science that could back this or dismantle this. I had a belief that living a good life is not enough for you to want to change. There's got to be some type, like if you're 80% of my life is good, like I've got a good relationship, I've got a good job, I've got things are 80% there. It's like, I feel like there needs to be some type of breakdown, massive breakdown for us to realize, okay, there's a near-death experience that I had, a near-death or a death in the family or a friend, there's a loss of a relationship, there's a loss of a job, there's a loss of an expectation that you really had a dream for. These kind of bigger breakdowns I feel like make us reflect stronger towards wanting to make a change.

I totally agree. So first of all, I will say I do not personally have fantastic data on this, but there are survey studies suggesting that those kinds of experiences lead to identity shifts, which can lead, of course, as I've described in this other line of work, to the sense of a fresh start and the belief that you want to turn the page. So it's the same principle at play absolutely. And I think the mechanism to use like a nerd term is really the same, right? So it's that something shocking happens, it's sort of a wake-up call, leads you to step back and do that big picture thinking. and it creates this disruption in your narrative.

Because I feel like it's easy to procrastinate or kind of feel lazy, which is part of your process as well. It's easy to feel that when things are okay, or when things are like good, but they're not like, it's not a big enough pain for you to be like, I need the motive, now I have motivation to make a change.

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree with that.

Do we need a bigger pain or is it possible to create exponential change or transformation when things are okay or really good in your thought.

It's so interesting. I do think that even when things are good, we can have these kinds of fresh start experiences that shape us in positive ways. I'll give you an example. I had a phone call, I was driving here from Santa Barbara this morning, I had a phone call with a friend who just got tenure. And he is thinking big, his life is great.

For those that don't know, what does that mean?

Oh, yeah, fair enough. Not everyone is part of my weird world.

Academic world, yes.

In academia, if you're a professor, this is the be-all and end-all of your career. You're working really hard. You get your PhD, you get your assistant professor job, you work really hard, you write a bunch of papers, you teach a bunch of classes. And if your university says, you're doing great, if you're good enough, they bestow upon you tenure, which means permanent job. Job security basically can't be fired unless you do something illegal. And they're saying, you have now total academic freedom. We're no longer going to be evaluating We trust you. We trust you. And it's like this bizarre institution that's created to help people take risks, but it is a big moment in the life of an academic when they get to that milestone. It's like there's nowhere else to go. You've climbed to the top of the mountain. And so it's really exciting. It often happens to people around their 40s, sort of like midlife when you might already be having some introspection going on about like, why am I here? What's my purpose? So a lot of academics step back at that moment and think, what do I want to do now? What do I want to do next? I've been climbing and climbing to this point. And I was having this conversation with a friend on the drive here who had reached that point and was having that exact, okay, what's next? And wanted to talk about writing a book since I'd written a book. And like, what is that? Like, he thinks that might be the next big adventure for him. But nothing is wrong. Everything is right. It's just that he reached a moment, he reached an achievement. He got to the top of a mountain and looked around and realized, okay, I've climbed to my goal. and it's time to figure out what the next one is. And I think that can be a fresh start too, that's positive.

Identity is something that is interesting to me. How important is the way we shape our own identity or view our identity in terms of where we are to where we will be? Like if we stay stuck in old identities, how do we shed identities? How do we create a new identity even though we've never actually lived it? Will that help us get there? Can you share more just about identity in general on how it hurts us or helps us?

It's a fantastic question. I'm going to give you a somewhat, first I'm going to give you a somewhat frustrating answer. It frustrates me. I don't feel like academic research has wrapped its arms around identity the way I would like it to because I think it is unquestionably so important, right? The labels we put on ourselves obviously matter, but I feel like We don't know nearly as much as we should. It's one of the things I'm most interested to study. It's your next book. Moving, maybe. We know a little. One of the things I think is most relevant to the way I think about identity is mindset, which is different than identity, but a mindset can come with, or can be triggered by an identity. And one of the barriers we haven't talked about yet to change that I think is really important is whether you believe you can change. and identity and mindset are a big part of that. So we know a lot about mindset from work, for instance, by Carol Dweck at Stanford who's done this incredible- Fixed mindset versus fixed mindset. Exactly. And that's sort of an identity, right? You identify with being someone who can grow or you identify as someone who is X, right? Like, you know, I'm only this smart. I'm only this capable. So in a sense, there's an identity that comes with believing you can grow or an identity that comes with believing you can't. There's also wonderful research on the placebo effect and how that extends beyond just medicine. We know about it in medicine that if you believe a sugar pill is going to make you healthier, you actually experience physiological benefits. But there's some really interesting research showing it's beyond, we think of it in this medical context and that's where it was first studied actually I learned from a children's book. Ben Franklin studied this and I don't know if you know, mesmerizing. Interesting. That term comes from Dr. Mesmer, who was the original sort of charlatan in France who was giving people fake medicine and cure. Anyway, and Ben Franklin figured it all out. Sounds like a freaking Amazon show.

It does.

It was like, and it's also a wonderful children's book. So, I wish I'd known that before I wrote my book. It would have been in there. Anyway, there's a lot more though than just the medical components to placebo effects, right? When we believe that we will achieve something that also can improve our achievement, right, when we believe we're going to get an outcome. One of my favorite studies that I describe in the book that I think is sort of related to mindset and identity is work by Allie Crum, who's a psychologist at Stanford. She did this really interesting work with Ellen Langer of Harvard, where they randomly assigned housekeepers to one of two groups. And those housekeepers were either told every day when you go and do your job in a hotel, you are getting exercise at the level that's recommended by the CDC. So you're getting a great workout when.

You do your job. You're burning a thousand calories or you're getting whatever you're...

Right. I don't know if a thousand calories is the definition of a great workout. You're getting a great workout. Oh, good workout. Yeah, maybe it's more like 300. Okay. Just not to get too overboard. And then another group just wasn't told that information. And the question actually was, are there differences in the outcomes those two groups experience a month later in terms of health. So does a group that believes they're doing a job that comes with health benefits actually end up losing more weight, having more controlled blood pressure? And the answer was yes.

Really?

Which is a, on the one hand, you're like, is that magic? Like what's going on? On the other hand, you can start to see how it actually would play out and how this would be applicable in other settings. So they believed their job could give them a workout. and all of a sudden, maybe they're choosing to take the stairs from floor to floor to get those extra calories or lean a little bit more when they're using the vacuum. I live in a townhouse in Philadelphia, and someone pointed out to me, it's so great that you live in a townhouse, all that passive exercise when you run up and down the stairs. And now I am the one volunteering to go grab the ketchup that we forgot if we're going to have dinner on a roof deck. That's exciting. I can get extra exercise. So there's like different choices that you make once you start to have a different set of beliefs about your- Interesting. you- know, what you're achieving. So anyway, I think of this as related to identity, because now you're starting to have the identity as I am someone doing a career that's physically active, and now you lean into that and then you experience the benefits. So I think the work on mindset is the best work I have seen that's really rigorous and that relates to identity.

So if- belief supports you getting those results you want or making the transformation of the change you want, how would you suggest that we learn to believe in ourselves more from a scientific point of view? Like what's the data suggest on, okay, if you say these affirmations, if you look in the mirror and do this exercise, if you just smile at people and you create more reflection of joy, like what is the thing that you've seen in data that helps increase belief in oneself.

Yeah, I think the most powerful thing is who you surround yourself with.

Really?

So I think the social context you create, the people around you have so much to do with whether or not you believe in yourself. And by the way, I also want to add a really quick footnote because the academic in me can't stand not to, which is to say you can have excessive confidence and that can be harmful. So this is a little bit of a dangerous seesaw were on here, right? You want to be confident enough and believe in yourself enough that you're going to lean into the opportunities and work towards the goals because you believe you could achieve them. But if you're like, I've got this, I'm perfect, you're not going to practice, you're not going to work hard. So there is, anyway, it's a little bit of a delicate balance. But back to how do you get to that right level of belief? Everything I know from research points to the structure of the people you surround yourselves with, whether it's the people you work with, the people you train with, if you're an athlete, the people you socialize with. They give you a lot of those beliefs in yourself. And you can choose them, but they will, with the messages they send you about what's acceptable behavior, what's normal, what they're achieving, and how you measure up. It shapes so much about our confidence.

Really? There seems to be, I think this is true, and I also love the examples of some of the great athletes who've accomplished so much that were doubted over and over growing up and kind of have this chip on their shoulder, like no one believed in them and they said, I'm going to go prove them wrong type of mentality, which I think can get you extremely far in terms of success and results, but Never.

Feel like you can't film it inside.

You never choose that. You never choose that. No.

Right, so I think what you're pointing to is like, it's not a necessary condition.

Right. It's not the best environment.

It's not the only. There are people who can thrive without it, but if you get to choose, and if you want to create an environment where you're gonna believe in yourself.

So you think surrounding yourself with the right people, the right environment of people, the right community, what should those people be like? What should their attitude, their energy, their communication style be like with you? people were reflecting on their five to 10 people in their inner circle. What should they reflect on? They should have these qualities. They should say these things. Or here's some red flags. If your best friend tells you you shouldn't do this or your best friend says, I don't think you look good doing whatever it is, what are those flags and what are those, I guess, positive signs?

Yeah. Well, okay. Here, let me pivot a little bit to another, we're doing a lot of academic stuff. I like it. I love academic. I'm actually going to tell you a story about a person in academia who is the most important person in my career, and that's my dissertation advisor. His name is Max Bazerman. He's a Harvard Business School professor, great human being, and a great academic. What he's truly exceptional at is mentoring. His PhD students have gone on to be tenured professors. Now everyone knows what tenured is. At every elite institution in the world.

So he's good at instilling belief in other people. Confidence, belief.

Unbelievably good. And he does all the other things that you need to do to help someone succeed, right? Like you know good coaches. Of course. You know, the training, like the actual teaching of skills, all those things are part of it. But I think he creates an environment for people to thrive. And it actually took me a while after I had graduated as one of his advisees, and I was trying to advise my own students and figure out what was the secret sauce that made him so wildly more successful as a coach and mentor than anyone else in our field had really, I mean, stratospherically more successful. And what I realized is he had all the obvious stuff, all those obvious ingredients, like, you know, responsive and knew his stuff and gives you feedback. But there was an unshaking belief, like he treated you like family. He was there for you. He believed that you could do it. He always was giving that positive reinforcement. Another thing that he did that I think is so interesting and related to research is he sort of created, I'll call it like mentoring circles within the students he was coaching so that we were not always just being coached or mentored and advised by him, right, but he would put us in the position to advise more junior students.

Smart.

So there's this wonderful research that I write about in the book by Lauren Eskes Winkler, who's a a professor at the Kellogg School at Northwestern. And she had this amazing insight when she was doing research for her dissertation. She noticed that she was interviewing all these people who were struggling to achieve their goals. And as she asked them what they thought might help them achieve more, because that's what she was interested in, how do we increase achievement, they all had these really deep insights, you know, struggling salespeople and C students, when she got them to introspect, they actually knew a lot. They maybe just hadn't gotten there and no one had asked them. They also really liked being asked. What's your advice? How would you coach someone who is in your shoes? And she realized most of the time when someone is struggling or when we're coaching someone, our instinct, even if it's unsolicited, is to just whip out some advice. Here are the seven things that I think will help you get further. And it can be really demotivating because it conveys, I think you're kind of, you haven't gotten your stuff together.

You don't have the answers. I have the answers.

I'm going to give you the answers. And that's our instinct. And she thought, what if we flip the script? What if instead of putting our arm around someone and giving them advice, we.

Said, what would you do?

What would you do?

And actually, how would you coach someone else?

And not even just how would you actually have them coach someone else? Like put you in the role of a mentor and coach to someone else who has similar goals so that you feel like you're on a pedestal. Wow, someone trusts me to give this kind of advice. I must, I must, you know, be kind of cut out for this. Maybe I'm better at this than I thought. And then you're going to start introspecting in a way you might not if it was just your problem. Because you've got to help someone else and you don't, you know, you don't want to let them down. And then when you do that, you actually figure out, well, I've got some good ideas. And, like, maybe I do know something. And then once you've told someone else to do it, you're going to feel like a hypocrite if you don't do it yourself. Right. So this is another sort of social trick. Max would put us in these sort of advice-giving circles where the senior students are working with the junior, and he.

Rarely gave advice actually. He more facilitated the experience for you to learn and create the answer within yourself, I guess, by helping others. By helping others.

And he would, you know, he's nudging along the way and like good job or like maybe a little redirection. But and if you go to him and you're like, I need to know how to do X, he tells you, but there wasn't a lot of, steer, like backseat driving, if that makes sense. And I think that also helped build confidence. It made us believe in ourselves in those roles. And I now actually have an advice club of people who are former Max students, maybe no accident, we sort of try to keep this going even beyond that point in our lives where he was coaching us. And each of us we're at similar career stages, all professors, similar goals, and we reach out to each other for solicited advice whenever we're facing a challenge, a career challenge, and aren't sure what to do. And it's just been totally amazing. So it's this peer group of people who support each other, care about each other, there's friendship, that's all built in. We see others achieving and it helps us see, oh, if they can do it, I can do it. But then also we get to give advice and we grow from that as well.

What would you say are the top three or five things that a coach can do to instill belief in someone else that you witnessed from him or that you've also seen with your peer group?

I think a lot of positive feedback is super important. That that's like the predominant sense is that this person thinks I'm doing great, even if they're also telling me ways I can improve because you don't want to only, obviously, it's really important to also get Well, like a little more like this. You need that nudging, but it needs to be with a positive. Sometimes people call it a feedback sandwich, right? You like start with the positive. Anyway. So I do think that positivity and like conveying they believe in you, I think creating social structure for you, which is one of the things Max, there was sort of a whole ecosystem of other students and supporters who were all striving towards similar goals and Instead of feeling like we were in competition with one another, it was very clear that we were all part of a team. Almost every email starts with high team. These are academics all vying for jobs and to sort of achieve. And you could see it being very cutthroat and competitive. We weren't on a team, right? We weren't playing for a team. But we were a team. And that was how we saw ourselves. And then the structuring, you know, everybody structured to help others who were below them. It's sort of part of your role is Working with them. So those are a few of the key things. I'm not sure I've hit your number.

Positive feedback, social structure, supporting the team.

Yeah, putting people in the role of advice givers or supporters and mentors.

I think you, yeah, he said he believed in you. He treated you like family, mentoring circles. Yeah.

Yeah, so maybe we have hit your number you asked for.

That's great. I love that.

Those were the keys.

I love that. How does someone build confidence within themselves if they feel like they're not confident? Maybe they don't have this mentor, this social structure to instill that. They don't have the people around them. Are there ways we can build inner confidence without other people believing in us?

Yeah, I think, well, so first of all, I do think you can go out and find these people, even if you don't have them, and that we should proactively be creating those structures, right? So say you wanna, I'm gonna make up a goal. Say you wanna run a marathon, right?

A lot of people decide at some.

Point in their lives.

I just, I just, did you run a marathon? No, yes, two days ago I started training for my first marathon, which is in three months, which is a small window of training time, but it's very sore today. That's amazing. So I've made the commitment earlier in the year, but then the marathon keeps getting delayed with the COVID but now it's happening in November, so.

Congratulations.

Well, I haven't finished it yet, but yes.

You're going to?

Yes, I will.

Exactly. I'll see the confidence.

I know you'll do it. I will. That's really exciting. I've surrounded myself with a coach, with a team of support people who have done it before, who are encouraging.

Like, I'm not just saying, I'm gonna.

Go do this on my own. Exactly. Not downloading an app and saying, it'll just be the app. Because I know it's gonna be challenging. I know it's something I've never done. It's something that has scared me my entire life. I know it's not supposed to be this easy, like walk in the park. It's a marathon. And so I've set up the structure and the accountability and the schedule to follow through on the action steps needed in order to set myself up for the best possible position for, you know, staying healthy and finishing it and all these different things that I want to do with my goals.

Perfect.

Yeah.

You already know all of this.

I'm a former athlete, so I'm in the athletic zone.

That's funny. I do, I mean, obviously I knew you're a former athlete, but I do think we under appreciate, at least when we're young, how much those skills translate. Oh, yeah. And like so many of the lessons about, you know, how do you structure practice, what are the, you know, in my book, I was a tennis player, so I talk a lot about like insights that actually came from that sport and then eventually influenced my research and understanding of, okay, if you want to build a habit, the best way to do it is not like, standing in the same place, doing it exactly the same way every single time. That's never how you would practice in sports, and that would never work out when you're out on the field or out on the court. You've got to be in variable conditions and preparing for anything that could happen.

Worst case scenarios, yeah.

Right, and yet often I think scientists and anyone who's trying to create structures and success make mistakes that if you looked at it like an athlete and you said, well, how would an athlete tackle a parallel problem? we would know that's not going to work. It's too rigid, it's too much expectation of things being perfect.

Perfect, yeah. You talk about habits and behavior. What is the difference between a habit and a behavior, and which one should we be focusing on more in order to get to where we want to be, changing our behaviors or changing our habits?

A habit is a subset of behavior. It's a pretty narrow subset actually if you look at the true scientific definition. So Wendy Wood of University of Southern California is, I think, the world's expert on habit. And she would define it pretty rigidly as something you basically do automatically without almost consciously realizing you're doing it. Like you sort of make the coffee.

In the morning with the coffee maker.

You hit the button. You don't even remember. You're just like, you shampoo your hair, right?

And you're like, did I do the shampoo already?

I was thinking about something else. You drive off to work and you don't know how you got there. You're like, what? Because you're on autopilot. those are the really rote activities, like you hand sanitize if you're working in a hospital, you didn't even notice you did, did I do that already? Those are habits. I think there's been a lot of excitement and growth of, in the popular press, the idea that a habit is anything that you want to repeat. And I think that would actually, a lot of the things that we think of and that we talk about casually as habits are probably more in the category of routines. which is different. Like often it's a, like if you're going to the gym, is it really a habit? You probably remember deciding to go to the gym, maybe you do it at a consistent time, maybe you do it a lot, but I would start calling a lot of these things more like routines if you want to talk about the non-academic. At any rate, you know, a little bit like inside baseball, who cares? But I do think it's interesting there's distinction in the processes that drive one versus the other. I mostly, I study behavior, which is like a super category. It's even above routines or habits where, where, and it's just all behavior change requires different behaviors to happen. Some of them are going to be on autopilot, some of them are going to be routine, and some of them are one time decisions that have big implications for your life. So I actually think having all of those categories in mind when we think about change is really important as opposed to narrowly focusing on one or the other.

So what is the definition of a behavior?

Ooh, that's an interesting, like what is a behavior? A behavior is an action you take. Like really everything is behavior. If it's inside your head, it's not a behavior, then it's like a judgment. But any actual action you take is a behavior.

Any action you take. So what are the most common behaviors that we have? that I guess hold us back and then what are the behaviors that-- okay.

I thought you were going to go with the most common. I was like breathing.

No, the most common behaviors that hold us back and then the most common behaviors of the ultra high performers, successful, you know, in business and sports, what are those behaviors that they tend to lean into versus the ones where people are stuck.

Yep, yep. Okay.

Trying to ask you questions you've never been asked here.

That's my goal. They're really great questions. Okay, let me start with some of the most common behaviors.

That keep us stuck.

That keep us stuck. Yes. Yeah, I think common behaviors where we get stuck are, and this is like, you know, what are the most common New Year's resolutions? They're to change those behaviors that we get stuck on. So the most common things we get stuck on are things related to our health, right? making good decisions about what we eat, what we drink, whether we smoke, whether we're physically active. Those are really common points where we get stuck. Our finances, right? Making good financial decisions on a daily basis about how we spend our money, how we save, who we give our money to. Those are places people often get stuck. We can get stuck in bad social loops. We sort of started by talking about relationships, so I think that's another place we get stuck, whether it's we're, you know, not, we feel like we're too shy, we're not meeting enough people, we're meeting the wrong people, we're in the wrong relationships. That's another area where we get stuck. I think education and career are sort of, I put them, because they're like one follows the other. And that's another category. Like if you're a student, you're trying to achieve, but we often get stuck on not really studying rigorously and, you know, putting the time in and the focus in, and then that converts to work. where we're not being as productive as we could be, we're not setting ourselves up for success. So I think those are some of the common- you- got the things that get us stuck.

-Behaviors that get us stuck. Yeah. -And what are the behaviors of the ultra performers or the elite who are accomplishing all their goals and pursuing their dreams?

What are those behaviors that they do really well? -So I have never gone and interviewed the ultra performers and said, like, list for me all your behavior. So instead of answering your question, perfectly, what I'm gonna do is tell you some of the behaviors that research shows lead to great outcomes. And then certainly I have seen lots of top performers where I go, oh, they're doing it. They're totally doing it. It's great. So I think one of the most important things is leaning on structure as opposed to expecting to just sort of follow the Nike just do it mantra. And by the way, when you talked about how you're training for your marathon.

I noticed you immediately went to all the structures. Schedule, structure, accountability, coaching, investing money into it all, so there's more investment in it. So it's like you've got to show up. Yes. That is like, for me, it's so ingrained in me that if you want to accomplish your goals, you've got to schedule these things you've got to do.

On a daily basis and make it.

Like-- Break it down.

What's the daily goal? What's the daily goal?

When are you going to do it? What's going to cue you to do it? Who's going to watch you do it? everything. What's at stake for you? What's at stake for other people? What's the higher purpose that if you don't do this, who are you gonna be hurting?

And who is literally holding you accountable, right? You've got your coach involved.

So those are the kinds of things. So structure is one of the leading academic, the research that shows which will help you get more results.

Yes, and there's so many pieces of that and like each one of them we could unpack and talk about studies from, you know, okay, a big one is, too often people say, I just have this big goal, you know, this big, I think if I set a big audacious goal, and by the way, that's good, it's good to set stretch goals, but then you've got to break it down, like into the, you know, what are you going to do this week? What are you going to do today? What are those component parts? And people get a lot further. Research by Albin Durrer, the late Albin Durrer of Stanford, great thinker, sort of did some of the pioneering work on this. We just did a field experiment. where we tested with thousands of people who wanted to be volunteering 200 hours a year and they had committed to that goal. And we found that just sending them reminders not to volunteer 200 hours a year, but to volunteer four hours a week led to vastly better performance. Just that really simple change even in the way you communicate about this. When you invite someone to start saving $5 a day instead of $150 a month, you get vastly higher take-up rates. Interesting. Identical. So just little framing shifts where you think about, let's break this down into the bite-sized component. Now it's harder to procrastinate on it.

You can see how it's doable. It doesn't feel overwhelming. So you're saying if my goal is to save $105 or invest $105 a month or whatever this is, are you saying it's not the best approach to say, I'm going to invest $105 a month, but I'm going to do $5 a day?

Yeah, so 100, I can't remember what the-- It's 150 because it's like 30 days roughly in a month.

150, as opposed to saying I'm gonna save or invest $150 a month, trick your brain into saying, I'm gonna invest $5 a day.

Right.

You're saying by doing that, what should happen?

We should have-- Many more people raise their hand and say, I can do this.

As opposed to $150 is too big for some people.

It sounds big. You start thinking like, oh no, where am I gonna have to cut? That's a big-- I'm not gonna get to go out to dinner. three times that I thought I was going to get to go to, am I going to make my rent? So you're focusing on that big category, $150. And this was an experiment that was done led by Hal Hershfield at UCLA with a savings app, Acorns. And they just invited people either, some people get randomly assigned, do you want to save $5 a day or $150 a month? It's literally the identical outcome. They will take $150 out of your account-- Monthly.

Monthly.

Yeah, but framed it differently and you get vastly higher take-- Really? Something like five times more people.

No way.

It just feels doable.

Yes. And it's like anyone can find $5 in their couch or like hard, like the change. It's like, I can do this every day, but 150 bucks may be like a big stretch.

Right, but it is the same thing. And so that broken down goal is really important. So as opposed to, so it's like.

If you're working out as opposed to saying, I'm gonna run, I don't know, 50 miles a week. It's like, that may seem like a lot, but I can run, what's that broken down to? Three miles, four miles a day, five miles a day. It's more doable than thinking about the big number, right?

Yeah.

That's interesting. How could you apply that in another area of life, do you think? In terms of fitness, in terms of finances, and what about relationships? I don't know.

I think you can break down most big goals into its component parts. It might not be as simple as literally redoing the math. But it might be, you know, I want to have a better relationship and I want us to spend more quality time together. Let's try to spend a lot more quality time together this year. Well, first you can get more concrete, right, than a lot of. And so say you had a monthly goal, it might be like, okay, I want to make sure that we go on, you know, five just us dates a month to have that alone time. You might say that means, you know, every Friday plus one Saturday, we're gonna do it. And that means, you know, once a week plus one time, one week that has two times. And we're gonna, let's go map out when they are. It all becomes more bite-sized and achievable. And this is, again, you said you're like mapping out your schedules. These are the component parts that actually.

Add up to achieving your goals. And I'm gonna think of like, okay, what am I gonna do this week? What am I gonna schedule this week? Not like, I've got all this stuff to do for the next three months. Like, what can I do for the next few days? and what's coming tomorrow. And then, okay, I see the full week and how am I gonna manage my time? And at the end of the week, wow, I can look at what I created and I can be proud of.

It and build for the next week.

Yeah, so that's really important. Yeah, and time's gonna keep passing and in three months you're gonna look back.

And say, oh, look at all those.

Steps I took to get to me where I'm at.

Absolutely.

Winning the LA Marathon. I'm just kidding. Completing is the goal. Completing in five hours is my goal. Okay, so that's-- so breaking down structure.

Let me add another super important strategy that I think a lot of high performers use that research supports. And this one I think is vastly underappreciated too, and it sort of relates to what I was poking at earlier, like the just do it Nike, like, no, that's not really right. I think this is really a misconception that's related to that. and this, the idea comes from research by Ayelet Fishbach of the University of Chicago and Caitlin Woolley of Cornell. And what they showed is that if you ask people when they have a big goal, what approach are they going to take to try to get to it? Most people say, like, I'm going to look for the most efficient route. It's all about efficiency. What's the most effective path to that end goal? That's how I go for it. And like a small fraction of people say something different. They say, I try to find a way that I'll enjoy getting to that end destination.

Have fun.

Have fun. So you could think about someone who wants to, we've been on marathons, say you're training for a marathon, somebody who's like, I'm gonna just go to the gym and get on the treadmill and grind it out.

You can get it hard every day.

Yeah. And another person is like, I'm gonna go on a run with a running group, we're gonna go through on the most beautiful trails that I know, we're gonna do it together. Maybe I'm even going to download some great reading material, listening material before I go so that I have something fun in my ears. Those are really different paths, right? Like this one might be more efficient because you don't have to coordinate with other people. You'll do it every day. You're going to know exactly your mileage. It's going to be really controlled. But it turns out if you don't enjoy it, you don't persist. And so they've done experiments where they showed that if you just actually Encourage people to choose the most fun way to pursue an exercise goal or study. They did this with students in math class, giving them fun activities that were sort of going on in the background. You can use markers and play music and have snacks versus just grind it out. People achieve more because they persist longer when they find ways to make it fun to do what's good for them. But we misunderstand this. We don't think we need that. We sort of think like, oh, that's kids stuff. Like, I'm just gonna push through and we're wrong. We won't ultimately. And that's because of impulsivity, because we over value the present experience relative to the long-term gains. It's just how we're wired. We don't appreciate that. We don't appreciate that about ourselves.

So we make these mistakes. We'll probably quit more frequently when it gets harder and harder if there's no like daily joy or fun. If you're just like, I got six months, 12 months, two years until maybe this goal happens. This is exhausting. it's draining, it's pulling me away from having fun in my friendships or these activities. So it sounds like if you can make the challenging steps the fun activity in your day-to-day life, then you'll stick.

With it longer is what I'm hearing you say.

Absolutely. And I think it's so underappreciated. Yeah, that's so true. What about, what else around structure? You said there's a bunch of subcategories within structure.

Yeah.

And the importance of Having structure for high performers.

Yes. Okay. So another really key thing is having if-then plans.

I love that.

So this is based on research by Peter Gollwitzer of NYU who studied the way people, different people, were making plans around goals they wanted to achieve. And he found that some people sort of said, you know, I will eventually do it or I'll do it, you know, I'll do it once a week. And other people laid out real detail in their plans. And they had sort of if-then statements like, if it is a Thursday at 4:00 p.m., then I will go train for my marathon in this location. As opposed to some time this week I'll get around to it. The more structure, the more clear it was, what's the cue that's going to trigger the behavior, the more follow through he was seeing. And then he started running a series of experiments where he would actually have people basically fill in the blanks, like fill in the if x happens, then I will do y. sentence instead of just saying, I plan to do Y, and looked at what are the outcomes and saw this really matters. It turns out we've done research showing that if people are prompted to just write down the date and time when they intend to get a flu shot, they're more likely to get a vaccine. If people are asked, when will you vote, where will you vote, how will you get there on a call, try and encourage them to go to a vote in an election, they're significantly more likely to show up. So these like Very simple tricks are being used widely in health care now, in voter turnout, because it's so powerful to create those if-then plans instead of just sort of the flimsy ones to get to an end goal.

Gotcha. Okay. I like the if-then plans.

If-then plans are super important. We haven't talked about tracking or accountability, although we've alluded to them.

Let's do it.

So those are other really important pieces.

Tell me more.

Tracking does seem to be really useful in terms of achieving goals because if you don't have visibility into whether you're getting anywhere, it's hard to reward yourself and rewarding yourself is part of the loop that makes you keep feeling satisfied and doing something.

Or the actual behavioral change to be implemented, right?

Exactly. It's a really simple thing but this tracking does seem to matter. One of my favorite studies of this shows it actually in water conservation. where people were taking showers that were long, and they were committed to conservation, but their showers were long, so that wasn't totally working out for them. And then they were randomly assigned to two groups, one group getting something they know they're being monitored and someone else can see how much water they're using, the other group gets a visual, they can literally see in real time how much water they're using.

Three minutes left, two minutes, whatever.

Well, it wasn't a countdown, it was just showing total gallons used. Liters or gallons, whatever. Right, so it's like really visible, it's going up.

You're wasting this much every moment, yeah.

Right, and you can sort of think like, oh how much did I use total yesterday, right? So you can imagine that kind of thing.

Like gamification.

Yeah, I'd say it's related to gamification, although there were no sort of stars and bells and whistles, it's more just I know where I am, and I.

Have, you know, I know how much I have.

I'm a horrible human being for wasting this much water. No, I'm just kidding. Well, yeah, I mean that might be the kind of thing. Right, right, right. hopefully it wasn't that extreme. Then I could come with negative. But it had a big impact.

Tracking, tracking and measuring.

Just having a sense. Because then you can say, I hit the goal. You can make the goals more concrete that way. I'm going to do 10,000 steps a day. My little Fitbit jiggles and it makes me happy. That's gamification. That jiggle gives me so much joy. But the tracking gives you visibility into how you're doing and it's important. And then accountability, which you've mentioned a bunch of times, You know, absolutely the research supports when someone else you care about, when they're holding you accountable, it matters because it changes the cost-benefit calculus of achieving your goals.

And that- Is there research around that that proves that or is it- Yes, absolutely.

When you're- my favorite work, so this is in the category of what's called commitment devices. So it's a category that economists have been studying for decades because they find them really weird. so economists get really excited when they hear about commitment devices because they're like, these shouldn't exist. It breaks all our theories. A commitment device is when you create some sort of penalty or constraint on yourself. So we're used to the government doing that sort of thing, right? They put their speed limits and they fine you if you're tempted to speed and we're like, yeah, that makes sense. But what if you fine yourself or penalize yourself for not achieving your goals? That's crazy. Who would ever do that? And yet, lots of us do. and it's effective. And someone who's holding you accountable is sort of like creating a penalty. Because if it's now visible to someone else whether you've achieved more, you're going to feel shame if you don't. So that's the penalty. If it's invisible how you're doing. Now you could say also they're going to see the upside. So maybe it's not only a commitment device that there's also an opportunity for pride and so on. But we tend to, losses tend to loom larger than gains to us. Accountability tends to, I think, be most potent because of the sense that you don't want to let, you don't want to fall down when someone's watching. And commitment devices are generally extremely effective. The most effective ones are actually when you put money on the line. So you can put cash down that you will forfeit if you fail to achieve a goal.

I love that.

And that shows that that helps.

That works.

It works really well.

So putting money down and saying, okay, I'm going to pay $1,000 to something I don't believe in if I don't accomplish this goal or if I don't do the steps at least to get there by a certain time. Exactly.

And it's like- that'll incentivize you. You incentivize yourself, which is very counterintuitive. Why am I finding myself? But it works. My favorite study is on smokers who wanted to quit. Half of them are given sort of your standard suite of stuff. Here's ways to quit. The other half are given all that stuff plus a commitment device. You can put money into this account for six months and it'll disappear if you fail in a nicotine or cotinine test in your urine at the end of six months. 30% higher quit rate in the group that had the ability to put that money in there.

Now, someone once told me that you pay attention to what you pay for. And so in the coaching world, when you're investing in a book or you're investing in a coach. Usually the more the investment in that book or program or coach, the more you want to pay attention to to getting the result. Would that be similar to this study that's like, okay, if I put $100 in this thing in six months, if I stop smoking, people are like, eh, 100 bucks doesn't matter. But if I put $100,000 in, I'm going to pay attention because that's a lot more money that I don't want to lose.

You know what's really fascinating is it goes back to the very first thing we talk about talked about, which is sunk costs. And then a tendency we have not to ignore them. So, you know, if you buy a book, it's sunk cost. You can't go return it. Maybe you can, but in most cases, if you dog-eared a tiny bit, or you're probably not going to return it. So you should ignore it. It's a recoverable. It doesn't matter, but we don't. That's not how we're wired. And as a result, as a result.

Of wanting to sort of recover that.

Sunk cost, we do work harder when we feel like, oh, I've invested so much money. More money. Yeah, exactly. So it's a trick. It's sort of a mistake that we do it, but it works. And so let's hook into that and use it to motivate us to achieve more.

So the more at stake you have of your own whatever money or time or energy, the more likely you'll achieve that goal or make that change.

It's just, yeah, you can change the cost-benefit calculus moving forward. You can also, if you've invested in the past, then the sunk costs that we tend not to ignore will feel like they should change that. So there's sort of two ways, prospectively and retrospectively. You can put a bunch of money into something and then you're going to feel guilty if you don't do it. Or you can use these commitment contracts where you literally put money on the line on, say, a website, one of these stick or B-minder that you'll have to forfeit if you don't achieve your goal in the future. They're both tactics that can work for different reasons.

Why do you feel like so many people-- oh, actually, I was going to ask you about this with people putting penalties on themselves, even if they don't have an accountability or it's not a public commitment or something like that. If we say we're going to do something and then we break our word to ourselves, does that shift our identity or does that keep us in a lower level identity of less confidence, less belief in selves? But actually when we keep our word, we increase the level of self-esteem and confidence, whether people know about it or not. Like, how does that affect our belief in ourselves or our confidence?

It's a really interesting question.

So.

And specifically, you're saying when we fail and it's visible to others versus when we fail and it's invisible, how does.

That change our account? It's more like when we say we're gonna do something and we don't take those actions and we constantly. I say I'm gonna work out five days a week, but I'm gonna do one day. And I keep saying, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this, and then I keep not doing it. How does that affect our belief in ourselves and our confidence when we continue to break our own word to ourself?

Got it. Yeah, that's, as you, you know, the premise of the question is right. It's not good for our confidence to continually fail. We do have a really amazing, what Dan Gilbert of Harvard has called a psychological immune system, where we, We sort of figure out ways to still end up satisfied and somewhat happier than maybe we would if we took everything at face value so we can bounce back. And I actually think fresh starts and the fact that the fresh start effect exists may be related to sort of the psychological immune system for all the failure that we, you know, we constantly fail at our goals. Goals are hard to achieve. Most of them we fail at. And we have built these ways to sort of stand up again and say, okay, but this time it's going to be different. And it's probably a good thing by and large, but of course it's not perfect. And the more we fail, the more difficult it is for that psychological immune system to win.

And what about the more we keep our word to ourselves, do we build more confidence and self-esteem and momentum towards achieving other goals as well? The other way?

Sure, yes, absolutely. Especially if we're tracking and we can give ourselves that pat on the back if it's visible to others, the more things that reinforce what we're achieving, I think, the better in terms of giving us that boost and confidence. And it's interesting there's some new work that's starting to be done on the power of streaks and visible streaks and.

Sort of seeing like-- Like momentum.

Exactly. If there's apps like Duolingo, it's just trying to get people to learn a new language and they're really making it prominent to you. Look, you've done it five days in a row. Keep the streak going. They're really trying to play into that momentum and psychological momentum and streaks. They do build and they make us feel like, okay, I don't want to.

Lose what I've achieved and accomplished, and that's very motivating. Okay. What would you say is the number.

One thing we need to know about.

Changing our behavior for the better? Ooh, I love this. And if you want to know the answer to that last question, then make sure to check out Part two coming soon where we talk about 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. Part two is going to be just as powerful, but make sure to share this with someone that you think would be inspired on part one lewishouse.com/1151 with Katie Milkman. Again, if this is your first time here, click the Subscribe button right now over on Apple Podcast or Spotify. Leave us a review and let us.

Know what you enjoyed most about this.

Episode and how it inspired you, the actions you're going to take in your life. And I want to leave you with this quote from Ralph Ellison, who said, when I discover who I am, I'll be free. This is all about the discovering process of who we are in our lives, becoming more aware of what works for us, what doesn't work for for us where we are and where we want to be. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, my friend, 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.