TRAIN YOUR BRAIN To Do The Hard Things In Life FOR SUCCESS! | Katy Milkman & Lewis Howes

The thing that I think is the most important understudied topic in my field is recovery from failure. Almost inevitably, we fail when we're trying to achieve anything ambitious.

I think you gotta have a dream. The school of greatness. Really.

Yeah. Please welcome Lewis Howes.

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. Right. We've got inequality. We have, you know, just. The world is tough, and it throws a lot at us. That's. 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 and 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, like, escape velocity from that status quo bias?

So give me an example of. Or I'll give an example of. There seems to be, like, a lot of people who are in relationships that aren't fulfilling them. Or maybe they talk about their partner or their spouse or to their friends and family, often about what's not working and what they don't like about this person or 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 or what would that fit into the status Quo bias.

Yeah, no, it absolutely would. And 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.

Like, it's like three years of my life with 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 everything, 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.

The time.

But yeah, 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? You know, what are the costs and benefits of either path, staying with this person or, you know, 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 sun cost bias is a big.

Part of that escalation of commitment. Status quo bias. So what's the biggest 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, I would say status quo bias and escalation. Commitment are like sister brother biases. Gotcha. 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 problem. So you know you want to change but like when are you really going to do it? You know, 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, 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 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 hump.

Gotcha.

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 going to start focusing on retirement savings. I'm going to set up the auto deduction. Eventually I'm going to 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 that'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 or 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, you know, in the middle of things. And so actually I've done some research on something I call the fresh start effect. This is with Heng Chen Dai, who's down the street at ucla, my former student and Jason Reese, 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, like, okay, I'm turning a page.

An anniversary, a graduation, move to a new community.

Yeah, 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 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. Cause 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. Like, I will be in a different age category. When I became a professor, I vividly remember, like, 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 here, 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. Sure. 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 motivation. Now I have motivation to make a change.

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree.

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. You know, 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 who don't know, what does that mean for those who don't know?

Fair enough. Not everyone is part of my weird world.

Academic world. Yes.

Okay, so in academia, if you're a professor, this is like 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, you. 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.

You as we trust you.

We trust you. And it's like this bizarre institution. It'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, even though it'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.

Maybe. 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. It's 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, I am 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 effects and how that extends beyond just medicine. Right. We know about it in medicine that, like, 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, you know, we think of it in this medical context. And that's where it was first studied, actually. I learned from a children's book, like Ben Franklin studied this. And they're, 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.

Interesting.

Anyway. And Ben Franklin figured it all out.

Sounds like a freakin Amish show.

It does. It was like. And it's also a wonderful children's book. So I wish I'd known that book before I wrote my book. It would have been in there anyway. There's a lot more though, than just the medical component to placebo effects. Right. When we believe that we will achieve something that also can improve our achievement. Right. When we believe we're gonna 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 Ali 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. Like, you're right.

I don't know if 1000 calories is the definition.

You're getting a great workout.

Oh, good workout. Yeah, maybe it's more like 300. 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, on the one hand, you're like, is that magic? 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. And 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, like, lean in a little bit more when they're using the vacuum. I live in a townhouse in Philadelphia, and someone pointed out to me, like, 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 gonna 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 what you're achieving. So anyway, I think of this as related to identity, because if you're 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 benefit. 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'll 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. I want to add, like, 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, like, seesaw we're 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 fulfillment inside. You.

Never choose that. You choose that. 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. Yeah, yeah. 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 going to 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? You know, what should their attitude, their energy, their communication style be like with you? If. If 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. Okay, here, let me pivot a little bit to another. We're doing a lot of academic stuff, but obviously I'm an 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 tenure is at every elite institution in the world.

So he's Good at instilling belief in other people.

Unbelievably 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, you know, he. 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, you know, responsive and new, 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 Eskris 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 have these really deep insights. Struggling salespeople and C students, when she got them to introspect, they actually knew lot. They maybe just hadn't gotten there and no one had asked them. They also really liked being asked, like, what's your advice? How would you coach someone who was 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 like, here are the seven things that I think will help you get further. And it can be really demotivating because it conveys, like, I think you're kind of, you know, you haven't gotten your stuff together.

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

I'm Gonna give you the answers. And that's our instinct. And she thought, what if we flipped 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, 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 gonna start introspecting in a way you might not if it was just your problem, because you gotta 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, like, maybe I do know something. And then once you've told someone else to do it, you're gonna 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. 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. Sure, 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 Mac 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 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. Right. 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 are below. You know, 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's. He said you said he believed in you. He treated you like family mentoring circles. Yeah.

Yeah. So maybe we have hit your.

Yeah.

Number you asked for.

That's great. I love that.

I think 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 want to. I'm going to make up a goal. Say you Want to run a marathon? Right. A lot of people decide at some point.

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.

I 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.

See the confidence. I know you'll do it. That's really exciting.

I surrounded myself with a coach, with a team of support, people who've done it before, who are encouraging. Like, I'm not just saying I'm gonna do this on my own. I never done it.

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've got.

These stations in the athletic zone. That's funny. I do. I mean, obviously, I know you're a former athlete, but I do think we underappreciate, at least when we're young, how much those skills translate. And like all 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. Right. You've got to be in variable conditions and preparing for anything.

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. Like it's too rigid. It's too much expectation of things being perfect.

Perfect. Yeah, right. 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, at the like true scientific definition. So Wendy Wood of University of Southern California is the, 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. You sort of make the coffee in the morning with the coffee maker, you hit the buttons, you don't even remember. You're just like shampoo your hair and you're like, did I do the shampoo already? I was thinking about something else.

You drove to work and you don't know how you got there.

You're like what, you're on autopilot, right? So that's like those are the really rote activities. Like you hand sanitize. If you were working in a hospital and 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 like 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, 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 study behavior, which is like a super category. It's even above routines or habits 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?

Oh, 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 the most common. I was like, breathing.

No, the most common behaviors that hold us back.

Yeah.

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?

Yeah. Yep. Okay.

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

They're great. They're great. 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. We aren't 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 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 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. Stuck. I think education and career are sort of. I'd 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 putting the time in, 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 things that get us stuck.

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 going to 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 totally doing it. Yeah, it's great. So I think one of the most important things is like, 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. It's so ingrained in me that if you want to accomplish your goals, you got to schedule these things you 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. Everything. What's at stake for you? What's, you know, at stake for other people? What's the higher purpose that if you don't do this, who are you going.

To 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. 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 that, by the way, that's good. It's good to set stretch goals. But then you got to break it down like into the, you know, what's the. 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 Alvin Jura, the late Alban Jura 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 interesting. Identical. So just little framing shifts where you think about, let's break this down into the bite size 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 gonna invest $105 a month, but I'm gonna do $5 a day?

Yeah. So 100. I can't remember what, 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 sit 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? Like that's a big. Like I'm not gonna get to go out to dinner three times that I thought I was gonna get to go out to. Am I gonna make my rent? So you're like focusing on that big category $150. And this was an experiment that was done led by Hal Hirschfeld at UCLA with a second with the 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. Yeah. They're framed it differently. And you get vastly higher tickets. Something like five times more people.

No way.

It just feels doable.

Yes. Anyone can five dollar five on their couch. Or like hard like the change. It's like, I can't do this every day.

But.

But 150 bucks may be like a base 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 going to 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, 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 like fitness, in terms of finances? And what about like relationships? I don't know. Is there.

I think you can break down most big goals into its component parts. It might not be as simple as like 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 five just us dates a month to have that alone time. You might say that means every Friday plus one Saturday we're going to do it. And that means once a week plus one week. That has two times. And let's go map out when they are. It all becomes more bite sized and achievable. And this is again, you said you're mapping out your schedules. These are the component parts that actually add up to achieving your goals.

And I really think of like, okay, what am I going to do this week? What am I going to 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 going to 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 going to keep passing and in three months you're going to look back and say, oh, look at all the 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, 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, 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 Fischbach 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, 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. You know, somebody who's like, I'm gonna just go to the gym and get on the treadmill and grind it out.

Grinds it hard every day.

Yeah. And another person who's like, I'm gonna go on a run with a running group. We're gonna go through, you know, the most on the most beautiful trails that I know. We're gonna do it together. Maybe I'm even gonna 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 gonna like, know exactly your mileage. It's gonna be really controlled.

Yes.

But it turns out if you don't enjoy it, you don't persist. And so they've done experiments where they show 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 that's crazy.

What's good for them. But we misunderstand this. We don't think we need that. We sort of think like, oh, that's kid stuff. Like I'm just gonna push through. And we're wrong. We won't ultimately. And that's because of impulsivity, because we overvalue the present experience relative to the long term gains. It's Just how we're wired. We don't appreciate, 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. 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. I think it's so underappreciated.

Yeah, that's so true. What else around structure. You said there's bunch of subcategories within structure. The importance of having structure for high performers.

Yes. Okay, so another, another really key thing is having if then plans.

I love that.

So this is based on research by Peter Golwitzer 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 4pm Then I will go train for my marathon in this location as opposed to sometime 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 trying to encourage them to go to vote in an election, they're significantly more likely to show up. So these 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.

Do it.

So those are other really important pieces.

Tell me more.

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

For the actual behavioral change to be implemented.

Right, exactly. So 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's 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 are they using?

Three minutes left, Two minutes, like whatever you have.

Well, it wasn't a countdown. It was just showing total gallons used. Right.

Or gallons.

Right. So it's like really visible. It's going up. It's.

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 am.

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 thought. Hopefully it wasn't that extreme. Then it could come with negative, but it had a big impact.

Tracking. Tracking and measuring, just having a sense.

Because then you can say, like, I hit the goal. I did. You can make the goals more concrete that way. Like, 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, does. Absolutely. The research supports when someone else, who you care about, when they're holding you accountable, it matters because it changes the cost benefit Calculus of achieving your goals.

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, 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 our 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. That's the penalty. If it's invisible how you're doing.

Yes.

Now you could say also, they're going to see the upside. So maybe it's not only a commitment device that there's like some. 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.

Right.

And commitment devices are generally extremely effective. The most effective ones are actually when you put money on the line, right? So you can put cash down that you will forfeit if you fail to achieve a goal. And research shows that not worse, 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 incentivize you. You incentivize yourself, which is very counterintuitive. Why am I fining 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 a Nicotine or cotinine test in your urine at the end of six months, 30% higher quit rate, and the group 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 a hundred dollars in this thing in six months, if I stop smoking, people are like, a hundred 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 the 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. And maybe you can, but in most cases, if you dog ear it a tiny bit or you're probably not going to return it, so you should ignore it, it's irrecoverable, 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, I've invested.

So much more money.

So, so it's a trick. It's not, 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 Beeminder that you'll have to forfeit if you don't achieve your goal in the future. Wow. 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 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. 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 your confidence?

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 only 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, as you. You know, the premise of the question is, right, like 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 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, 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 sort of give ourselves that pat on the back if it's visible to others, sort of 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 momentum, like exactly. Like if you, 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. And 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?

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 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. Find 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. You're not procrastinating, but actually we are procrastinating. Maybe we feel like we're a confident person but actually lack confidence. Or maybe you 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 book's 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 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 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 like 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 like two categories of scientists who study this stuff. The super humans. And they are out there who are like so self controlled and amazing and they look around at all the little ants around them and they're like, 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 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 cat 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, you know, 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. This is 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, but yeah, yeah, but it's right.

We all have our own relaxing. 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. You know, 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 them, you know, 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 gonna 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, you know, 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.

Right. So what is. Have you already been implementing all these things, or is this 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, and 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 in the Day I touched my cell phone for 15 years and I said, what's the thing that scares me that I think could help a reset. And my producer at the time, Christine, she was like. I was like, I'm going to Hawaii and what I'm going to do is 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 amazing. 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. 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 if 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 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 and it's just so many wanted to write a book that I was talking about. It's like, well, it's okay. 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 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, I love that. 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 I'm trying to do.

You sound like a workaholic too.

I'm a passionate human that wants to develop more skills to serve the world better. 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 of. 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.

Yeah.

So it's constantly in that.

Moving from sous chef to master. 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 eliminating certain tasks and doing the bigger strategic things. Only the things that I could do. Like, 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 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 gonna 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, at 8:00am 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 when I 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 going to say you, like, had it set up and then you could move to sort of add the next thing 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. It'll 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 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 going to 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. And 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.

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 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. 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 wanted to be an academic. And it was just too many competing pressures to do. 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. It's a good point. I also wanted to have a social life. So I could have crossed that out the of I could have done it.

All, 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 too many things.

Yeah, 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 I did 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. I want to look and have the form of these other athletes going upside down 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 gotta qualify for that. And so I gotta obsess until I. Otherwise, then it's done. I'm graduating school. So I think we gotta 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. Things are 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. Even 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 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. 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 a. You know, the classwork was not that fun, I will admit. And I wasn't that. 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, like, focused. So focused all day and, like, 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 was 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, you know, 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 bottom. 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. 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 in chapter. But actually, another thing that can help beyond just that psychological chapter break is a physical change, especially if a habit 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 or two or 10 years, it's actually moving into a new physical location and kind of creating a new environment and fresh started by physically moving, Is that what you mean?

Totally. And, and that that's gonna sort of any of the things that had you in a rut that you want to, you know, 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, you know, three donuts. And then you realize, like, 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. 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 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 improvement in change would happen more.

Easily when there's that shift.

The drastic change. The drastic physical change in 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.

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. It was 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 gonna 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 going to go to the gym at 7am as consistently as possible. You'll only be rewarded when you hit the gym right 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 going to have a habit and we're going to 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, 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.

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 confusing.

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'll 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, 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 sun 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. 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 know, have the sun in your eyes at a different angle. And so I think that's what we learned from that, that'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 going to do it at 5pm and otherwise, no matter what, sometimes there's no one holding you accountable. You're not meeting with your tutor. So you're going to want to say, I'll try for 5pm But I'm going.

To practice at some point.

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 then I can do it afterwards or before.

So 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 Duck. We're 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 going to 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 one of the challenges and that's what makes it so hard to solve. But we know a little bit 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 effect. Well, aptly 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 and then I'm like, what the hell? And then I have pizza, everything. Yeah, 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 if I want to have a tough goal? But if I have a tough goal, I'm gonna have some goal failures, and I'm gonna get what the hell? And I'm gonna 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 gonna set that tough goal, but give herself some emergency reserves. 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 and 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'S might never work out. Yeah.

And she thinks calling it an emergency is important, even though I like to call it a mulligan, because you don't wanna be tempted to use it. She says she actually almost never takes it. But what she does is she sets 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 to get out of jail free cards. Or you get the seven.

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'd have trouble getting the ethics approval, I guess.

I guess sort of like, oh, because I have.

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 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 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 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'm hearing 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. 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 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. I. 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 going to go back to social because I think that's another thing that helps with recovering from failures. If you've built your team and your support structures and 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 his name Max?

Great memory.

Yeah, well, I take a lot of notes so I try to remember it 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, the advice. Simon Sinek. I'm not sure if you're familiar with him.

Sure.

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 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 he was like, I'm actually really struggling with this area of my life, and I think you're really smart and talented. 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 your yourself.

Absolutely. And of course, you know, it's. It's this like, 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, you know, so they build each other's confidence in multiple ways by saying, hey, I'm, you know, 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 the 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 paper's 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. 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 that 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 curve balls constantly. And you know, of course, routinization, you know, 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 science, the research studies, and leaving something you loved behind, which is 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 youe Are to where youe Want to Be by Katie Milkman. I think you'll be very inspired, 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. Go to Twitter. Twitter.

I'm on Twitter the most.

Katymilkman. Right, on Twitter. And you're also Katie Melkman on Instagram and Facebook. You can find you there as well. But Twitter is your go to where you'll be most active, lurking, most reactive. 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.

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

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, 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, yes, 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 was really fun. No emotion is bad. Every emotion is telling us a story. But these certain emotions that make us tired. Our brain is our brain, body and conscious mind are limited in energy. The non conscious mind is unlimited in energy. So the non conscious mind will keep driving us to just keep going. So we have to discipline the conscious and the unconscious.