Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Katy Milkman on Creating Lasting Behavior Change for Good EP 155

Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up next on the Passion Struck Podcast. A moment that causes us to step back and think big picture about our lives, and to give us a sense that we're new and fresh. And we can say on January 1, okay, last year I meant to quit smoking, last year I meant to build up all of my productivity at work, and I didn't get around to it, but that was the old me who failed. And this is the new me and the new me is going to be different. Welcome to Passion Struck.

Starting point is 00:00:23 Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer

Starting point is 00:00:46 listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to episode 155 of Passion Struck. Recently ranked by Apple is one of the top 20 health and fitness podcasts in the world.

Starting point is 00:01:15 And thank you to each and every one of you who comes back weekly to listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world. And if you're new to the show or you would just like to introduce this to friends or family members, we now have episode starter packs both on Spotify and on the PassionStruck website. These are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organize into topics to give any new listener a great way to get acquainted to everything that we do here on the show. Just go to passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started. In case you missed it, I interviewed Dr. David Yaden last week, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and we discuss the research that he's doing in the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, as well as his thoughts on self-transcendence and behavioral change.

Starting point is 00:02:02 I also interviewed Aaron Diel, who's the CEO of Improve It. And we talk about how improv changed her life and how she's now teaching improv to help others change theirs. And if you missed my solo episode from last week, it was on unconditional love and eight ways that you can create it in your own life. Please check them all out. I also wanted to thank you so much

Starting point is 00:02:25 for your continued support of the show. Your ratings and reviews mean so much to the growth and popularity of this podcast. So thank you each and every one of you who gives us those ratings and reviews. Now, let's talk about today's guest. Dr. Katie Milkman is the Dr. James G. Dinnman in Dow Chair of the Wharton School

Starting point is 00:02:44 at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the host of Charles Swab's popular behavioral economics podcast, Toysology, and the former president of the International Society for Judgment and Decision-Making. She is also the co-founder and co-director of the Behavioral Change for Good Initiative, a research center whose mission is to advance the science

Starting point is 00:03:04 of lasting behavioral change. Her best-selling book, How to Change the Science of Getting from Where You Are, Who You Want to Be, was named as one of the top 20 best books for Healthy Living in 2021 by the New York Times. And Katie was also named to the world's top 50 management thinkers by Think thinkers 50 in 2021. We discuss why she and Angela Duckworth set out to co-found the better change for behavior good initiative and some of the incredible impacts it's made over the last few years. How the mastery of human motivation and behavior became her passion. The importance of how our behavior should be a strategy in design, effortless perfection,

Starting point is 00:03:45 and Katie's thoughts on how you can use behavioral changes to curtail its practice. The importance of microchanges in our behavioral change journeys, why the approach to health-related behavioral change is different from other behavioral change modalities, and so much more. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life now. Let that journey begin. I am so excited to welcome Dr. Katie Muckman to the Passion Struck podcast. Welcome, Katie. Thank you. I'm really excited to be here. Katie Muckman to the Passion Start Podcast. Welcome, Katie. Thank you. I'm really excited to be here.

Starting point is 00:04:26 Well, I can't wait to dive into your book in a bit, and I have to tell you, I absolutely loved it. I couldn't put the book down. I thought it was just incredible. And I also really enjoyed the forward that Angela Duckworth did as well. So excellent job on the book. Thank you so much. That's wonderful to hear. Well, but I thought it would be a good place to start because I have an interview coming up with Dr. David Yeaden,

Starting point is 00:04:54 who studied at University of Pennsylvania. He's now at Johns Hopkins. As we were going through our interview, he told me you really have to check out this behavioral change for good organization that Angela and Katie started. And so that prompted me to reach out to the organization on one of the forums and led to this interview.

Starting point is 00:05:13 I was hoping that you could talk to the audience about this initiative that you and Angela now, 100 other scientists are part of and what its purpose is, but more importantly, what are some of the findings it has turned out so far? Yeah, it'd be delighted to. So the Behavior Change for Good Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania is something that Angela Duckworth and I founded about five years ago and its mission is to advance the science of lasting behavior change and also to spread knowledge about that science. So both the scientific mission and a communication mission. And the way that we have organized our

Starting point is 00:05:52 work is by bringing under our tent about 150 scientists from around the world with different disciplinary backgrounds, including economics, sociology, psychology, marketing, management, medicine, computer science, you name it if it has an opportunity to make a contribution to understanding behavior change that discipline is in the fold. And basically saying what's bring this group together to cross pollinate about ideas and to do science together. And we've spearheaded a new way of doing research, which is instead of running experiments, that's sort of the standard methodology, the gold standard in our field, where you run,

Starting point is 00:06:31 you know, an AB test. Like, does this change behavior effectively? More so than this other methodology? Rather than just running AB tests, we actually specialize in doing what we call mega studies, which is like an A to Z test. Lots of scientists come together with different ideas and we put them all out there in the world simultaneously in a really massive trial. We just published results from one of our first mega studies in nature, which is sort of the world's leading scientific journal late last year. And it was looking at different methodologies. We tested 54 different programs that lasted four weeks and tried to encourage more gym attendance

Starting point is 00:07:08 among members of 24 hour fitness gyms. That just gives you a flavor of the kind of work we do. And in terms of some of our biggest discoveries today, I would say one really exciting discovery. A lot of this is fueled by our collaborators. And this is no different in that respect. Was led by a former PhD student of Angela's postdoc of mine who's now a professor

Starting point is 00:07:29 at Northwestern University at the Kellogg School. Her name is Lauren Eskryst-Winkler. And her insight that I think is so interesting, which is in my book as well, is that often when someone's struggling our first instinct is to try to give them advice, whether they've solicited it or not on how they can do better.

Starting point is 00:07:46 And in talking to people who are struggling in various parts of their life, she discovered that that can be really demotivating. And she wondered actually if, in some cases, where people have all the knowledge they need to succeed and just lack confidence, a better formula might be to flip that script and put people in the position of advice giver. So a student who might be able to do better in school, if they are more confident in their abilities and have a reason to introspect and think deeply about what could work for someone like them to improve study habits, she thought, what if we say, you need to coach someone else?

Starting point is 00:08:23 Could that improve their outcomes? And we run one really big experiment with Lauren at the Behavior Change For Good Initiative, where with seven high schools at Ion, Florida, we showed giving students the opportunity to coach and offer advice on how to study better to their younger peers. The students who offered advice ended up outperforming others. And we think the reason is several, based on Lauren's work, one is that confidence boosts, oh, you think I know enough to coach my peers?

Starting point is 00:08:52 I guess I'm not such a chemo, maybe I can achieve. And then you have to introspect deeply about what will work for you in order to give advice to someone else. And once you've offered that advice, you're gonna feel like a hypocrite if you don't follow it yourself. So that's one of my favorite discoveries

Starting point is 00:09:07 that I think has come out of work. We've done, but there's lots of other insights like that. And we're just so excited to have the opportunity to partner with this amazing team to advance the science and grateful for the many people at the University of Pennsylvania who saw an opportunity in the work we were doing and came through and made this happen. Well, I want to touch on a couple things you just said.

Starting point is 00:09:28 So I love the results of that study because I have a senior in high schools. She's an intellectual and I love watching her and her friends do study groups and they've just been studying for their AP Cal and Psych and Physics tests. And just to see the round robin of exchange of ideas about everything from formulas to ways to approach it

Starting point is 00:09:53 has been eye-opening for me. And it's lovely to watch her with her confidence, just shout out her ideas to that group without worrying that they're going to jump on her. So that's great to see that there's research that backs us up as well. That's really a wonderful anecdote. And I have to say that one of the most powerful things that I have seen in my career studying behavior change is how important it is to have social groups that support one another and build confidence and create

Starting point is 00:10:26 positive spillovers. And so I love hearing that your daughter has a group like that in her life. I think it is a great backdrop for her as she goes into her undergraduate and then from there obviously I think the group participation even gets magnified as you get your masters and PhDs you will know. The other thing I think is group participation even gets magnified as you get your masters and PhD as you well know. The other thing I think is so great about this organization is I had Jeff Walker on the podcast several months ago. And if you're not familiar with who Jeff is, he was the long-term vice chairman of JP Morgan Chase

Starting point is 00:11:00 and ran their multi-billion dollar private equity group. But he has become a huge advocate for making societal impact and social impact. He started the contemplative science center for the University of Virginia and was its first chair. But one of the things he and I have discussed is how competitive academia typically is, and there's often a desire not to want to share.

Starting point is 00:11:24 So I think what you're doing here and getting so many scientists to actually collaborate is really groundbreaking and ends up helping everyone as a result. Well thank you and I have to say my experience in academia. I think I'm very lucky that it has been an extremely collaborative, collegial place for the most part. And those have been the most wonderful parts. And I think trying to amplify that and create a community that supports each other, that's how all the best science

Starting point is 00:11:53 gets done. It's through cross-pollination, ideas bouncing off of each other, people going about research in isolation, and then those insights propel each other forward. So just as I was saying, it's so wonderful that your daughter has a group. I feel the same way about science. Anytime we're trying to accomplish something, if we can build the right community,

Starting point is 00:12:11 we can do so much better. And it has been really a wonderful experience to work with this group of 150 scientists so far. I hope we'll be able to keep the magic going forward. I do as well, and I can't wait to read more and more of the research that's coming from it. I also love Angela Duckworth's book, Gret.

Starting point is 00:12:32 And for me, when I first started reading it, I could relate to many of the things she was saying because I went to the Naval Academy and she was talking about West Point. And I completely agree with her that there is this factor of passion and perseverance that drove me to get to where I was at the Naval Academy. But as I looked at it, I thought she was missing one important ingredient. And that was, I can have as much grit in the world as I want. I don't know how to

Starting point is 00:13:06 intentionally drive it. Am I going to reach my end goal? So the question I wanted to ask you is, how important do you think intentionality is to behavioral change? That's a very interesting question. I should say, I am not an expert on grit. Everything I know about it, of course, I've learned from hanging around Angela. I don't think she would say grit is the only ingredient. It's just one ingredient that seems important to success and that she's studied. And she's done a lot of work on situation modification with James Gross, his brilliant psychologist

Starting point is 00:13:42 at Stanford University. And I think she thinks that's a very important component of success as well, which is situation modification basically means intentionality. Having a recognition that if my situation isn't going to support my goals, then I need to change it. And so I think in that sense, she would certainly agree that it's intentionality having an understanding of your purpose and how to

Starting point is 00:14:11 how to best approach it is going to be another important degree and to success. I certainly agree with it and it's part of the reason I wrote the book How to Change because I felt like science had given us a lot of insights into what we could do if we had an intention and a goal that weren't clearly enough articulated to a wide audience and best use cases limitations and so on. So I think both Angela and I would agree with your premise. leads into another great question, which is how did you develop your passion to focus your career on the mastery of human motivation and behavior, and more importantly, how have you been able to master it yourself? Wow, that's a great and deep question. I'll just admit, I don't know if I can

Starting point is 00:15:00 answer it perfectly accurately. I don't know if we can all tap into our motivations and do so perfectly, but I will say that for me, it feels like it was a bit of an accident in that I was really interested in human behavior as soon as I started encountering this topic in my course work. I was an engineer by training. I went on to get a PhD in computer science and business with a thought that sort of all the reams of big data coming out of early stage Silicon Valley and sort of e-commerce 1.0 back in the day. That was a really exciting and interesting area.

Starting point is 00:15:41 And that maybe I could do something interesting with that data and with an understanding of computer science and business and I landed in my PhD program. I had to take a graduate level sequence and micro economic theory and of all places, that is where I found out about a field called behavioral economics, which is sort of a revolution in thinking about economic theory that says people are limited in their capacity, that we have systematic mistakes that we make around everything from planning for the future to weighing losses and gains. If you're familiar with the work of Danny Coniman and Amos Tversky, they were sort of the founders of this field. And I thought, wow, that is so fascinating. This is what I want to study. And so I sort of pivoted, but I wasn't clear that my mission and my purpose and my passion

Starting point is 00:16:29 were around improving decisions and specifically related to health and financial security and education, which is where I focus now. I was sort of dabbling around that area, but I became an assistant professor just studying decision biases, just mistakes that we make. I came to the Wharton School and there was a wonderful group over at

Starting point is 00:16:50 our medical school actually that was doing work related to decision making. I started spending time there just because these seemed like smart, interesting people and it was in those interactions that I really found my purpose, I would say. And it was because I wandered into a seminar where I learned how big the upside was of doing this work, right? And specifically, I saw a graph, I know this jumped out at you when you were reading my book, because you've mentioned it. The graph showed the breakdown of premature deaths in the United States that are due to different sources from accidents to genetics to environmental exposure. And one of the wedges in this, it was a pie chart, showed the fraction of premature deaths that were due to behaviors that we could change.

Starting point is 00:17:34 And what blew my mind was that that was the biggest wedge. So 40% of premature deaths turn out to be due to behaviors we could change. Decisions we make on a daily basis about what we eat, what we drink, whether we're physically active, if we're safe when we get into vehicles. And I just did not have an understanding of how big that was, how huge the implications were for wellbeing.

Starting point is 00:17:58 And as soon as I started to see, wow, okay, these daily decisions add up in the domain of health, I started to recognize, okay, the seemingly decisions add up in the domain of health. I started to recognize, okay, the seemingly small decisions we make about our finances, about our education, they must accumulate more than I appreciate, too. And therefore, the opportunity to use the science I'm learning and put it towards efforts to improve outcomes for humans is huge. and I should really focus there. And that's really where my mission and purpose came from doing this work was the recognition of the upside impact. If I concentrated my attention, that gave me so much energy and excitement that I've been working on this wholeheartedly ever since.

Starting point is 00:18:40 And I think I need to have your question. You have done all this research, you see all these findings, but even when we have that happened to us, sometimes we see all this stuff in front of us, like the 40% who don't make the behavioral change and we don't implement it. So what has been your secret sauce that the listeners could take away from this for how you have found ways to implement this in your own life? Yes, so I guess the first thing I'd say is, I am still a work in progress. I am so far from perfectly using all of the science myself

Starting point is 00:19:11 to hold myself up as a shining example would be a mistake, I think. But certainly, one of the most powerful insights of all is the recognition of those human limitations and that they are part of what makes us interesting, part of what makes us loveable creatures, and an opportunity that in recognizing all the ways in which we're flawed, and saying, like, oh, yeah, I'm forgetful.

Starting point is 00:19:36 I get impatient and impassioned, and I make mistakes once you recognize that in yourself, and you see all your limitations, and you accept them. That is when the opportunity for growth arises. All of my research is about what is the limitation? How do we plug that whole? And I'm completely aware now of all of my own limits. Oh, yes, that's the planning fallacy. I thought that I'd be able to accomplish this goal in just two weeks, but actually it's going to take three three months. Oh yes, that is my present bias.

Starting point is 00:20:06 The impulse to like check social media instead of following through and hitting this deadline. That's my forgetfulness. Once I see all these things, clearly, and I've become wise to the science that says, here's the way we plug the gaps, I am really eager to take those scientific insights and apply them to my life.

Starting point is 00:20:23 So maybe that's the best I can say. It's sort of like owning and recognizing your own limitations is itself an opportunity because then you see all the ways that you can optimize and improve. We'll be right back to my interview with Katie Milkman. There comes a time when you need to consolidate whether you're out of hard drive space

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Starting point is 00:22:53 That's goosto.com slash passion struck. Please consider those who support the show and make it free for our listeners. And I know all these lengths and discount codes can be difficult to remember. So we put them all in one place at passionstruck.com slash deals. Now back to my interview with Katie Melkman. There are so many people I've met throughout my life that say we can never change. Or there's no way I can change that about myself.

Starting point is 00:23:17 Or if you start dating someone, they're doing something that you don't appreciate. There's no way they're going to change. They're locked in their ways. But I think your research indicates that regardless of your age, we all can do behavioral change. So why is it that people get this mindset that they can't change or someone else can't change? Well, first of all, I should say change is hard. It's not as though there's some magic wand we can wave and just instantly be a different person. And so I think there's a good reason that we have this, I'll call it a prejudice, towards thinking,

Starting point is 00:23:53 we're not going to be able to change. Because it isn't easy. But I think the ways in which we can change are also different than often people recognize. There's a few things, one, there's wonderful research by Dan Gilbert, who's a psychologist at Harvard, showing that we think we will change far less than we do over any time span. Our forecast is like we will be more stable as humans than we are. That's a misappreciation of the way that our social circumstances evolve, our preferences

Starting point is 00:24:22 evolve, our taste in music changes over decade time periods. All of these things just happen naturally. I think that same bias may be part of what's making us think it won't be possible to change because we don't recognize that the world is constantly swirling around feeding us new inputs, new social experiences, new beliefs, new understandings, and that it does take us on more of a journey than we appreciate. But second is, when we put our mind to it and say, I want to change, there are a set of tools we can use that will help us achieve those goals deliberately if we want to. Now, not everyone will want to, and you might think, oh, I met this person, and could they be a long-term life partner? I don't know. Maybe they can never change. Well, the answer is, if they don't want to change, and they aren't interested in being deliberate

Starting point is 00:25:09 about using these tools, well, you can't force them to. It's more that we have the agency to change ourselves when we choose to, if we use the best principles. And it's going to be work, and it's going to take time. And it probably will have setbacks. But the evidence is that, you know, when we set the right kinds of goals, when we use the right strategies, there is an opportunity. A podcast interview you were on with Vanessa and you guys were talking about

Starting point is 00:25:35 New Year's resolutions. And I think for the audience, they could probably guess what the number one resolution people make is, but why isn't it to be more productive? Yeah, then I think the number one resolution has to do with health. Well, losing weight, typically. Losing weight or getting in shape. Why doesn't it have to do with productivity? It's an interesting question. I think not everyone, first of all,

Starting point is 00:26:03 is working in a job they love and trying to become more productive in that environment, or even at home, eager to change their productivity. So it doesn't shock me that that's not number one, just because it's not universal that we're employed at all stages of life, or that we have big goals that we are working towards. And by the way, it does make us happy

Starting point is 00:26:23 when we have goals and they give us meaning and purpose. And so if more of us have those and we're working towards. And by the way, it does make us happy when we have goals and they give us meaning and purpose. And so if more of us have those and we're working towards productivity, it might improve our happiness and satisfaction. But it's pretty universal to want to improve health, regardless of whether you're a student, whether you're retired, whether you're in the job market, out of the job market, you know,

Starting point is 00:26:42 that is something that we all hope for is a longer, healthier, better life. So it doesn't shock me. That's that is the number one goal. It's I think more of a shared human experience across all stages. I'm probably the outlier because I spend the majority of my time trying to figure out how do I become more productive? How do I become more cognizant of my actions? How do you create a life where you're more in the moment instead of being outside of it, which I think is a huge struggle for so many people. And I have an upcoming book myself,

Starting point is 00:27:18 which we'll release later this year. And in it, I have a chapter I call conscious engagement. I believe so many of us go throughout life spontaneously engaged and I liken it to a pinball machine if you're a novice pinball player where the ball is just bouncing off of things and you have all these distractions because there's the noise, the bumpers, everything else that we face in life. And until you start learning how to play the game and you become really intentional about figuring it out and understanding how to beat the game, that's where I think you transcend into a conscious

Starting point is 00:27:59 and gauger. And one of the most popular podcasts I've ever done, and it was a solo one is on the power of choice. And you talked about choice before, Dr. Michelle Seeger, professor at the University of Michigan. She just wrote a book called The Joy Choice. She's also a behavioral scientist. And her work is also pointing towards, it's the micro choices in our life

Starting point is 00:28:24 that determine our long-term aspirations and results. I'm wondering if you can put even some more depth on why micro choices are so important and why so many people fail to look at their lives that way. That's a really interesting question. I think one of the reason these micro choices matter is that they accumulate. If we're making them day in and day out, I don't versus due exercise. Dan eats donuts versus smoothies for breakfast. Those choices add up and they become really meaningful over the long run. And this is sort of the insight that led me to realize there was a huge opportunity in studying behavior change,

Starting point is 00:29:10 just if we could pivot those habits in positive directions, we could reduce 40% of premature deaths in this country. That's why this matters. We can mindlessly continue down those paths if we don't use any of the tools to make a change and suddenly the years that up and we've lost out on a big opportunity for a better life. I really enjoyed how you started out your book specifically talking about tennis star Andre Aguicy. I myself was a very good tennis player. He was a couple of years ahead of me, and although I never got to play him,

Starting point is 00:29:47 it was eye-opening for me because my tennis career kind of fell apart for the same reasons Andres did, and what I was trying to do constantly was be perfect. I was trying to overpower my opponents, and instead of really analyzing their game, I was just trying overpower my opponents and instead of really analyzing their game, I was just trying to bring my full force to whoever it was. And it's interesting because it opened up for me in the recent interview I did with former NBA player,

Starting point is 00:30:17 Anno Neal, she was coached at Iowa State University by this famous coach, Bill Finnerty, and Bill's approach to coaching his players was much like Brian Gilbert's to Andre Agassi in that every opponent we face, we've got to think about how we're going to defend against them, we're going to think about how we play against them and he called it strategy by design, which I loved.

Starting point is 00:30:42 And I think that's what you were getting to as well. How can you apply this philosophy where Andre Agassiz started to play completely different once he got a new coach to our own lives? Yeah, thanks for giving the chance to talk about that in PS. I was a competitive tennis player too. So maybe someday we can hit some balls. And Agassiz was one of my favorite athletes as a kid

Starting point is 00:31:06 in part because I got to watch such an interesting evolution and I'm interested in behavior change. She really evolved as a player over the years. And this pivot he made with Brad Gilbert was particularly interesting because he became a master strategist. And I think that is exactly what so many of us need to do if we want to achieve more in our lives,

Starting point is 00:31:25 and when it comes to change, and what many people fail to do. First, if you have a goal, think about what are the obstacles? What actually will hold me back? What might prevent me from achieving this goal before making your plans? So often we just envision how we'll achieve success,

Starting point is 00:31:41 and don't think carefully about what might stand in our way. And the research shows that thinking first about those obstacles and planning for them is hugely beneficial. And specifically in the realm of behavior change, in my research, I've identified a number of really systematic and predictable challenges that can get in the way. And I should say, I study internal barriers to change. There are huge external barriers to change that cannot be neglected, you know, in equality, et cetera.

Starting point is 00:32:10 I don't wanna say that's not important. It's hugely important, but where I focus is on the internal barriers that are more within our personal control, when those are the barriers, things like, I tend to procrastinate, I don't enjoy what I'm doing. And so I put it off and choose other more instantly gratifying activities rather than focusing on my goal. Or I'm forgetful. And so this, this often isn't top of mine when it needs to be. I have habits that are standing in my way. I have a social circle that's standing in my way.

Starting point is 00:32:40 Whatever, whatever those barriers are, once we actually identify them, it turns out that science has a set of tools that it can offer us that will help us overcome them. And when I wrote my book, I opened with the Agacy Story to highlight how important it is to first organize and think about those barriers and then tactically deploy the solutions

Starting point is 00:33:03 that are tailor-made to your situation that will help you. And just to be a little more concrete, let me sort of give you an example. Imagine someone has a goal of getting healthy and to achieve that they really need to take their medication regularly. And they're trying to figure out, I'm not doing this even though it's obviously so important to me, what's wrong?

Starting point is 00:33:23 Well, you'd want to approach that really differently if they seem to be forgetting every night to take their pills, then if the reason they're not taking it is some nasty side effect that they're dreading. And often people don't think about behavior change in their goals in this way. They just sort of slap on the most convenient or best marketed solution. They think, oh, let's set big audacious goals. Or let me visualize success. I've heard that works instead of doing this first step. And it's just like Agassi thinking about what's my opponent's weakness. I do I need to hit every ball to the backhand. Do I need to draw them into the net?

Starting point is 00:33:55 And that changes everything. Once you recognize what you're working against and you can strategize carefully, you can be so much more successful. Yeah, I actually refer to this when I talk about it as the B in turtle effect. And I'll tell you this through the lens of Elon Musk. The reason I call it that is that in some ways you need to be the slow, methodical turtle who's really focused on the long term aspirations of where they're going, but just as a bee, that's captivated by the task that they have to get done in that day. The magic is how do you bring them together?

Starting point is 00:34:33 So a great example of this is when Elon Musk started SpaceX and he did on the program for NASA. He was the only vendor who decided to bid both on crew as well as Pargot flights. And because he did that, yes, it slowed him down at first against his competitors, but now you look at where they are and how much they've leapfrogged

Starting point is 00:34:56 because they took those daily actions to focus on the bigger prize and over time it opened up both opportunities for them as just an analogy. Katie, another thing I really loved about the book was having been a senior executive at Dell, your experience of going to Google and how it was eye-opening for you for a number of different ways. I was hoping you could tell the audience what that experience was like through the lens of the fresh start effect that you write about in the book. Yeah, absolutely.

Starting point is 00:35:28 Well, one very fun experience I had as an assistant professor at the Wharton School was getting invited out to Google's Mountain View Headquarters to talk with some of their HR leaders about challenges the company was facing and to try to bring science to bear on those challenges. I was exciting because Google is the fast growing neat company and I was really interested in applying insights. I was generating an ivory tower to real day-to-day problems. I couldn't believe honestly

Starting point is 00:35:58 that I was going to have much to offer when I flew out and was wandering around this amazing corporate campus. But in the end, I was fascinated to learn that even this dream company, if you will, at the time it was 2012 roughly, and things couldn't have been going much better for Google. They were struggling with challenges related to human behavior just like every other organization and just like every individual. They were offering lots of training programs, their employees that were state of the art. So they could buff up on new skills and seeing that not everyone was taking advantage of them.

Starting point is 00:36:32 They were offering all sorts of great wellness benefits, all sorts of financial benefits, retirement matching programs that were not being adopted by all of their employees. And they were wondering, how can we get where are our employees to take advantage of these fantastic benefits we're putting in front of them to be as good as they could be. And I thought, you know, it's so fascinating

Starting point is 00:36:52 that Google is struggling with this. It was super interesting to have the conversations I did, but probably the most exciting moment in my visit came after I gave a presentation about some of the research I'd done that offered tools and tactics that actually could nudge people towards taking more advantages of these opportunities. And a senior leader asked a question that ended up pivoting the direction of my research for the next several years. And that question was, okay, Katie, we're completely convinced that there are lots of tools that you and your collaborators have developed that could help us nudge employees towards taking better advantage of our programming

Starting point is 00:37:27 But is there some ideal time when we could be offering these benefits and pushing out these nudges towards behavior change? And I just thought that was such a fantastic question because to my knowledge There really hadn't been any attention paid to the fact that we know people's motivation to make a change, to pursue a goal observationally at waxes and wings over the course of our lifetime. And we didn't know much about whether there were systematic conditions that predict good timing for making those kinds of changes. So I took the question back to my research team and we put our heads together and started thinking what do we know about this and what can we learn? And I worked with Heng Chen Dai, who's a professor now at UCLA, is Anderson School and Jason Reese, who's a senior fellow at

Starting point is 00:38:15 Wharton. And our first instinct was to think about New Year's resolutions and what that might teach us about timing and behavior change. Because we know that about 40% of Americans leap on this phenomenon, this pattern every year around New Year's, they say, here are the ways I want to be better, Jim's fill up, et cetera. So what can we learn from that that's more generalizable? What we learned in digging into literature on timing and the way people think about their lives is actually that we don't think about our lives linearly. We think about our lives like we are characters in a book.

Starting point is 00:38:51 And like there are chapters and those chapter breaks, New Year's being a big one, give us a sense what we've discovered since of a new beginning. We have the sense that when we move to a new community, take a new job, get a promotion, change our identity in some way, graduate from college. Even on Mondays, when we start a new weekly cycle, it feels like a miniature chapter break. All these moments, they sort of break up our mundane lives into these more concrete, smaller scale opportunities. And we think at those

Starting point is 00:39:28 chapter break moments, okay, this is a moment that causes us to step back and think big picture about our lives. And to give us a sense that we're new and fresh. And we can say on January 1, okay, last year I meant to quit smoking, last year I meant to build up all of my productivity at work. And I didn't get around to it. But that was the old me who failed. And this is the new me, and the new me is going to be different. So that ability to set past failures aside, and that tendency to reflect at these moments,

Starting point is 00:39:57 we've studied, and it turns out that it creates big opportunities for change. And people are more likely to set goals on popular goalsetting websites to show up at the gym, to search for the term diet on Google at moments that feel like fresh starts from the start of a new week or a new month to the start of a new year. Of course, the celebration of holidays that we associate

Starting point is 00:40:17 with fresh starts, birthdays, all of these moments, their opportunities. And not only does it happen naturally when we just look at data on when people take action to make a change, but we can actually harness the power of those moments to nudge change. So we've shown in experiments that if you point out a date on the calendar to people that they associate

Starting point is 00:40:37 with a fresh start, but might not already be thinking they could leap on, like an upcoming birthday or the start of spring, those are moments that resonate as fresh starts and we say, do you want to start saving for a retirement at that moment? For instance, that's much more attractive than just saying, do you want to start saving next month? And we can increase retirement savings. We can increase the rate at which people raise their hand and say, yeah, I want to start

Starting point is 00:40:59 pursuing a new goal. I was so excited to have the chance to go visit Google. It was a really interesting opportunity, but also it propelled this research stream because hearing the question about when can we time change helped me realize there was this huge opportunity and and set of research that I could work on. And I love that about interacting with people who are thinking and practice about how to create change often they have questions I haven't thought of as a scientist that are really important to understand and to make progress. When I was a senior executive at Lowe's Home Improvement, I wish we could have brought

Starting point is 00:41:36 you in to counsel the head of resource management. There was an issue going on where I guess too many women were wearing sandals and flip-flops to work. So instead of going after the issue, they implemented this blanket policy that you could only wear people's shoes. Suddenly in the weeks that went on after that, all of a sudden, anyone who's a manager of people is carrying a ruler around that all of a sudden, anyone who's a manager of people is carrying a ruler around having to measure these people's shoes to see whether they follow policy or not. And then ultimately, it came to a head when she went into her office the next day

Starting point is 00:42:18 from floor to ceiling. There were about 10,000 pairs of shoes that different employees had put in the office as a protest against the policy. You think about policy change, and that's a pretty drastic example. But in these big companies, it's sometimes hard to change behaviors. As I saw in that example, why is that? Yeah, that's an interesting example where obviously

Starting point is 00:42:46 employees felt that they were being coerced in a way that was not appreciated. And I can understand exactly why. I do think in order to make change in organizations, not only do you need to understand the internal barriers to change, which I write about and study, but also you need to understand how is this policy that I perceive to be so reasonable going to be received by the people I am imposing it on and to think something you are imposing something on people as opposed to helping them solve a problem

Starting point is 00:43:20 that they also see or helping them become better and grow. You have a big communication challenge on your hands, right? Imposing things never goes well. It needs to be perceived that there's mutual benefit, there's an understanding of why a change is being made. So I actually think communication is a huge part of change efforts in organizations that's often neglected. And let me say that's not what my book is about.

Starting point is 00:43:45 It's not about communicating and sort of getting other people on board, but there are some really wonderful books on that topic. And probably my favorite is a book by Robert Chaldeanie called Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion. It's about helping people come along to see the need for change the way you do, as opposed to what I study, which is, all right, we all are aligned

Starting point is 00:44:06 that this is the direction we want to go, you know, we all recognize it would be better for us if more of X happened and now how do we sort of create that change? How do we overcome the barriers that aren't persuasion challenges, but rather, you know, it is hard because I'm said in my ways because I'm forgetful because I have habits because I've said in my ways because I'm forgetful because I have habits because I don't have the social support I need. So that's one distinct set of challenges, which is different from the persuasion challenge. Yeah, you're right. And especially in organization that size where you've got 380,000 employees at 2,000 stores, everything else, it is hard to get consistent change out there

Starting point is 00:44:48 and communicated in the right way. But I think even in our own lives, sometimes we don't understand this change that sometimes other people are communicating us subtly or in not so subtle manners, so to speak. I have recently had on a number of guests that have brought up the topic of effortless perfection. It started when I was interviewing Susan Cain.

Starting point is 00:45:13 It came up again with Liz Fosseline who recently wrote the book Big Feelings. And then it came up again in my episode with Michelle Seeger. Why is effortless perfection such an issue today in society, and how do we get people to change this behavior? This is actually a huge thing in some of the more prestigious universities, but it's not just there, it's also ranging in high school, and it's this feeling that kids or adolescents have to be perfect and everything they're doing. You know, not only do they have to get the perfect grade,

Starting point is 00:45:50 but they have to be in the perfect clubs, they have to be in the perfect social circles, they have to be doing volunteer work that all lines up, they have to do sports that make their image look good, and so they put so much pressure on themselves feeling that they have to do sports that make their image look good. And so they put so much pressure on themselves, feeling that they have to be perfect. Because without that, they don't think they're going to get into the Princeton or Yale or University of Michigan, whatever it is. But then I think when you get to some of these universities,

Starting point is 00:46:21 there's this feeling that you have to outperform even what you think you can do because you're measuring yourself against a very high standard of caliber of student who's there. So it's carried this terminology called effortless perfection. How do you start pushing back if you realize your son or daughter is behaving in this way? What are some things that you can do to push back and get them to self-reflect on what they're doing? What comes to mind is most relevant is that if you think about what creates our expectations, our beliefs about what we're capable of, it's often set by, it's set by our role models,

Starting point is 00:47:04 the people we look around at, and it's set by, it's set by our role models, the people we look around at, and it's set by what the people around us also clearly value. So, to the extent that you see someone who you think is pushing too hard towards unrealistic goals, which is PS sort of the opposite of what I study normally, what I study is, how do we help people push harder towards higher goals? But you can use the same understanding of human psychology and decision making in either direction. It's important to show role models that you think are the right role models to point to norms that you recognize as healthy norms. And in general, the people who we surround ourselves with and the people we see as role models

Starting point is 00:47:45 and the people who are held up as role models, they shape our understanding of what's good and what we should be pushing towards. So if you have kids who you think have the wrong role models or an idea of perfection that's too outrageous, then starting to point towards norms that you think are healthier and say, look 60% of the students of the University of Michigan aren't getting straight A's, right?

Starting point is 00:48:08 The 60% of your peers are taking time away from their work on a regular basis to exercise. When you can point towards the majority that's taking actions that you think are valued, that can change behavior and meaningful ways because we look at what's normal in others around us for an understanding of what we should be doing too. And so you can point out behaviors that are adopted by the majority of peers that you view as more functional and healthy and that is likely to have an impact.

Starting point is 00:48:40 Yeah, I think we need to be teaching the kids that they're perfectly imperfect and that no one is perfect. And it's to really celebrate the imperfect parts of you because that's what I think makes people unique at the end of the day. I would also say that's sort of what science, if it's taught as anything about human nature, that's perhaps the most important discovery. It's the one that I find most useful and exciting is how limited we are as humans in so many important ways that no one has, you know, perfect memory, no one has perfect self-control,

Starting point is 00:49:18 and to the extent that you expect to, you will only be disappointed and let down by yourself. And so instead, starting to acknowledge all these limitations and just think about what are the systems I can put in place that will help me deal with them and succeed within those constraints. That's where you see the best performance. This kind of leads me to another question that kind of comes out of perfectionism, which is people want to look perfect at times. And so I wanted to touch on eating and exercise behaviors.

Starting point is 00:49:51 In your research, have you found that eating and exercise required different behavioral change than other habits do? I would say eating and exercise in themselves are actually really different, right? Because one of them is a behavior trying to adopt, and that is sort of adopting exercise would be something that a lot of people are working towards. And the other is often a behavior that you are trying to extinguish, like try, let me stop eating unhealthy foods and then you have to replace it with eating healthier ones. So they're very different challenges

Starting point is 00:50:27 and they have different barriers. They're related in that one, it's hard in both cases. And the other is often what's most instantly gratifying is working against us, right? It's more instantly gratifying to sit on a couch and binge watch TV than for most of us, at least, than to go for a run. It's more instantly gratifying to have a doughnut

Starting point is 00:50:46 for breakfast than to have a healthier meal. And so that is a barrier in both cases that we have to be very attuned to. How can we find ways to replace those more instantly gratifying activities that we'll still enjoy and look forward to instead of making it a drain and a misery to be healthier. But yeah, I absolutely also think there are big differences between health behavior change

Starting point is 00:51:12 and say financial behavior change or productivity hacks that might work for you. In the context of something like saving, we can often put things on autopilot and not have to actually exert any willpower whatsoever. One of my favorite hacks from researchers set up an auto deduct once a month. And then literally you never have to think about it again. Every time you get a paycheck, you auto transfer a small portion of that to a savings account. If you set that up once in a moment when you're feeling motivated, it takes you so far, right?

Starting point is 00:51:44 Setting up these auto transfers to retirement savings similarly, and you never have to think about it again, but unfortunately there is no auto pilot that works the same way for eating when you can set up an auto-spinnich ingestion and auto-reject of donuts. It doesn't work that way. So what I guess I'm saying, and this comes back to the theme of all of my work is, the obstacles differ depending on the goal

Starting point is 00:52:09 you're trying to achieve, and therefore the best solutions that are likely to help and carry you forward are gonna differ. And then sitting down, thinking carefully through what are the obstacles for you in this context, given your goal, and therefore what can science offer is super important that's sort of the first step in any successful behavior change journey.

Starting point is 00:52:28 And absolutely health decisions have different barriers than other decisions. I'm sure found that to be the case in my life. If I had one takeaway on health that I would offer, it is that most of us think about, how do we live a life that matches our goals and how can we get there most effectively and efficiently? What diet will take me to my ideal health outcomes fastest or what exercise regimen? And that research actually shows more important

Starting point is 00:52:57 than focusing on efficiency is to focus actually on enjoyment. What path can you take that you will enjoy on a daily basis? So whether it's exercising, not by getting on the maximally efficient machine, but rather by going to the Frento Zumba class or instead of eating all kale and blueberries, it's finding that mix of nutrients that you actually crave and love that tastes good and is good for you. Maybe it'll take a little longer to get to your ideal outcome, but on the path you won't be miserable. And what that means is, find the fun way to pursue your goal. You'll persist longer, and that's going to be different for everyone.

Starting point is 00:53:37 So I think for each person, there's going to be a population for whom that's right, but there's going to be a population for whom that doesn't work, and something else brings them daily joy. They still look forward to their meals and are able to persist. So that persistence comes with finding a path that you do not experience as painful. And too often we neglect to look for that in our in the path we take. I would completely agree with that. For some people, a paleo diet might work for others. It could be a gluten free, for others,

Starting point is 00:54:10 it could be below carbs. I think you just have to understand your body, your exercise, your routines, and end up doing what best fits your metabolism. And then you will not find painful because that is again, so often we think, I'll just push through the pain because my goal is so important, but the research shows that does not last and

Starting point is 00:54:29 that's what leads to quitting and persistence comes when you find a path to your goal that actually is enjoyable in each moment as well as helping you get closer to whatever it is you're working towards. Why are humans wired to choose immediate gratification over benefits we have to wait to receive? That's a fantastic question and I think it's also sort of a philosophical question. There's no way that we can experimentally figure that out, right? Because it has something to do with evolution. I think the most interesting and plausible answers that I have heard come down to what were our incentives when we were evolving our patients, I'll call it. And obviously that was thousands and thousands of years ago.

Starting point is 00:55:20 And the environment was very different than the one we face now, right? Where if you had an opportunity to have a large meal that was full of unhealthy options, if you had the opportunity to do other fun things at the expense of maybe some kind of long run over arching goal, actually, maybe those things weren't in conflict, right? You should binge eat when you got the opportunity. You should enjoy pleasures when you could because life with shorter risks were greater. So my best guess is that that environment

Starting point is 00:55:53 evolved a set of reactions that aren't optimal today. And that's sort of the wiring we're stuck with. And it's unlikely that we will evolve new wiring anytime soon. But we don't really know because to experimentally answer that, you know, you need a time machine and we don't have one. Okay, and Katie, if the audience would like to learn more about you, what are some ways they can do that?

Starting point is 00:56:19 Thanks for asking. I think the best way to learn more is on my website, which is just Katie Milkman, Katie with a Y, Milkman like the guy who delivers the milk, .com, and you can find more about my book, how to change on my website. You can find out about my podcast, Choiceology. You can find out about the behavior change for good initiative, read my academic research papers if you're into that sort of thing, but that's probably the best one-stop shop for learning about all of the things we've discussed. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. There was so much wisdom and I would just highly encourage the audience if you haven't had a chance yet to read Katie's book is well worth the investment and time.

Starting point is 00:57:03 Thank you so much. Thank you for asking great questions and for having me on the show. I really enjoyed the conversation. Well, thank you so much for being here. A big thank you to Dr. Katie Milkman, BCFG, and Penguin Random House. Links to all things Katie will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com.

Starting point is 00:57:21 Please use our website links if you buy any books that are featured from guests on the show. They all go to help supporting the show and making it free for all our listeners. Videos are on YouTube at John Armiles. Please subscribe, advertisers, deals and discount codes are at www.pashinstruct.com slash deals. Please consider those who support this show. I'm at John Armiles at both Twitter and Instagram, and you can also find me on LinkedIn. During today's episode, I also brought up a number of past episodes that you might want to check out. These include Episode 19, which is a solo episode I did

Starting point is 00:57:55 on the Power of Choice. My interview with Susan Cain, which was Episode 121, my interview with Liz Fosseline, author of Big Feelings, which was episode 128. I sell a episode on how do you create the balance life, which was episode 124, and episode 135 with Dr. Michelle Seeger, author of The Joy Choice. And if you want to know how I book all these amazing guests on this show, it's because of my network.

Starting point is 00:58:21 Build those relationships before you need them. Most of the guests on the show actually subscribe to and provide their advice on both guests and topics that we have on the show. You are about to hear a preview of the Passion Struck podcast with Elise Michaels, a trauma-informed men's mental health coach who helps men find passion and purpose again. A lot of our behaviors and developments and fears and ideas are just programs running in our minds that we can't see and things that happen to us can be traumatic that we don't know

Starting point is 00:58:54 and that we don't understand. So that's why I said I help with subconscious trauma because I help you see what you can't. Remember, we all rise by lifting others. So please share this show with those you love. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with somebody you can use the advice contained within it. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. And we'll see you next time.

Starting point is 00:59:19 Live Life, Passion Struck. life, passion struck.

Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Katy Milkman on Creating Lasting Behavior Change for Good EP 155

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