The School of Greatness - Why You Feel Stuck and How to Actually Change | Dr. Katy Milkman

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

80% of people feel stuck in their own lives right now, and it has nothing to do with willpower. Dr. Katy Milkman, author of How to Change and professor at Wharton, breaks down why status quo bias and sunk cost thinking keep us glued to relationships, jobs, and habits that stopped working long ago. She explains the fresh start effect, why moments like Mondays, birthdays, and new zip codes actually rewire our motivation, and why waiting for a bigger breakdown might be costing you years. You will hear how she turned a dreaded gym habit into something she craved just by pairing it with Harry Potter audiobooks, and why a Google experiment on exercise proved that flexible backup plans beat rigid discipline every single time. She also gets honest about her own struggle with work life balance, choosing late night work over time with her five year old, and what she is doing to change that pattern right now. If you have ever broken a promise to yourself and felt the confidence drain out of you a little more each time, this conversation hands you the science to forgive yourself and start again smarter. Katy walks through commitment devices, temptation bundling, and the exact if then plans researchers use to make change stick long after the motivation fades. How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be Dr. Katy’s website and newsletter In this episode you will: Diagnose the exact barrier, impulsivity, procrastination, forgetting, or low confidence, that’s keeping you stuck, and match it to the right fix Harness the Fresh Start Effect to launch new habits at moments that actually stick, not just January 1st Turn dreaded tasks into cravings using temptation bundling, like pairing workouts with audiobooks you can’t put down Build flexibility into your goals with Marissa Sharif’s emergency reserve strategy so a missed day doesn’t derail your progress Reframe big numbers into small daily wins, using the Acorns savings study, to make saving or goal-setting feel effortless Recover from failure faster by understanding why rigidity, not lack of willpower, is what really breaks habits For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1976 More SOG episodes we think you’ll love! Get More From Lewis! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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Make sure to follow right now to stay up to date on the latest and greatest. 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? It'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. 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, you know, 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 me 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 to their friends and friends. 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.

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 you. The house we bought together, the trips we've taken on, the family integrations. All of those things that they're,

They're irrecoverable. They're historical. They're behind you. You can't get them back. So maybe the house you bought actually is recovered. We're not called that as sunk costs. 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 costs 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 by it. And I think it's part of the reason that we would stay in a relationship or in a job that isn't working out. Escalation of commitment is really common. And the sunk cost bias is a big part of that. Escalation of commitment, status quo bias. So what's the biggest internal barrier that holds us back, would you say? Oh, my goodness.

Well, I mean, this is the barrier in the sense to deciding you want to change, right? So right now we're sort of like before I even write my book, which is about how to change once you've decided to. there's a lot of people who haven't decided they want to change. So I would say status quo bias and escalation commitment are like sister-brother bias. 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, like, 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, they become challenges. Because even once we decide we want to change, even once we've ignored the sun, 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. Right?

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, you know, where you can open a book about change is with getting started. But then I go to probably the next most important, and that is impulsivity. The fact that we tend to overweight, the instant gratification will get from our decisions, like, it's going to taste so good to eat this, or it's going to feel so great to scream at this person, or, you know, it's going to be really exciting to buy this instead of

setting aside money for retirement. All of those kinds of, we focus on the present at the expense of our long-term benefits. that's another major barrier, figuring out how do you get through that hump? 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.

So forgetting, I think it's- What do you mean about 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 and you keep putting off and forgetting. So that's another. Why is it so hard for, 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. actually, just like our motivation to do anything, by the way, it 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 even 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. A new job. A new city, yeah. You got it.

Those are all fresh-star moments. Actually, there's trivial ones, too, but they can. can matter. Like the start of any 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 way that you wouldn't in the middle of a week. Start of a new month following the 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 breakpoint. You think actually about your life, like you're a character and a book, that the way we organize our memories and structure them, it's not linear completely. Instead, it's like, you know, the college years, you know, the years playing sports, the years living in Boston, whatever they are, that's how you structure your memories. And that means there's actually implications for the way you live your life. Because when you get to one of those chapter breaks, that's when you do this big picture thinking.

Interesting. And you also tend to feel like your identity is shifting, right? So you step into a new role as you, you know, 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 is. as small as, you know, you're stepping into a new year and you feel like the new year, new you, you know, you can look back and say, well, you know, last year and 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 a new me. And so you feel the sense of optimism and disconnect from those past failures. Right. I've had this belief, maybe correct me if I'm wrong, or maybe you have some science that could back this or dismantle this. I had a belief that living a good life is not enough for you to want to change. There's got to be some type, like if you're 80% of my life is good. Like,

I've got a good relationship. I've got a good job. I've got things are 80% there. It's like, I feel like there needs to be some type of breakdown, massive breakdown for us to realize, okay, there's a near-death experience that I had, a near-death or a death or a death in the family or a friend. There's a loss of a relationship. There's a loss of a job. There's a loss of an expectation that you really had a dream for. These kind of bigger breakdowns, I feel like make us reflect stronger towards wanting to make a change. I totally agree. So first of all, I will say I do not personally have fantastic data on this, but there are

survey studies suggesting that those kinds of experiences lead to identity shifts, which can lead, of course, as I've described in this other line of work, to the sense of a fresh start and the belief that you want to turn the page. So it's the same principle at play, absolutely. And I think the mechanism to use like a nerd term is really the same, right? So it's that something shocking happens. It's sort of a wake-up call. It 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. And when things are like good, but they're not like, it's not a big enough pain for you to be like, I need the motive. Now I have motivation to make a change. Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree with that. Do we need a bigger pain or is it possible to create exponential change or transformation when things are okay or really good in your thought? It's so interesting. 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. Tenures are great events. Oh, yeah. 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. And if your university says, you know, 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, like, you have now total academic freedom. We're no longer going to be evaluating you. We trust you. We trust you. And it's like this bizarre institution that's created to help people take risks. But it is a big moment in the life of an academic when they get to that milestone. It's like there's nowhere else to go. You've climbed to the top of the mountain.

And so it's really exciting. It often happens to people around their 40s, sort of like midlife when you might already be having some introspect. going on about like why am I here? What's my purpose? So a lot of academics step back at that moment and think, why 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 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, but that's positive. Identity is something that is interesting to me. How important is the way we shape our own identity or view our identity in terms of where we are to where we will be? Like if we stay stuck in old identities, how do we shed identities, you know, 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. but it's one of the things I'm most interested to study.

It's your nice book. Maybe. Maybe. We know a little. What are 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. Both mindset versus fixed mindset. Exactly. And that's sort of an identity, right? You identify with being someone who can grow or you identify as someone who is X, right? Like, you know, I'm only this smart.

I'm only this capable. So in a sense, there's an identity that comes with believing you can grow or an identity that comes with believing you can't. There's also wonderful research on the placebo effect and how that extends beyond just. medicine, 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 I don't know if, you know, mesmerizing. That term comes from

Dr. Mesmer, who was the original sort of charlatan in France, who was giving people fake medicine and making care. Anyway, and Ben Franklin figured it all out. Sounds like a freaking Amos show. It does. It was like, and it's also a wonderful children's book. Yeah, yeah. I wish I'd known that before I wrote my book. It would have been in there. Anyway, there's a lot more, though, than just the medical 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 going to get an outcome, one of my favorite studies that I describe in the book that I think is sort of related to mindset and identity is work by

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 your... Right. I don't know if a thousand calories is the definition.

You're getting a great workout. Oh, good workout. Yeah. It was more like 300. Okay, okay. Just not to get too overboard. And then another group just wasn't told that information. And the question actually was, are there differences in the outcomes those two groups experience a month later in terms of health?

So does a group that believes they're, you know, doing a job that comes with health benefits actually end up losing more weight, having more controlled blood pressure? And the answer was yes. Really? Which is a, you know, on the one hand, you're like, is that magic? like what's going on. On the other hand, you can start to see how it actually would play out and how this would be applicable in other settings. So they believed their job could give them a workout.

And all of a sudden, maybe they're choosing to take the stairs from Florida to get those extra calories or like leaning a little bit more when they're, you know, using the vacuum. Right. 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 like, you know, go grab the ketchup that we forgot if we're going to have dinner on a roof deck.

That's exciting. I can get extra exercise. So there's like different choices that you make once you start to have a different set of beliefs about what you're achieving. So anyway, I think of this is related to identity because if you're, now you're starting to have the identity is 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 and 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? seen data that helps increase belief in oneself.

Yeah. I think the most powerful thing is who you surround yourself with. Really? So I think the social context you create, the people around you have so much to do with whether or not you believe in yourself. And by the way, I also want to add like a really quick footnote because the academic and 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. You want to be confident enough and believe in yourself enough that you're going to lean into the opportunities and, you know, work towards the goals that 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, you know, the people you surround yourselves with, whether it's, you know,

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 have 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 the type of mentality, which I think can get you extremely far in terms of success and results, but never feeling the fulfillment inside. You'd never choose that. No. Right? So I think what you're pointing to is like, it's not.

a necessary condition. Right. It's not the best environment. It's not the only, 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 people were reflecting on their five to ten 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 it. Whatever it is, what are those flags and one of those, I guess, positive signs? Yeah. Well, okay, here let me pivot a little bit to another, we're doing a lot of academic stuff. I like it. I love it. I love it. 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, who

His name's Max Bazerman. He's a Harvard Business School professor. Great human being. But, 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 as instilling belief in other people. Unbelievably good.

Confidence, belief. Unbelievably good. And he does all the other things that you need to do to help someone succeed, right? Like, you know good coaches. Of course. You know, the training, like the actual teaching of skills, all those things are part of it. But I think he creates an environment for people to thrive. And it actually took me a while after I had graduated as one of his advisees.

And I was trying to advise my own students and figure out what was the secret sauce that made him so wildly more successful as a coach and mentor than anyone else in our field had really, I mean, stratosphericly more successful. And what I realized is he had all the obvious stuff, all those obvious ingredients like, you know, responsive and new his stuff and gives you feed. 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.

goals 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. So there's this wonderful research that I write about in the book by Lauren Eskris Winkler, who's a professor at the Kellogg School at Northwestern. And she had this amazing insight when she was doing research for her dissertation. She noticed that she was interviewing all these people who were struggling to achieve their goals. And as she asked them what they thought might help them achieve more, because that's what she was interested in. How do we increase achievement? They all had these really deep insights, you know, struggling salespeople and see students. When she got them to introspect, they actually knew a lot. They maybe just hadn't gotten there. And no one had asked them. They also really liked being asked. 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

solicited 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 going to give you the answers. And that's our instinct. And she thought, what if we flip the script? What if instead of putting our arm around someone and giving them advice, we said, you know. What would you do? What would you do? And actually literally. How would you coach someone else? And not even just how would you actually have them coach someone else. Like put you in the role of a mentor and coach to someone else who has

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

gave advice actually. He more facilitated the experience for you to learn and create the answer within yourself, I guess, by helping others. By helping others. And he would, you know, he's nudging along the way and like, good job or like maybe a little redirection. But and if you go to him and you're like, I need to know how to do X, he tells you, but there wasn't a lot of, like, backseat driving, if that makes sense. And I think that also helped build confidence. It, like, it made us believe in ourselves in those roles. And I now actually have an advice club of people who are former Max students, maybe no accident. We sort of try to keep this going even beyond that point in our lives where he was coaching us. And each of us were 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 witness from him or that you've also seen with your peer group? I think a lot of positive feedback is super important.

That that's like the predominant sense is that this person thinks I'm doing great, even if they're also telling me ways I can improve. because you don't want to only, obviously. It's really important to also get, well, like, a little more like this. You need that nudging, but it needs to be with a positive. Sometimes people call it a feedback sandwich, right? You like start with the positive. Anyway. So I do think that positivity and, like, conveying they believe in you,

I think creating social structure for you, which is one of the things maxed, there was sort of a whole ecosystem of other students and supporters and who were all striving towards similar goals. And instead of feeling that we were in comprehensive, 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's 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 I'm not sure I've hit your number. Positive feedback, social structure, supporting the team. Yeah, putting people on the role of advice givers or supporters and mentors. I think you, yeah, he said he believed in you. He treated you like family mentoring circles. Yeah.

Yeah. So maybe we have hit your number you asked for. That's great. I love that. 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. And there are 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 in the book. Did you run a marathon? No, 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. I surround 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 going to go do this on my own. Exactly, not downloading an app and saying it'll just be the app. Because I know it's going to 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 for my goals. Perfect. Yeah. You already know all of this. I'm a former athlete, so I'm a athletic zone.

That's funny. I do, I mean, obviously I knew you're a former athlete, but I do think we, we have a former athlete, But I do think we underappreciate, at least when we're young, how much those skills translate. Oh, man. 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. Sure.

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 to characterize. Worst case scenarios, yeah. Right. And yet often, I think scientists and, you know, and anyone who's trying to create structures and success make mistakes that if you looked at it like an athlete and you said like, 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 true scientific definition. So Wendy Wood, of University of Subtitians. in 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, you know, consciously realizing you're doing it, right? Like you sort of make the coffee in the morning with the coffee maker, you hit the button. So you don't even remember. You're just like, you shampoo your hair, right? And you're like, did I do the shampoo all right? I was thinking about something else.

You dropped 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're working in a hospital and you didn't even notice you. did I do that already. 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? What? 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 alter performance? Okay, I thought you were going to go with most common. I was like, breathe. 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. 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 can get stuck in bad social loops. We sort of started by talking about relationships. So I think that's another place we get stuck, whether it's we're not, we're, we feel like we're too shy, we're not meeting enough people. We're meeting the wrong people. We're in the wrong relationships. That's another area where we get stuck. I think education and career is sort of, I put them, because they're like one follows the other. And that's another category. Like if you're a student, you're trying to achieve,

but we often get stuck on not really studying rigorously and putting the time in and the focus in. And then that converts to work where we're not being as productive as we could be. We're not setting ourselves up for success. So I think those are some of the common categories 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 this, 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 that. It's great. So I think one of the most important things is, um,

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, like, money into it all. So there's more investment in it. So it's like, you've got to show up. Yes.

That is like, for me, it's so ingrained in me that if you want to accomplish your goals, you've got to schedule these things you've got to do on a daily basis. and make it like... Break it down. What's the daily goal? What's the daily thing? 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. All that detail. What's at stake for you? What's a 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, you know, okay, a big one is too often people say, I just have this big goal, you know, this big, I think if I said a big audacious goal, and that, by the way, that's good, it's good to set stretch goals, but then you've got to break it down, like into the, you know,

what are you going to do this week? What are you going to do today? What are those component parts? And people get a lot further. Research by Albinjura, the late Albinjura of Stanford, great thinkers 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-sized component.

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

Yeah. So 100. I can't remember what this down. Yeah, yeah, it's $150 because it's like $30. 30 days, roughly in a month. $150. As opposed to saying, I'm going to save or invest $150 a month, trick your brain into saying, I'm going to invest $5 a day.

Right. You're saying, by doing that, what should happen? 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 going to have to cut? Yes. That's a big, like, I'm not going to get to go out to dinner three times

that I thought I was going to get to go out to, I'm not going to make my rent. So you're like focusing on that big category, $150. And this was an experiment that was done led by Hal Herschfeld at UCLA with a with a savings app Acorns. And they just invited people either. Some people get randomly assigned, do you want to save $5 a day or $150 a month? It's literally the identical outcome. They will take $150 out of your account. Monthly. Monthly. Yeah. But they framed it differently and you get vastly higher to take up. Something like five times more people are interested. It just feels doable. Yes. I mean it's like anyone can five, five dollars in their couch or like hard like the change. It's like I can do this every

day, but 150 bucks may be like a base stretch. Right. But it is the same thing. And so that broken down goal is really important. So as opposed, 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 or four miles a day, four miles a 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 than a lot of. And so say you had a monthly goal, it might be like, okay, I want to make sure that we go on, you know, five just us dates a month to have that alone time. You might say that means, you know, every Friday plus one Saturday, we're going to do it. And that means, you know, once a week plus one week that has two times. And we're going to let's go map out when they are. And all becomes more bite size and achievable. And this is, again, you said you're like mapping out your schedules.

These are the component parts that actually add up to achieving your goals. And I 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? Right. 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 those steps I took to get to me where I'm at. Absolutely. Winning the L.A. Marathon. I'm just kidding.

Completing is the goal. Completing in five hours is my goal. Okay, so that's leading on structure. Let me add another super important strategy that I think a lot of high performers use that research supports. And this one I think is vastly underappreciated too. And it sort of relates to what I was poking at earlier, like the Just Do It, Nike, like, no, that's not really right. I think this is really a misconception that's related to that. And this idea comes from research by Ayelet Fishbach of the University of Chicago and Caitlin Woolley of Cornell. And what they showed is that if you ask people, when they have a big goal, what approach are they going to take to try to get to it?

Most people say, like, I'm going to look for the most efficient route. It's all about efficiency. what's the most effective path to that end goal. That's how I go for it. And like a small fraction of people say something different. They say, I try to find a way that I'll enjoy getting to that end destination. Have fun. Have fun.

So you can think about someone who wants to, we've been on a marathon, say you're training for a marathon, you know, somebody who's like, I'm going to just go to the gym and get on the treadmill and grind it out. It's going to be hard every day. Yeah. And another person is like, I'm going to go on a run with a running group. We're going to go through, you know, the. most on the most beautiful trails that I know. We're going to do it together.

Maybe I'm even going to download some great reading material, listening material before I go so that I have something fun in my ears. Those are really different paths, right? Like this one might be more efficient because you don't have to coordinate with other people. You'll do it every day. You're going to know exactly your mileage. It's going to be really controlled. But it turns out if you don't enjoy it, you don't persist.

Ah. 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, you know, giving them fun activities that were sort of going on in the background. You can use markers and play music and have snacks versus just grind it out. People achieve more because they persist longer when they find ways to make it fun to do what's good for them. But we misunderstand this. We don't think we need that. We sort of think like, oh, that's kids stuff. Like, I'm just going to 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 that. We don't appreciate that about ourselves. So we make these mistakes. We'll probably quit more frequently when it gets harder and harder if there's no like daily joy or fun. If you're just like, I got six months, 12 months, two years until maybe this goal happens. This is exhausting. It's draining. It's pulling me away from having fun. my friendships or these activities. So it sounds like if you can make the challenging steps, the fun activity in your day-to-day life, then you'll stick with it longer is what I'm here you say. Absolutely. I think it's so underappreciated. Yeah, that's so true. What about what else

around structure? You said there's a bunch of subcategories within structure. Yeah. The importance of having structure for high performers. Yes. Okay. So another another really key thing is, is having if-then plans. I love that. So this is based on research by Peter Goalwitzer of NYU, who studied the way 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 once a week. And other people laid out real detail in their plans.

And they had sort of if-then statements like, if it is a Thursday at 4 p.m., then I will go train for my marathon in this location, as opposed to some time. this week, I'll get around to it. The more structure, the more clear it was, what's the cue that's going to trigger the behavior, the more follow-through he was seeing. And then he started running a series of experiments where he'd 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.

Let's do it. So those are other really important pieces of structure. Tell me. 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 sort 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 groups getting something they know they're being monitored and someone else can see how much water they're using. The other group gets, you know, a visual. They can literally see in real time how much

What are they using? Three minutes left, two minutes like, whatever you have. Well, it wasn't a countdown. I was just showing total, you know, total gallons used, right? Leaders or gallons. Right. So it's like really visible. It's going up.

You're wasting this much every moment, yeah. Right. And you can sort of think, like, oh, how much did I use total yesterday? Right. So you could imagine that kind of thing. It's 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 use. I'm a horrible human being for wasting this much water. Now, I'm just kidding. Well, yeah. I mean, that might be the kind of thought. Right, right, right. Hopefully it wasn't that extreme because then it could come with negative.

But it had a big impact on it. 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? Yes, absolutely.

My favorite work, so this isn't 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 find you if you're tempted to speed. And we're like, yeah, that makes sense. But what if you find yourself or penalize yourself for not achieving your goals? That's crazy. Who would ever do that? And yet, lots of

of us do and it's effective and someone who's holding you accountable is sort of like creating a penalty because if it's now visible to someone else whether you've achieved more you're going to feel shame if you don't so that's that's the penalty if no one 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 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. Right. And research shows that helps. That works.

It works really well. So putting money down and saying, okay, I'm going to pay $1,000 to something I don't even 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, wait. It'll incentivize you. You incentivize yourself, which is very counterintuitive. Why am I finding myself? But it works. My favorite study is on smokers who wanted to quit. Half of them are given sort of your standard suite of stuff. Here's ways to quit. The other half are given all that stuff plus a commitment device. You can put money into this account for six months and it'll disappear if you fail in nicotine or coating test in your urine at the end of six months.

30% higher quit rate. Wow. Really? My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode. And the School of Greatness drops new conversations every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday around money, mindset, healing, manifestation, and relationships. And if you're not yet following the show, then you're missing all of them. Please tap the follow button right now.

and you'll get notified the moment every new episode drops because the next one might be exactly what you need. Now, let's get back to the conversation. Someone wants 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 getting the result. Would that be similar to this study that's like, okay, if I put $100 in this thing, in six months if I stop smoking, people are like,

eh, $100 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 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. Maybe you can. But in most cases, if you dog gear 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 invested so much. More money. Yeah, exactly. So it's a trick. It's sort of a mistake that we do it, but it works. And so let's hook into that and use it to motivate us to achieve more. So the more at stake you have of your own, whatever, money or time or energy, the more likely you'll achieve that goal or make that change. It's just, yeah, you can change the cost-benefit calculus moving forward.

You can also, if you've invested in the past, then the sunk costs that we tend not to ignore will feel like they should change that. So there's sort of two ways prospectively and retrospectively. You can put a bunch of money into something and then you're going to feel guilty if you don't do it. or you can use these commitment contracts where you literally put money on the line on, say, a website, one of these, you know, stick or B-minder, 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? That's a really interesting question. So, and specifically you're saying, when we fail and it's visible to others versus when we fail and it's invisible, how does that change our confidence? It's more like when we say we're going to do something and we don't take those actions and we constantly, I say I'm going to work out five days a week, but I'm going to do one day. And I keep saying, I'm going to do this.

I'm going to 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 ourselves? Got it. Yeah. As you, you know, the premise of the question is right. It's not good for our confidence to continually fail. We do have a really amazing what Dan Gilbert of Harvard is 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 in fact exists may be related to sort of the psychological immune system for all the failure that we constantly fail at our goals. Goals are hard to achieve. Most of them we fail at. And we have built these ways to sort of stand up again and say, okay, but this time is 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, too, 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 dual lingo just trying to get people to learn a new language and they're really making it prominent to you.

You know, look, you've done it five days and we'll 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, you know, 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. Yes. And that high-level thing is really what I built my book around.

And that is the importance of not just sort of taking any of these different tactics off-the-shelf, willing-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 like you're going to, maybe everybody can benefit of bit from all of these things. If you're procrastinating, create a commitment device, like 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 on average. That's what you're going to get the most out of. So how do we create an assessment for ourselves to see what we need the most of? Maybe we feel like we're not procrastinating, but actually we are procrastinating. Maybe we feel like we're a confident person but actually lack confidence.

Or maybe you feel like you're not lazy, but actually you are. Like 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. Yeah, I need the commitment devices. Yeah, you're like, and you've got the, my book's chapters are organized, you've got them open in front of you. And I organize the book very intentionally around sort of these are the different barriers. And here's what all the science says about how to overcome them.

And so we've gone, we've been jumping around across chapters. You know, one of the things that I think is really wonderful about this particular topic is that I don't think there's as much self-deception here as that. in 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 that, if it's like bad habits that are really getting in your way, then here's the set of strategy. So I don't think there's as much self-deception. I think it's fairly straightforward,

and people will see themselves quickly. You'll see it, yeah. quickly and their own challenges. What's the biggest thing you want to change in your life right now? Yeah, 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 sort of like two categories of scientists who study this stuff, the super humans and they are out there who are like. like so self-controlled and amazing. And they look around at like 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 category. Right now, I think the thing that I am struggling with most is work-life balance.

And it's been a really tough year on that for so many reasons. I have a five-year-old who is out of school. for a long time and needed to he was doing homeschool pre-k which you know 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 as anyone would imagine zoom pre-k um so that was tough and then um I had this book that I wrote and was really you know 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 your health restorative yeah well we 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. Sure. Because this is so important. I have to do this now.

The mission is important. Yeah, but there has to be a balance. And so that, I think, is the biggest thing I'm trying to change. What would you fall into then? Which category would you want to? Procrastination. Procrastination towards spending more time, taking care of your health and being with family and downtime. So procrastinating, being lazy.

Not that way. Yeah, but it's true. We all have our own. Relaxing. I've talked about the idea of wants and shoulds. Yes. 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 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 overprescribing unnecessary antibiotics to their patients, ended up doing that less so when they put a formal pledge up in their office saying, you know, 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 the, you know, by best practice. And I follow best practice. This is not what I should be doing. That pledge reduced that dramatically. I think sort of pledges. My partner is someone who I can have holding me accountable, setting hours and sort of planning around what, what are those hours and what are they

going to be allocated to? Like, am I really going to work on Friday and Saturday night until 11 p.m. 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 it something you need to have a conversation with? 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.

You 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 the 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, to 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 go to Hawaii. And what I'm going to do is she going to leave the phone in the hotel room when I go out. And she was 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.

Incredible. That's how I take vacations too. Really? You leave all this stuff at home. I don't bring a computer. I normally do bring my phone. But it's like stored away and the safe. Start away and I take email off of it.

Smart. No social media and email or whatever. Right. All the things that would be a drag, they're gone. It's just a phone. It's just a phone. Call me and that's it. Yeah.

Yeah. So no, I think that's absolutely critical. And that's a commitment device, right? You've 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. Is that something that works in this, or is that? Absolutely. It absolutely works in this. That's a kind of commitment device. 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 of working until midnight. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So anyway, those are things I'm working on. 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, you know, life around a relationship, your finances, or your health? Well, I mean, actually, interestingly, society has already set up with a lot of pledges involved in relationships without, you know, us even getting involved, right? I'm engaged, and you're married. This is my boyfriend. I'm not single anymore. Right. We're talking about, you know, sunk costs, wedding rings. These 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 the art game 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 that they're already there. But one thing the research points to is, can we build more of them? 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 and has already built some of this in and then think, can we take inspiration from it and from the research to build more of it in other places. Right.

Can you talk to me about temptation bundling? And what temptation bundling is and how we can utilize it for our lives? Yes. This is the very first bit of me search I did. Me search. This is my me search. So, okay, this idea came, and then 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 class work was not that fun, I will admit. And I wasn't, 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, focus, 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 is 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 it 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 out of treadmill or doing it here where I can enjoy it while moving my body. You got it. So for me, it turns out, I've already admitted I'm a nerd, so no one's going to be surprised to hear this. And also, like, I can only handle so much sensory input. So I did it with audio novels.

I couldn't do it. TV was like too much. I couldn't follow the characters and everything. So like, you know, James Patterson, Alice. Alex Cross style. Actually, Harry Potter. I love Harry Potter and like Voldemort.

What's going to 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, craving a trip to the gym. Excited. So excited.

What's going to happen to Alex Cross next? Is he going to get, you know, is he going to escape? Is he going to 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 because 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 have 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 to 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 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. 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, hook it to something? 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're talking about with fresh charts and these chapter breaks. And so psychologically, those break points are a great time for starting something new because we have that renewed enthusiasm, optimism, the ability to say, okay, yeah, I couldn't do it last time, but I can be optimistic now because I've turned the page on a new chapter. But actually another thing that can help beyond just that psychological chapter break is a physical change, especially if a habit that'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 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 that's going to sort of any of the things that had you in a rut that you want to, you know, sort of rip away, it's going to 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 dug and 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, like, move into different rooms. That would be a terrible idea. Terrible idea, right? And, like, that's part of, though, the thing that we do when we're trying to change other habits is basically, like, still living with the, with the environment that was holding us back. Right. 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 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 in different exercise routines and social routines. Really, like improvement in change would happen when you... Right. More easily when there's that shift. The drastic change, the drastic physical change, the environment change. Yeah. Interesting.

Huh. So moving like in a different state or different... climbing or a different, just like all around environment will help you shift those. Or a different job. Gotcha. A different set of, you know, 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.

This is Wendy Woods research that you're talking about, right? Yes. Sounds like someone I should interview. You should interview Wendy, which is amazing. She's down street. Yes. She's here. Everybody I've talked about it.

One of the things that's really fun about. behavioral sciences. 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, they're different areas of expertise. Wendy is... Adam and Ethan are in there too, I think we're out of here. Exactly, exactly. Ethan told me about this, yeah. Yeah, Wendy's down the street at U.S.C. and she wrote a great book, Good Habits, Bad Habits. I have to read that, yeah. Okay, cool. What else do we need to know about behavioral change to support us

and accomplishing and achieving our goals. Trying to think of what. 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 at 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.

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 surprised me, so I won't set you up and ask you to guess because you'll know. Okay. 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. I ran it with John Bashers of Harvard, Business School, and a few other collaborators. We wanted to get Googlers to build a last. 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 readily assigned them to different groups. We thought we had a formula for helping them build a lasting habit based on sort of a month program. We were going to get them to kickstart 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 a.m. We say, great. You're going to go to the gym at 7 a.m. as consistently as possible. You'll only be rewarded when you hit the gym, ready at around 7 a.m. Go for it. You're a 7 a.m. 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 7 a.m. 2. And we say, great. 7 am's a good time, go 7 a.m. sometimes, but we want you to mix it up. Go whenever you want. Just do it a lot for the next month. And when the month is over, we think you'll have a lasting habit. Flexibility is key. We thought the people who we got going consistently. We actually, we thought that was probably better. Consistency is the best way. That's what we thought. If we do it consistently every time, every day, you're going to be able to stick this habit. You're going. You're going to keep going. Yes. Machine. Machine is better than a robot. 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 of less. For the next month, six months, year. Year, yeah.

We're looking at the data. And we're sure it's the routine people. We analyze the data. It's not. Flexibility. Flexibility is key. Not consistency is key. 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 7 a.m. person, you're going a little bit more at 7 a.m. if you were in that rigid 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 miss the day. So I'm not going to go at noon or 5 or 7. They don't go if they miss their 7 a.m. That's it. They give up on themselves.

It's an only under these circumstances kind of habit. The flexible people, they go a tiny bit less at their regular time. But if they miss that time, they have another time. They have a backup plan. They have a backup plan after that. So they're going to the gym more net net, because they've built this flexible strategy. Like they have their first best,

their second best, and their third best. They've built a no matter what habit, if you will. I'm going to do this at midnight if I have to, or 11 p.m. As long as I get it in, they've learned how to roll with the fact that life is not consistent.

And so, you know, 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 is so interesting to me, and I write about this in the book. It brought me back to tennis. because, and we sort of talked about this a little bit earlier

when I was saying flexible, you never practice a sport only under perfect conditions. Right. Right. Like, I never trained and hit forehands, always standing at the baseline perfectly aligned. Like, you know, I did some of that. The sun shining at 78 degrees, yeah.

Yeah, but if that's all you do in your training regimen, you're hosed, because that's not what you're going to find in the real, when you're out. Yeah, when you're out on the court in a real match. You're going to have to be able to run backwards and forwards and you have the sun in your eyes at a different angle. And so I think that's what we love. 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 on 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 8 a.m. every day. There's nothing wrong with that, but probably practicing Spanish and saying I'm always going to do it at 5 p.m. and otherwise, no matter, sometimes there's no one holding you accountable. You're not meeting, you know, with your tutor. Sure.

So you're going to want to say, like, I'll try for 5 p.m. Right. But I'm going to practice at some point. Yeah. I'm going to practice at some point. Even if 5 p.m. falls apart, then I've got my 9 p.m. backup plan. Right, right. Or if life happens and I want to do a dinner at 5, a 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 haven't talked about. Because flexibility is about like. You don't fail. Right. Because you can shift it.

Exactly. Whereas if I have to do it at 7 a.m. 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. And I'm saying Angela Duckworth thinking about grit. It's not like it isn't studied. I just think there's so much that we need to know because almost inevitably we fail when we're trying to achieve anything ambitious. Okay. And a lot of people don't get back up again and figuring that out. Why is that? 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.

A perfectionist. 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 that'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, abandon completely. Small goal failure. Yeah. So like, I'm only going to eat 1,500 calories today. That's my goal. And then I see donuts in the coffee room I eat it. 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 guys 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 going to have some goal failures, and I'm going to get what the hell, and I'm going to quit. So she came up with a strategy for herself, which she then studied both with productivity and also with exercise goals and all different settings for her dissertation work. And the idea was she's going to set that tough goal, but give herself some emergency reserves, some sort of like, if you play monopoly, like the get out of jail free cart, that you save for the real emergency, but you've got it in your back pocket and then you can declare like everything's okay. I'm going to use this now. So three times a month, I can call, go an emergency card like, I'm exhausted. I didn't sleep well last night.

I got too much of 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 got to be limited. Right. So it doesn't become like, well, every day is an emergency. Well, I never work out. Yeah, yeah. And she thinks calling it an emergency is important, even though I like to call it a mulligan, because you don't want to be tempted to use it. She says she actually almost never takes it. But she, what she does is she sets like seven days a week goal, but she gets two emergency reserves. She almost never takes them. Each week.

Two a week. And then she's done this research showing, like, if you do that kind of structure, right, the seven-day-a-week tough goal, she compares that to what about just a five-day-a-week goal, which is structurally the same as seven days with two get-out-of-jail-free cards. Or you get the seven. Which one's done? 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, you know, 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. You know, I even like, okay, I have one cheat meal a week or something or 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 can 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. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And she's done it looking at productivity too. Like you need to do a certain task every day on your goal to make your big, you know, the most income is if you do it every time. But, you know, if we set different goals and give you different emergency reserves, you can get more productivity from the same workforce from the same individuals because they feel like, you know, it's not overwhelming. They see the wiggle room and they're able to keep pushing themselves.

So having the Mulligan method or approach to your recovery from failure strategy is a good strategy, is what I hear you say. Yes, yes. I think that understanding and appreciating the value of things like cheat meals, emergency reserves, it lets you forgive yourself. And that's the fundamental thing. Like failures happen. Understand how to forgive yourself. It can be through flexibility, which we talked about sort of having the backup plan to the backup plan 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 curveballs 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 because I keep failing over and over again. 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 have, if you've built your team and your support structures and, you know, recovering from failure also has to do a lot with confidence to know that you can get back up and that there is another chance and that it's okay. I think that that social support can be an important part of recovery as well. It's so interesting you said. And I wanted to bring this up earlier when you were talking about your mentor. Was it a 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 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, and, you know, without the belief at least. And I was asking him, what do you think is a great way to instill belief in someone who doubts himself? And he was like, well, I have a good example.

I have this friend of mine who's kind of been down on her luck for many years. She's very talented and smart, but for whatever reason she wasn't believing herself. And I would try to tell her I believe in her and, you know, 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. This can you coach me? And him switching it around from giving her advice to saying, will you coach me on helping me improve this? He saw her confidence go through the roof. And so I think it's pretty cool that your mentor does the same with you and your team of colleagues where it's like, okay, you guys coach each other on how you would solve

this problem and it builds that confidence with each other. So I think it's cool in terms of building competence is we should always be coaching others even if you feel like you don't believe in yourself. Absolutely. And of course, you know, it's this like slightly tricky tightrope to walk in that if you're always coaching others and they don't want it, you know, destroying their confidence. That's one of the things I like about this idea of like advice club 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 want your advice, I'm soliciting and I believe in you, and then you get the chance to coach. But also when you're struggling,

you can go to them and solicit advice. So it's this beautiful circle. And I think it's really related to what Simon Sinek was saying. I love this. I'm excited about all these strategies and the research here. I want people to get your book, How to Change, a Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, make sure you guys get a copy of this book and 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, 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, to get the way. or else you're not going to persist in achieve as much. So to me, I think that's number one.

Number two is probably about fresh starts. I think I would want to leave people with the realization that life is full of these moments that give us renewed confidence in ourselves, renewed motivation, a sense of a new beginning and a clean slate, and that by looking for them, by looking for opportunities to create, chapter breaks, when things aren't going right, we can get further. I'd like to do even more research on this to prove this in a million different ways. But what we know already is it's clear. These moments arise, they help us pursue our goals. We can call them out and help people achieve more. So the fresh starts are there, they're real, they're coming, and they can give us the opportunities we need to grow.

and give us that psychological immune system boost that we need. Okay, so make it fun, fresh starts. I think my third comes back to what we just talked about, about the importance of flexibility, that you have to create flexible approaches to achievement, that you cannot be too rigid, that rigidity is the enemy of habit, and success because life throws you curveballs constantly.

And, you know, of course, routinization, 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 will 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 then in and 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, of dissatisfaction, of being stuck in something, could prevent them from, you know, 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 Change the Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Katie Milkman. I think you'll be very inspired. So make sure you check this out. 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. Katie underscore Milkman, right? On Twitter. And you're also Katie Milkman on Instagram and Facebook.

You can find you there as well. But Twitter is your go-to where you'll be most active. Lurking. Lurking. Most reactive. Posting. 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. And so people can check that out.

You can go to katiemilkman.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. So that might be another place. People who want to get into the nerdy stuff. The nerdy data. See the data. That's another spot. Where is that? I think it to kittymilkman.com. Is that there? They'll find it. Or Bcfg.upend.U.U. University of Pennsylvania. That's another place to find out

about our center. We've got to get Duckworth on here as well. I've got to get her on. I've had A few people try to make the connection for that. But I think she's not traveling right now. She's just getting back on the road. Okay, perfect. So I'm going to happen now. I'm sure you can find her at a time when she's in L.A. 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 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 is really lined up everything because they have that North Star and purpose. this. 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. My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode right now because we are on a mission to impact 100 million lives every single week. And every follow here on this podcast helps us reach more people. Make sure to hit the follow at the top of this show's page right now. It's a single biggest thing that you can do to support the show and the impact of us reaching you every single time we have new episodes. I appreciate you, and I can't wait to see you in the next episode.

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