Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques - 104. How to Change: Building Better Habits and Behaviors (And Getting Out of Your Own Way)

Episode Date: August 29, 2023

"We're wired to look for the path of least resistance and efficiency, and that's normally a good thing, but it can get in the way when we want to make a change," says Wharton professor Katy Milkman. Through her research on decision making and in her recent book How to Change: The Science of Getting From Where You Are to Where You Want To Be, Milkman examines the many barriers we create for ourselves when it comes to achieving goals."Who you surround yourself [is important] with because we have a tendency to conform to the people around us," she says. "And if we are surrounded by people who show us our limitations, that can be a barrier."On this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, host Matt Abrahams sits down with Milkman to further explore her research into human behavior and decision making, motivation, and tools we can use to make real change. Connect:Email Questions & Feedback >>> [e-mail] Transcripts >>> Think Fast Talk Smart WebsiteNewsletter Signup + English Language Learning >>> FasterSmarter.ioThink Fast Talk Smart >>> LinkedIn,  Instagram, YouTubeMatt Abrahams >>> LinkedIn ********Thank you to our sponsors.  These partnerships support the ongoing production of the podcast, allowing us to bring it to you at no cost.Strawberry.me. Get 50% off your first coaching session today at Strawberry.me/smartJoin our Think Fast Talk Smart Learning Community and become the communicator you want to be. 

Hi, Matt here. We have two days left before we close our listener viewer survey. A big thank you to all of you who have already provided feedback. Please take a few minutes to share your input on the show. We still have a few prizes left to give to lucky respondents. Go to FasterSmarter.com.com. To give us your input. That's FasterSmarter.com.io slash survey. And now a word from one of our sponsors.

Their support allows us to bring you quality content free of charge. If you've ever thought, I know I can do more, but something's holding me back. You're not alone. Whether you're navigating career growth, seeking better balance, or wanting to communicate with more confidence, coaching can help you bridge the gap between intention and action. At strawberry.comme, you'll get matched with a professional coach who's trained to help you clarify your goals, build lasting confidence, and make intentional choices professionally and personally. This is not therapy, it's not consulting. It's a thought partnership designed to help you take action with more clarity and purpose. I strongly believe in the value of coaching. All of us can benefit from the help of a coach. Visit strawberry.combe slash smart

to get matched up with your coach today. That's strawberry.comme slash smart and get 50% off your first coaching session. It's the most affordable time ever to see if coaching is right for you. When it comes to achieving our own personal goals, sometimes the biggest impediment is ourselves. I'm Matt Abraham's, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Today, I am really excited to speak with Katie Milkman. Katie is a professor at Wharton and co-founder and co-director of the behavioral change for good initiative. She hosts the podcast Choiceology and is the author of How to Change the Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.

Katie and I met a little over a year ago when she was so kind to offer advice about authoring my latest book. I'm super excited to continue our conversation here. And Katie, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. One of the reasons I'm so excited to speak with you is that your work pulls together and synthesizes many of the topics we've discussed here before. We talked about habits with BJ Fogg, motivation with Suu Kyi Huang, and behavior change

with Bob Chaldini. A lot of your work focuses on how we can change and maintain attitudes and behaviors we want to adopt. Before we get into how to do that, I'd like for you to share some of the things that get in the way of realizing these changes. that we want. What are some of the barriers that you've identified and worked with? Thanks for asking that question because it's critical to think about before you can actually figure out what's the solution. You have to understand what you're working against.

Some of the key barriers that I think about are internal. I should say there's lots of external barriers to change, but the internal ones are where my research focuses. So the getting started problem is a barrier. You know, how do I find the motivation to get going on this? we have looked at impulsivity, the fact that we focus more on the rewards we'll get today than the rewards that will be delayed and procrastination, which is really the flip side of impulsivity. One that I think gets neglected is forgetting, but it's really important. If it's not top of mind, we can't get things done. I talk about laziness, which it sounds worse than it is. I actually think we're wired to look for the path of least resistance and efficiency, and that's

normally a good thing, but it can get in the way when we want to make a change. That's another challenge. And then two final barriers that I write about and think are important are believing in yourself, really having the sense that you have what it takes. You have the confidence and self-efficacy that this is possible for you. And related to that is, and this is where we start to bleed a little bit from internal to external barriers, who you surround yourself with because we have a tendency to conform to the people around us. And if we are surrounded by people who show us our limitations, that can be a barrier too. Those barriers, I mean, there are a lot of them. And as you were rattling them off, I'm going through in my own mind the things that have prevented me from doing some of the

things that I want. And so I'm hoping in a little bit we can talk about how to reduce some of those barriers and achieve the changes that we're looking for. One of them that I find fascinating is this notion of present versus future. And I know that you have thought a lot about this and done some research on this, that we tend to be motivated by the now and not so much what's in the future. What impact does this have? And what advice do you have for managing our present versus future goals and selves? I think the focus on instant gratification over long-term delayed rewards is one of the biggest challenges. In terms of advice, I actually think there's some really wonderful wisdom that comes from research done by Islet Fishbach at the University of Chicago

and Caitlin Woolley at Cornell University, they've shown that most of the time when we're focusing on pursuing a goal, we neglect this issue and we just follow the advice of Nike, which says, just do it, right? We think all I have to do is wanted enough and that will get me through. And we focus on finding efficient paths to our desired outcomes and we neglect thinking about whether we'll enjoy the path and the goal pursuit. And it turns out that's a mistake, because if we aren't finding it gratifying in the moment to pursue our goals, we tend not to persist.

So they have some really nice research showing if you encourage people to pursue their goals in a way that they find fun, as opposed to a way that's maximally efficient, you actually end up with better results. A really concrete example would be, think about going to the gym. You could either get on the maximally punishing stair master, or you could go to Zumba class with a friend, And you will, of course, probably get fitter faster if you're on that stair master.

But if you find it miserable, it'll be a one-time only visit. Whereas if you're doing something you enjoy, you're going to keep it up and your results will be better in the long run. I think this is really important. I like to call it the Mary Poppins effect that, you know, she says put a spoonful of sugar on it, right? That's the advice for how do you get kids to do things. But actually, this is true for adults too.

We need a way to make it more enjoyable to pursue our goals. And I've studied one tactic for that, which I call temptation bundling, which is linking something that would otherwise feel like a chore with a source of temptation and pleasure and instant gratification. So for podcast listeners, maybe you love listening to a podcast. What if you only let yourself listen to your favorite podcasts while you're working out or doing household chores or some other activity that would otherwise be a source of pain? And we can think about other ways of temptation bundling, right? You only get to go to your favorite restaurant that has unhealthy burgers. crave when spending time with a difficult mentee. When we temptation bundle, we seem to improve the rate at which we engage in these behaviors that otherwise would feel like drudgery. I love this

notion of find the fun and temptation bundling. I didn't know what I did when I grade was actually had a name. So I love what I do. Grading, as you well know, Katie, can sometimes be burdensome. I love peanut M&Ms. And I only allow myself to eat peanut M&Ms while I. I'm grading. And to me, it helps me get through that. And in fact, it's nice to know that you've done some research that it actually can help others. I'm wondering with some of these barriers, have you found that technology can help? Because I'm thinking that setting up reminders on my phone or time allotments where things go on for a certain amount of time could help. How does technology help manage some of this stuff? Absolutely. Reminders on your phone's a great example,

because forgetting is a huge barrier. We underinvest, actually, in reminders. We have some research showing that when we offer them for sale to people, you know, pay 10 cents and you'll get this reminder to do this thing. And P.S., if you don't do this thing, you lose a whole bunch of money later in our study. People are like, I don't need to spend 10 cents. Of course I'll remember. And then they forget. We underused reminders to our detriment.

A lot of people neglect planning, which is a big issue. And technology helps with that immensely, too. So there's wonderful research by NYU's Peter Golwitzer that people who have goals, but that's where they leave it, don't end up getting the same results as people who have goals and then make detailed plans about exactly when and where will they implement those actions that are necessary in order to achieve the goals. And technology is a great planning tool, right? Keeping your calendar, blocking off the exact amount of time you anticipate you'll need, having buffer time because we're overly optimistic about how long things will take, making sure you set reminders for all the key. ingredients in your life? You highlight the notion of planning. I have a personal goal to become more physically flexible. As I've gotten older, it's harder to like bend down and touch my toes, for example. And so I'm taking notes that I not only have to have the intent to be more flexible.

I actually have to create a plan and publicly commit or demonstrate. You're helping me with that notion and goal that I have. I'm turning this into personal therapy. I hope that's okay, Katie. Lots of people do. It's funny because that's not. That's not my specialty. I have to acknowledge me. What you're sharing is so helpful. So I know personally when I strive for a goal, I often make mistakes or don't follow through. I start well, but I just don't follow through. What advice do you have to help people follow through on the things that they're willing to try?

Well, we talked a little bit about the idea of outside accountability. Right. You might make your calendar visible to other people or have support groups. One of the things that helps a lot with follow through can be something called a commitment device. Commitment devices sound counterintuitive. We're really used to others imposing commitments on us, right? Your boss who gives you a deadline and says, or else, or you think of the government that says, you know, maintain a speed under this limit or else. Those are incentives, essentially, or constraints. A commitment device is when you do that to yourself. So, for instance, you say, I will find myself X dollars

if I don't hit this deadline. And you literally put money on the line and a credit card down, on their website that I have no affiliation with, like Stick and B-Minder, where you can do this and the money gets sent to a charitable organization if you don't succeed. And P.S., if you want to make sure it's painful, you can choose a charity you hate because they have charities on either side

of contentious issues. And you choose a referee, someone else who will hold you accountable. Did you hit the deadline for the project you were working on? Or did you go to the gym the number of times you intended to go? One of my favorite studies on this is actually with smokers who were trying to quit, and they were randomly assigned to two groups, one group got all the standard tools for quitting.

And the other group got the standard tools, plus they could put money into a savings account, and they knew they would have to forfeit all of that money if they failed a nicotine or cotanine urine test six months in the future. And indeed, it turned out just having a way to put that money down increased quitting. So the group that had access to an account

that they could put money in and forfeit if they failed to achieve their goals, they quit at a 30% higher rate. Wow. So I think these commitment devices, tools of accountability, are really important to keep in mind for yourself. Again, we're used to others doing it. Someone else sets a deadline and says, or else, or finds us. But you can do the same thing to incentivize yourself to follow through on your best intentions so that when temptation strikes, there's more skin in the game. There's more consequence if you give into it.

I really find that fascinating, this notion of setting up accountability for ourselves. I had not thought about the negative consequence, right? So donate to a charity that's totally opposite your point of view would be very motivating. I'd like to look at the role communication can play in achieving our personal goals. How do framing and feedback influence our success? Those are great questions. They matter a lot. So feedback is important in that it helps us demarcate whether or not we are making the progress.

to. It helps us celebrate the small wins. Framing also matters a lot. One of my favorite studies that I got to be involved in was led by one of my students named Anish Rai. And it was in partnership with an organization called Crisis Text Line. And they were trying to figure out how do we help motivate our volunteer workforce to follow through on getting to the 200 hours of yearly volunteering that they've committed to do for us. And they were already receiving reminder emails each week, please fulfill that commitment. And we knew something about the science of framing and the importance of making goals feel more bite-sized and achievable. And what we suggested and tested was whether it might be more effective than highlighting

that 200 hours yearly goal. We said that's four hours a week. Let's just reframe that big commitment into a more bite-sized component so that it feels approachable and you know exactly what you want to check off and achieve this week or in this next two weeks. And what we found is just reframing those goals led to about an 8% increase in volunteering over and above what they were achieving normally. So I think that's a nice example of how important it can be to communicate clearly about bite-sized goals.

And feedback is really important in that context, too, because otherwise you can't see, am I getting there? Am I making the progress I hope to make? Really interesting and insightful that the way you look at the task itself and the way you frame it for others and personally help. I know that when I look at, again, being very self-serving here, when I look at wanting to lose weight, for example, if I reframe that is I want to be healthier, it's much more motivational to me. And I look at what I do differently. So just the way we frame things in my own life has made a big difference. I'm curious in your own life, what have you found to be most impactful for yourself, Katie, when you're trying to achieve something you want to achieve?

What are the things you do? One of the most important things for me is this notion of trying to make it more fun. But a big way I do that is through social connection. So I'm very careful to bring in collaborators who make it a joy and a pleasure to do the work. It creates accountability because if I'm doing something on my own, I can put it off forever. But now there's someone else who's waiting for a draft or waiting for a response. It also makes the work more enjoyable because I'm very careful. As I said, to choose collaborators.

I choose people who make it a joy. That's absolutely critical to my productivity and happiness. Thank you for sharing. And some of the work you do and the collaborators you have are amazing. And in fact, I'd like to focus now on different work that you have done. And one of the things I'd like to bring up, it has to do with a collaboration you had with one of our previous guests, Jonah Berger. The two of you conducted some research that has been very, very frequently cited.

And it's on how online content goes viral. Can you share the results of that work and any suggestions you have to make our ideas go viral regardless of if it's online or not? Thanks for asking about that work. I really love that project. It actually was motivated by former Stanford professor Chip Heath, who came and gave a talk when I was a graduate student at Harvard about some of the amazing work he had done on what kinds of stories we pass on. And he was studying this in the lab. And I thought, gosh, it would be so interesting. if we could look at what goes viral in the wild. I was really fascinated by field data, and I was an avid New York Times reader, and they had this little feature on the New York Times website that showed what were the top 25 most shared articles that day,

and I was like, let's scrape that data and actually see what drives things to go viral online. What we saw is that stories that were more emotional were much more likely to go viral. Interestingly, in the context of the New York Times, more positive news was slightly more viral than negative. Now, any news that was emotional is better than being sort of not triggering that kind of reaction, but positivity was winning out.

I don't think that's true in the necessarily social media world we inhabit today. But on the New York Times, circa 2009, 2010, which is when we did our data collection, that was a nice finding. We also found that it was emotions evoked more of a sort of heart-raising reaction. The term in psychology is to call them arousing, but that has other meanings in common plot. That's not what it, it's not what it sounds like. It's emotions that just make your heart race.

So think awe and anger, much more than emotions like sadness, that lead you to share. Scientific articles, interestingly, were really commonly shared, more so than many other categories of article. Of course, opinion pieces, but if there's something surprising and awe-inspiring it, it does make us want to connect with others and make sense of it and discuss. And I think that's such a positive result

and something we can all think about, how do we use that for good? Before letting you go, I know that beyond studying goals and how we achieve them, you also do work on diversity, equity, and inclusion in a very important topic to me personally, and we've talked about it a lot on this podcast.

What has your research shown to help in this regard? What can we do to help the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion? Let me first say something that doesn't work that we've invested way too much time and energy in. We have done some research looking at whether or not online diversity trainings add value and found that they really don't seem to add the kind of value we all would hope. What we have seen is much more promising in our research is solutions that change the environment where decisions are made to facilitate more, I'll say, inclusive kinds of decisions. I'll give you a very concrete example. we did one experiment where we looked at whether or not people who are making selection decisions.

So think I'm hiring someone or I'm choosing who will be up on a panel at a conference. We varied whether or not a decision maker was choosing a whole set of individuals to hire, right? Like five. I'm going to make five hires for different slots on a team or put five people on this panel. Or they're just making one choice. They get to hire one person to fill an empty role on a team. What we see is that people choose more women and minorities when they're hiring in sets rather than singleton. So you might say like, well, yeah, of course, because I got five slots. But to be clear, we're comparing, you know, for every five choices made, how much diversity do we see when people are choosing one at a time versus in sets? And we see much more diversity in sets.

And the mechanism seems to be when we're, say, hiring a group of five people all at once, as opposed to one person a month for five months, we notice. a lack of diversity in the choice set we come to the table with. And we adjust it because most of us are not intentionally discriminating. Obviously, there's exceptions to that. But what a lot of our research points to is that when we have the opportunity to look at a whole group and say, does this meet my goals in terms of the diversity I'd like to see on my team, does this meet my goals in terms of who I would like to make sure is at the table, we adjust and we do not hire five people who all look the same. We want diversity in groups.

So try to hire in sets because you can't even think about diversity if you're just hiring one person, right? What is a diverse hire? That's not a thing, right? No one person has diversity. So that's my favorite result from. We'll be right back to finish our conversation. But first, a quick word from one of our sponsors. Their support allows us to bring you this show free of charge. If you've ever felt like you're trying to do everything yourself, especially when the stakes are high, you're not alone. One of the biggest shifts I see in effective leaders growing their organizations comes from focusing on the right things. But that's hard to do when you're stretched thin. You need to be able to delegate some tasks to competent professionals.

That's where Upwork can really help. Upwork is a one-stop platform to find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across areas like marketing, development, data and analytics, and more. It gives you fast access to specialized talent so you can move quickly, fill key gaps, and scale your work without taking on full-time overhead. You can browse profiles, review past work, and get support scoping your project so you can hire with confidence. It's a simple way to focus your time where it matters most. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's upw-w-r-k-com.

Upwork.com. And now, back to our conversation. Our work. Well, Katie, you know, before we end, I like to ask the same three questions of everybody. And I'm very excited to hear your answers to these questions. Are you up for that? I'm ready. I thought about this in advance.

Oh, good. You're prepared. I hope you didn't have to reward yourself. I hope this wasn't a chore. This was fun itself. Question number one. If you were to capture the best communication advice you have ever received as a five to seven word presentation slide title, what would it be? Tell stories to make your point.

Have you found in your own work that that's benefited you personally in reporting the results that you find in the research you do? Absolutely. I think it's really important. I don't think of myself as a storyteller primarily. My first love is collect and analyze data, find truth in numbers, but to communicate. that truth so that it's sticky and so that other people will understand it clearly and remember it. You have to make it come to life. We have to do the hard work of the science and collecting the data, but then to communicate it successfully and ensure that other people understand it and use it, storytelling is so critical. You are a very good storyteller in your book,

and you do a great job of eliciting stories as a podcast host from your guests. So question number two, who is a communicator that you admire? And why? The communicator I picked is a very dear friend, Angela Duckworth. She's one of my closest collaborators and an absolutely extraordinary communicator. She wrote a brilliant book called Grit. She has one of the most viewed TED Talks of all time. Some of the things that make her such a great storyteller and communicator are the same.

She has a beautiful way with words. She understands that it is critical to make things personal and to have poignancy in the the story she tells, she opens her book Grit by talking about her father and her childhood, the fact that he used to point out that she was no genius. And that motivated her to work harder and harder. And actually, she did eventually win a MacArthur Genius Award. And her big contribution, or she has many contributions, but one of her biggest contributions is recognizing that we overweight this idea of genius and that so much of success is really

about grit. Angela communicates so clearly about the importance and the oversight in our culture. She's so fantastic at explaining the importance of this. I have seen that talk a number of times, and you're right. Her ability to be very clear and poignant are very, very powerful. Question number three, what are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe? Clarity, brevity, and vividness. Those are my three.

Talk to me about vividness. I think clarity and brevity makes sense to me. What is vividness doing in that list? I'm a judgment decision-making scholar. So my thinking is heavily influenced by the work of other judgment decision-making scholars, particularly I'm thinking of Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky, and some of their work has highlighted that one heuristic we use when we're making judgments is how vivid something is. So we overweight the likelihood of shark attacks and homicides, for instance, because

those are really overrepresented in our mind relative to other kinds of incidents because they're splashed all over the news. We talk about them. We're scared of them. Vividness really matters to the way we calculate frequencies and estimate the importance of things. And it's also important for communication, because if you want people to wait your message, it needs to be something that stands out in their mind. And so, you know, great advertising, great communication recognizes this bias and deploys vividness. It sticks in your mind just like a shark attack. Right. We're taking advantage of the way the brain is wired to process information. And if we can do that, be vivid, but also very clear and brief, I think we've got the total package. Katie, this has been a true delight.

I knew it would be. I have enjoyed our conversations prior to this one. And thank you very much for giving us very specific advice on things we can do as we strive for goals and change in our own life. And I appreciate expanding beyond just that, but also talking about information going viral and diversity, equity, and inclusion. I encourage everybody to learn from Katie in multiple ways. Katie hosts the popular podcast Choiceology, and she has an amazing book, How to Change the Science of Getting from where you are to where you want to be. Katie, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much again for having me. This was a real pleasure. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, The Podcast, from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

This episode was produced by Jenny Luna, Michael Riley, and me, Matt Abrahams. For more information and episodes, visit gsb.standford.edu. Or subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts. Finally, find us on social media at Stanford, GSP. Before we wrap up, I just want to say thank you for listening. It really means a lot to hear how people all over the world are using these ideas in their own lives. It inspires me and the whole team that brings you this show. If you want more episodes and resources, feel free to follow, subscribe, and explore past conversations.

We're grateful for your support of Think Fast Talk Smart.