Shownotes:
In this episode, I sit down with the renowned behavioral scientist Katy Milkman to explore why change is so hard and how we can make it easier. Katy shares her insights on the psychological barriers to change and reveals practical strategies, like fresh starts, temptation bundling, and commitment devices, that can help us achieve our goals. Join us for an engaging conversation packed with actionable tips to transform your approach to change and make lasting improvements in your life. Don't miss out on these valuable insights from one of the leading experts in the field!
About Our Guest:
Dr. Katy Milkman is a renowned behavioral scientist and professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She hosts the popular podcast Choiceology and co-directs the Behavior Change for Good Initiative which she co-founded. Katy has worked with or advised numerous organizations on behavior change, including The White House, Google, Walmart, Humana, the U.S. Department of Defense, 24 Hour Fitness, and the American Red Cross. She is the author of the bestselling book How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be and has published extensively in leading academic journals. Katy also frequently writes for major media outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Thrive Global Article:
Katy Milkman on Overcoming the Challenges of Change
About Lainie:
Lainie Rowell is a bestselling author, award-winning educator, and TEDx speaker. She is dedicated to human flourishing, focusing on community building, social-emotional learning, and honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic through learner-driven design. She earned her degree in psychology and went on to earn both a post-graduate credential and a master's degree in education. An international keynote speaker, Lainie has presented in 41 states as well as in dozens of countries across 4 continents. As a consultant, Lainie’s client list ranges from Fortune 100 companies like Apple and Google to school districts and independent schools. Learn more at linktr.ee/lainierowell.
Website - LainieRowell.com
Twitter - @LainieRowell
Instagram - @LainieRowell
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Transcript:
Lainie Rowell: Hello, friends. Welcome. I am talking to the amazing Dr. Katy Milkman, and she gave me permission to call her Katy, so, hi, Katy. Thank you so much for being here.
Katy Milkman: Thanks so much for having me, Lainie.
Lainie Rowell: I shared this before we hit record, but I cannot share it enough.
I love your book, How to Change the Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. I read it about two years ago. And what I love is the strategies are just so practical, actionable, tactical, all the words. And I want to get into the specifics as much as you're willing to share, but first, can you tell us why change is so hard?
Katy Milkman: No, that's a fantastic question. And,. I wouldn't be in business. I wouldn't be wouldn't be studying this topic if it were easy. I wouldn't have written a book about it and we're in a research center on it. Changes are for a lot of reasons.
I think the most fundamental is that we are as humans evolved to be creatures of habit, to stick with comfortable routines for all sorts of reasons that make sense. If you think about what makes for a stable, good life, but it can be a barrier in the context where you want to make an adjustment.
So we, for instance, find any change feels like a loss relative to our present state, and losses tend to loom large, and that makes us avoidant of change. Habits are the systems or routines that we put on autopilot that make it easy for us to go through life without having to think through every decision we make, and they make us resistant to change because now you have to do something effortful instead of sticking with the path of least resistance.
We are also generally wired to prefer instant gratification over long term delayed rewards, which again, you can see, thinking back to our ancestors, why that's a great strategy, right? If you don't know when your next meal is going to come from or where your next opportunity to mate might arise, you should take advantage when you have the opportunity.
That's how we survive and procreate. And yet, those instincts do not serve us so well when we want to make a change because most change requires overriding what's instantly gratifying and thinking about the long term rewards that we will achieve if we can, say, exercise or study harder. So all of these features of our minds make change extra hard.
And we haven't even touched on, of course, all the structural barriers, right? What the world does to us when we try to change. Just the internal barriers, the way we humans are built, are, are plenty of a challenge. And then you can throw in more.
Lainie Rowell: That is a lot of reasons why it's hard to change. And I can see from an evolutionary standpoint a lot of the reasons.
I can understand the efficiency of it. I don't think it ever hit me the way it just did when you talked about we feel it like a loss, and that's like a really emotional thing to be thinking about, right?
Katy Milkman: Absolutely. You know, it's really interesting. So we recently actually lost one of the most important figures in my field, Danny Kahneman, the great behavioral economist and author of the bestselling, mega bestselling book, Thinking Fast and Slow.
And one of his major contributions, besides sort of teaching us that people are poor intuitive statisticians, was to teach us that losses tend to loom larger than gains, that people are very sensitive to anything that feels like a loss, about twice as sensitive by some estimates, although it certainly varies depending on the context.
But that means, you know, if you find 20 in the morning and you lose it in the evening, you're going to be much, much more unhappy than you would have been if there had never been 20 in your life at all, which is peculiar because you end the day in the same state you started it. But this tendency to find loss is extremely painful, excruciating even, is really a barrier to change because change is all about losing who you were, and shifting to a new path, and the fact that those kinds of adjustments are costly psychologically is, is an important part of why we often don't take the leap.
Lainie Rowell: Well, you've set me up perfectly to talk about your podcast, Choiceology, which the reason I made that connection is because you did a beautiful tribute to Daniel Kahneman when you replayed an episode from him on your podcast.
And so I know he was an important person in your life. And I would just love if you could just kind of quickly tell us about choiceology and how that kind of fits in with your work.
Katy Milkman: Yeah, well, one of my favorite things about the research I do is sharing the insights from the amazing scholars out there that are relevant and practical to our everyday decisions.
So I teach an MBA class at the Wharton School that's all about improving our decisions and about six years ago, I had the opportunity to take over hosting a podcast called Choiceology that Charles Schwab creates that focuses each episode on one decision bias that everyone should know about. Sort of telling a story to illustrate why it's so important and then talking to the scientist who did the original research to dig into, you know, what's going on?
What are the findings? How do we know this is true? What can we do about it? And it has been so much fun. We make 12 episodes a year. They're really heavily produced in a way that makes them, I think, tremendously fun to listen to. I have an amazing team behind the scenes that does that.
And every episode is teaching you something new. And I'm learning so much. It's one of my favorite things I've ever done because it gives me this excuse to call up the scientists doing the work that I think is most important, most relevant and hop on a call with them for 30 or 45 minutes to have a conversation about how they probed this bias or a problem, whether it's, you know, why people are overconfident or how can we achieve our goals more successfully by breaking them down into bite sized parts?
We just did one on something called the realization effect, which shows that we think differently about risks when we have actually just realized a loss, meaning, you know, it's no longer a paper loss, but we sold the stock at a loss.
Now it's realized and now we make very different decisions and are less willing to take risks than we would be if we were still in the middle of it. So some of the effects are subtle, some of them are massive, and we, we dive into the science.
Lainie Rowell: You and your team do a beautiful job, it is well produced, and I did just listen to the Realization episode, and what I love as part of that highly well produced episode is that you bring in things like the Revolutionary War, and how George Washington was leading, and the choices that he made, to be successful.
Not that he was successful every time, like in a battle, but the choices that he made that were counterintuitive or against what would have been the norm at that time, and it is what led to his success. So I love the nuance, I love how practical it is, and I thank you for bringing in other scholars who have practical information.
Katy Milkman: It's such a joy to make and it's so fun to get that feedback. So thank you for the kind words, I appreciate it.
Lainie Rowell: I tend to think about how, for myself, there is this aspirational self, the things that I would love to do, and then, then there's my actual self, which is, the things that I, maybe do that are not going to lead to the things that I want.
So it's like, do I read the book that I am so excited to read? Or do I binge watch Netflix? I'm excited to read the book, but that's going to be more work. And we know that I'm going to be happier reading the book. The evidence is very clear on that, but what are some of the strategies to overcome,? We want to get to that long term goal. How do I get past that short term, "I don't want to do this"?
Katy Milkman: Yeah, no, it's such an important question. I think the most important insight in the research on this topic comes from Islet Fischbach at the University of Chicago and her collaborator, Caitlin Woolley at Cornell. And they've done some really, I think, counterintuitive work showing that most of us think when we have a goal and it feels tough, we just need to push our way through, use willpower, if it's effortful, you know, no pain, no gain, right?
We all know, just do it, Nike. These are the slogans we grow up with that are just telling us it's good to do goal pursuit, even when it's painful, in the most efficient way possible. And what they've shown is that that's what we think, and it's wrong. The better way to pursue our goals is actually not the most effortful, painful way, but rather by trying to figure out how can we make it more fun.
Now, very few people naturally take that approach, but when we are encouraged to pursue our goals in ways that are more fun, as opposed to the most efficient way possible, we actually see greater results, and the reason is that people persist longer when they enjoy goal pursuit. Think about this in the context of gym attendance, which I think is like sort of the most, the most common thing that people do.
It's a very intuitive goal. Lots of people have wanted to exercise more and know that it's kind of painful to do it. You could think about what's the most efficient path to getting fit, if that's really what your objective is. And it'd probably be some very painful workout, maybe like, you know, Stairmaster at maximal resistance, like going as fast as you can.
Lainie Rowell: Steep incline. Yeah.
Katy Milkman: Exactly. Right. So that, that's going to be really efficient. And a lot of people are going to say, okay, I want to get fit as efficiently as possible. That's what I'm going to do. The alternative though, might be to focus on how could I have fun getting fit? And there you take a very different path.
You might go to Zumba classes with a friend and you can pretty quickly see, as you start thinking about it, which of those people is going to be more likely to return to the gym for a second visit after their first, right? The one who has this miserable experience on the Stairmaster is going to dread their workouts forever after and likely won't show up again.
So maybe they got a little closer to their fitness goal in that one workout because it was such a great workout, but it's the last workout they'll ever do. The person who goes to Zumba classes with their friend, they probably have a good time. It's really likely that they'll persist. And it turns out most of goal success is about persistence.
There are some goals that really just take one action, right? You got to go get your colonoscopy. Do it, right? But, but most of these things require showing up time and again and so try and figure out how do you make the experience more pleasant, either by choosing a different path or you can use a strategy I have studied, which is called temptation bundling, where you literally engineer the experience to be more fun by combining something that you find tempting and enjoyable with what would otherwise be a chore.
So imagine you still get on that Stairmaster, maybe you don't set it to the toughest incline possible, but you might let yourself binge watch the latest episodes of Bridgerton while you're on the Stairmaster, right? And now instead of being a purely miserable experience, there's something a little bit joyful about it.
And in fact, maybe you won't even notice the pain so much while you're enjoying all the plot twists. If you only allow yourself, by the way, to enjoy binge watching your favorite shows while, say, exercising, now you're going to start craving trips to the gym to find out what happens next. And this is another way you can make it fun to pursue your goals.
It's not just relevant at the gym, but we've done research in that context showing that by giving people a chance to temptation bundle, it can increase exercise.
Lainie Rowell: I'll confess, there was no way I was going to let you off of this interview without talking about Temptation Bundling.
It is absolutely the strategy, out of all the habit forming, out of all the change theory, it is the strategy that has helped me the most in my life. Truly transformative. Like, I'm not just saying that because we're talking right now.
And when I tell people about it, they go, oh my gosh, that makes so much sense. What was the title of the study? It had Hunger Games in it. It was so good.
Katy Milkman: Yeah. Our first research study on temptation bundling was called Holding the Hunger Games Hostage at the Gym. Because we invited people to choose content that they would find tempting and then told them we would lock it at the gym.
They'd only be able to access it after watching the beginning if they showed back up at the gym to work out again. And so we were literally holding these temptations in locked, monitored lockers. And we gave people a set of like 82 sources of entertainment to pick from, you know, the Da Vinci Code, The Hunger Games, et cetera.
And The Hunger Games was by far the most popular. And it worked beautifully so we felt that it deserved prominence in the title of the research paper. But I do want to just mention that, while Hunger Games is a great thing to temptation bundle with exercise, whether you prefer the book or the audiobook or the movie adaptation, there are lots of other settings outside of workouts where we can temptation bundle, and I think using this tool to help people exercise, it's very natural, and it's where we've done a bunch of the research on it, but it's actually a very useful tool anytime there's something that feels like a chore or a burden to you.
Not everything can be temptation bundled, but many things can, right? If you find it a little bit unpleasant to prep fresh meals for your family, say, but you'd like to do more of it, imagine you only let yourself listen to your favorite podcast while you're prepping those fresh meals. Or maybe there's a special bottle of wine you only get to open while you're doing that meal prep.
You can think about, you know, household chores. Maybe there's a. Spotify station you particularly love and you only get to listen to it when you are folding laundry or ironing or vacuuming. At work you could think about maybe there's a difficult employee who you should spend more time mentoring. Well, how are you gonna motivate yourself to do what feels like a chore?
You might consider making those mentoring meetings over lunch at a restaurant whose food you really crave and shouldn't eat too much of but what can you add that adds delight and temptation to what would otherwise feel like a burden and be put off? My students, I often talk about, you know, maybe you need to hit the books at the library.
Is there a Starbucks beverage you really crave? Or maybe you have another favorite coffee shop. What if you only let yourself pick that up on these occasions when you're heading to hit the books? So I think it's important to realize while it's particularly well suited and well proven to help us in the context of exercise.
Once you understand that part of why we don't pursue our goals and get chores done is because they aren't enjoyable enough and that we can engineer solutions to this by linking temptations, it opens up a whole host of possible ways to be more effective.
Lainie Rowell: Absolutely. I love how you're engineering the delight, right?
Why do we bring more delight into our lives? So let's engineer it that way. And. I want to talk about Fresh Starts, but first, you've kind of given me this segue to talk about confidence and expectations. So, from your book How to Change, you write, Our expectations shape our outcomes. How we think about something affects how it is.
And, I have to tell you, there's an example in the book where you talk about the housekeepers. And, I'll let you explain that. And I'm just going to tell you that I tell myself to engage the core while I'm doing housework now, thanks to you. So,
Katy Milkman: Well, now everyone's going to think it's an exercise book because we're coming to all the exercise examples.
But this is one of my favorite stories too. I really love this research. It was done by Stanford's Allie Crum and Ellen Langer at Harvard. And they have this, really fantastic insight that a pretty commonly and widely understood effect is much broader than we think it is. And that's the placebo effect.
So probably most of your listeners have heard of the placebo effect. It is where we have a prescription that we receive from a doctor. They give you, Hey, you know, this'll help with your headache. It's just a sugar pill, but it actually makes you feel better because your doctor prescribed it. And so you expect it to work.
And so you notice that you're feeling better even if you might not have noticed that had you not had the expectation. So placebo effects are huge and amazing, but most people think of them as limited to medicine. And what Ellen and Aaliyah realized is that actually, placebo effects are everywhere.
When we have an expectation, it shapes the way we experience the world. And they have this really lovely study that takes it outside of the medical domain and into the context of housekeepers working at hotels. They're either just sort of going about their business and encouraged to keep doing so, or they're randomly assigned to be reminded of something that is absolutely true, which is that the work they do each day is meeting the CDC's recommended exercise regimen. So by vacuuming, by changing sheets, by scrubbing floors, they are getting healthy physical activity that's great for them. So some people are reminded of this and some aren't, and then the question is, when you're reminded of the fact that your work is a workout, does it change the way you do your work and does it change your outcomes?
Because now you're thinking differently about this exercise. You're thinking of it as an opportunity to obtain physical activity and benefits for yourself versus just as a job that pays the bills. And what they find in their research is that the housekeepers who are given this information are reminded of something they may not have even known in the first place, which is that there's this ancillary benefit that they're getting exercise on the job.
They lean into it, right? Of course, they're probably choosing to take the stairs now. They're not sitting on the bed while they vacuum, but. pushing their energy into it, just be as, as I do. You mentioned that this has affected the way you think about...
Lainie Rowell: Engage the core.
Katy Milkman: That's right. It's an opportunity. Like I eagerly run up and down the stairs in my townhouse now to do my laundries, like an opportunity to get more steps and exercise. Once you frame it to yourself as this, as this benefit you're obtaining and it changes your attitude, changes your mindset. Of course, the, the big finding is that the outcomes are different.
So a month later, the housekeepers who've been reminded about these exercise benefits have experienced them. So they've lost weight, their blood pressure has improved, and so on. And it's just a really nice illustration of the fact that when we think about things differently, it changes our behavior and changes our outcomes.
And we have to be aware of that. It, it, it can be used, it can be weaponized and be used against us. But it can also be used as a tool when we want to change our behavior in positive ways.
Lainie Rowell: Well, and I appreciate you pointing out, this is not all about exercise, the book is about getting from where you are to where you want to be, and you're probably getting a peek into maybe something that I struggle to do, based on the examples that I'm pulling from, so maybe, maybe that's coming through.
Katy Milkman: No, me too, I use a lot of these tools for exercise, but also for learning foreign languages, and being more productive at work, and being a better parent, and a better boss and mentor and on all these things. So I think one of the most important things to recognize about all these tools is that they're very adaptable to whatever your goals may be. And there's not sort of a prescription for a specific objective, rather a set of tools that can help with whatever it is you want to achieve.
Lainie Rowell: And I'll share an example of how I do that. So for temptation bundling, yes, it definitely is I don't get to listen to podcasts unless I'm at the gym, but it's also pretty much, I don't get to listen to podcasts unless I'm doing something I don't want to be doing.
So, for example, I don't like to fold laundry. So I say, okay, well, I can listen to podcasts if I'm at the gym, if I'm folding laundry, if I'm cleaning out a closet, it's this, it's like, I have a list of stuff that I don't want to do, but needs to be done. It's like my temptation bundling task list. And so...
Katy Milkman: I love that.
Lainie Rowell: I get to listen to the podcast because I listen to a ton of podcasts, but I only get to do it when I'm doing something else. It's a huge efficiency hack for me.
Katy Milkman: I'm so glad it's been helpful to you. It's been very helpful for me too. And I hope it'll be helpful to your listeners.
Lainie Rowell: I think it will be. It's one that I love to share. Let's talk a little bit about fresh starts, because I think this is a really interesting, you know, when we're talking about confidence and expectations and kind of how, just how you approach it. I think fresh starts is a great example of how important your mindset is.
Katy Milkman: Absolutely. Yeah. So this is something that I got interested in and started studying almost 15 years ago now, as a result of a visit I made to Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California, they were having a big gathering to talk about various challenges that the company was trying to tackle, particularly in the human resources space.
And they brought in a bunch of academics and other HR professionals to swap stories, share ideas and I gave a presentation about some of my research. In fact, I mentioned some of the early work we'd done on temptation bundling. I was trying to offer tools, nudges, that they could think about deploying to help employees achieve various goals.
From exercising more, to saving more, to taking more of the classes and enrichment programming that was being offered, but that not everyone was adopting. And I got this fantastic question in the Q& A portion after my presentation, which was, okay, Katy sold on the fact that some of these tools that you've been studying and others are studying, we should deploy them to try to encourage better decisions by our employees. We should roll out temptation bundling facilitation in our gyms, for instance, but the question was, is there some ideal time? Is there a time of year, a time in a person's life, when they're going to be more open to adopting change and when these tools might be particularly valued and when we should try to push them and put them in front of people?
Are there, are there good moments for this? And it was such a fantastic question to me because there's a whole lot of research that had been done on how do we help people set goals? What is the scaffolding we can provide so they'll achieve their goals, but not much about when should they set goals and, and when should we communicate with them and give them these tools and coaching and so on.
And I immediately had a very strong intuition, which was that we knew at the start of a new year, there's this huge uptick in goal pursuit, right? First of all, I'm sure many people read a story about it every New Year's and talk to their friends about it and set resolutions.
40 percent of Americans do this. I get phone calls from reporters every December when they're writing their annual New Year's resolution story. Oh, what can you help? You know, you study motivation and change. Everybody's gonna need your help on January 1st. So, there's this crazy boom. And I'd always been curious about sort of what drives that besides the fact that now it's a ritual.
But of course we know one of the things that drives it is this reset of the calendar, right? The beginning of a new year gives us a sense that we can start over. That last year, whatever goals we didn't achieve, that was the old me, this is the new me, the new me will be different. And of course, recognizing that New Year's is a big moment to motivate change isn't terribly original, but what my collaborators and I started exploring was whether there was a broader set of dates and moments that have the same features as New Year.
So this is work joined with Hengchen Dai of UCLA who my former student, who I'm very proud is now a tenured professor there, in part based on her leadership on these projects, where we sort of started enumerating all of the moments that feel like new beginnings and that show the same pattern. So we have studies showing that people at the start of a new week, at the start of a new month, at the start of a new calendar year, of course, following the celebration of holidays that we think of as fresh starts.
So think Memorial Day and Labor Day, much more so than maybe Valentine's Day for most people has a fresh start feeling, birthdays. Hengchen has done some really nice work showing just performance tracking resets at work, right? If you have quarterly goals, for instance at the end of those quarters feels like a, a fresh start.
And so any evaluation period, any promotion, these are the kinds of new beginnings that change our behavior. So we've shown that people set more goals on popular goal setting websites at these times. They naturally search for the most popular New Year's resolution, which is unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your perspective, but I would say, unfortunately diet, that is most searched for at these fresh start moments.
People go to the gym more at these fresh start moments and the other thing we found is that not only does it happen spontaneously that people pursue change, but we wanted to answer the question I'd originally been asked. And we looked at could we actually encourage change more effectively if we suggested it surrounding these special time points rather than arbitrary dates.
When you highlight that a date has fresh sharp properties, it becomes much more attractive as a moment to make a change.
On any goal you're pursuing, but also in one really large experiment we showed, you could use this to increase people's saving rates. People. are more willing to open and start putting money in retirement savings accounts when you invite them to do so after the start of spring, after an upcoming birthday than on other arbitrary future dates or equidistant moments.
So that was a long answer, but that's a fresh short effect and what we know about it in a nutshell. And I think it's really useful to be aware of both to encourage change in others, because this suggests when you may want to reach out to a friend or a family member or a, a mentee at work and say, Hey, you know, here's a resource that might be helpful, or here's a suggestion for how you might pursue change.
It also suggests when you may want to put a commitment on your calendar to begin something new, because you'll likely feel more open to making that kind of change at some moments than others.
Lainie Rowell: Well, I think the psychological do over is very motivating. And for me, what just gets me excited is that.
It's not just New Year's Day. We can find these fresh starts and I do tend to use Monday mornings as a fresh start. Like if last week, sorry to bring it back to exercise, but you know, if last week was not my best week for getting into the gym, it's okay. This week I can just tell myself and I've become pretty good at just saying like, Monday's a fresh start.
I can do it. And having a more often fresh start has really been helpful.
Katy Milkman: Yeah, I love that. And I agree. I think it's important not to like wait every year for New Year's before you begin again on a goal. We have done some research showing you can't manufacture them completely out of thin air. So that is one mistake people sometimes make is they think, oh, I'm just gonna call today a fresh start.
And that doesn't seem to work. It needs to be something that has an intuitive sense of fresh start in people's minds already, but Mondays are one of the big ones, and they come about, it turns out, quite regularly, so thinking about those as opportunities to make a change is a great takeaway.
Lainie Rowell: Well, and I love how you said in the workplace, we can find something on our calendar that for our team would signify a fresh start. And so something that isn't just maybe as powerful to me, but something that our whole team would be like, okay, this is the start of a new quarter, or this is the start of a project or something like that.
So I think that's really helpful.
Katy Milkman: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's really interesting, some of the things that already exist, there's a lot of things that are already out there from religion, of course, has all sorts of cleansing rituals and, and new beginnings. But also at work, you think about something like a sabbatical or a retreat.
And part of the function of those things is to get us to step back from the day in, day out and create a little bit of a sense of a new beginning when you return because things have shifted. So it's interesting to reflect on a lot of the ways that some of the science that we've done is already being reflected in best practices.
And then think how can we do even more? How can we adopt these insights to make things even better?
Lainie Rowell: Okay. I have to ask you about commitment devices because when you started talking about this in the book, I was like, Oh man , this works for me. I love a good commitment device.
This podcast, I do a lot of commitment device stuff on this podcast where I say something and I feel like once I put it out to my audience, best do it. Cause the shame if I didn't, I know that word's ugly for some, but the reality is I couldn't live with myself if I didn't do it. So. What about the commitment devices do we need to know?
Katy Milkman: Yeah, so first of all, commitment devices are tools that we use to constrain our future selves. And this can be very counterintuitive to people, right? So we're very used to having a teacher or a boss or even the government create constraints so that we won't act in ways that are harmful.
Right? We get speeding tickets, you're gonna be fined if you give into the temptation to speed or here's a deadline and if you break it, you won't get this promotion. So we're used to it being imposed on us by a third party. But what's confusing about a commitment device is it's essentially doing that to yourself, , right?
So it's self imposing some cost. If you don't hit a deadline, achieve a goal, if you don't show up and give it your best. And it seems strange, why would I handcuff myself? And yet in many contexts, it's, it's incredibly powerful. So we talked a little bit earlier about how important when there's a long term goal, we might give into impulsivity.
We care a lot about what's instantly gratifying. So let's make it more fun to pursue our goals. And a commitment device is essentially the opposite. If that's the carrot approach to motivating behavior change in a situation where I might not be motivated enough, the commitment device is the stick.
For instance, you could literally put money on the line that you say you'll forfeit if you fail to let's say quit smoking in six months. And actually there's a really wonderful randomized controlled trial showing that giving people an opportunity to put money on the line that they will have to forfeit if they don't pass a urine test for nicotine or codonine in six months is more effective for helping people quit smoking than any standard smoking cessation tools.
So you compare the standard smoking cessation options with those plus this commitment device. It's actually not really a head to head. It's sort of adding this on top. It leads to a 30 percent increase in quit rates. And so it's a really powerful tool. Another study I love shows that if people are given an opportunity to put money in a savings account that they cannot access until they reach a predetermined savings goal or date, about 30 percent realize this is a good idea and will put money in that account even though it has no better interest rate than a standard liquid account, but people see, oh, it might be good to not be able to dip into savings when I'm tempted.
And just having access to such account increases savings 80 percent year over year in one randomized controlled trial. So, Commitment devices are these tools that constrain us. They bind us to the mass. It's sort of the classic odysseus story of being nervous he's gonna encounter these, these things sea sirens who will lure him to their island where he'll face shipwreck if he listens to their sweet voices He's anticipating that temptation and he says I want to avoid this bad outcome so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna bind myself to the mast so I can't control my ship I'll have everyone who's rowing plug their ears with wax so they won't hear the sweet sound and then I'll be able to enjoy the siren's call but there will be no risk of giving into the temptation to shipwreck my boat, and it's this wonderful story, classic story, and it's sort of the earliest example of a commitment device, but it gives you the sense of if we can outsmart the temptation by anticipating it in advance and constraining ourselves in a way that leads to the best possible outcome for all involved, then a commitment device can be an amazing, amazing tool.
So cash commitments are one of my favorites, but deadlines that have some penalty, making a public announcement so that now if I don't do it, I face shame. There's all sorts of different ways that we can bind ourselves to the mast in order to achieve our goals. And we don't need a teacher or a boss or a benevolent government to create the constraints that will lead us to succeed.
We can do it for ourselves.
Lainie Rowell: And is it fair to say that doing a combination of something like temptation bundling with a commitment device, does that lead to the best outcome?
Katy Milkman: Yeah, that's a great question. So here is where I think it's important to think about understanding what, is getting in your way.
And recognizing there may be some sort of personalization, but in the case of both a temptation bundle and a commitment device, they're both really trying to work on the same barrier, which is that I am tempted to do something other than exercise. So if temptation is my big barrier, then then the one two punch may be effective, but it's not clear that you'll get additive benefits.
It may be that temptation bundling is enough. Now I no longer dread it. Maybe that it's not. Temptation bundling is like, Oh, I dread it slightly less, but I'm still going to need to put a hundred dollars on the line that I have to forfeit to a political candidate who I hate if I don't go to the gym 10 times this month, otherwise temptation bundling makes it slightly easier, but I need that sort of fine on top in order to get me over the hump.
So it's going to probably differ by individual, depending on their threshold and tolerance and needs, but they're both working on the same challenge. And so that might mean also that maybe they aren't both necessary. Whereas if the barrier to say exercise is something different, like forgetting neither would be very useful.
You'd need a different set of tools. So I think one of the key things I try to articulate in my book and in the science that I've done that's sort of really come through is that there are a series of distinct challenges we all face when we are trying to make a change. And the tool that will work best is the one that's best matched to your challenge or challenges.
It's often multiple things. So that pairing is really important.
Lainie Rowell: I appreciate that you honor the unique and dynamic in all of us and how there's personalization that comes into play. So I can tell you. As a commitment device, it tends to be for bigger things, like a public announcement that I will have a book coming out.
This is not one right now.
Katy Milkman: You're talking about the past.
Lainie Rowell: I'm not saying there will never be another book. But anyways, I tend to do the commitment devices for grander things. And the temptation bundling is the day to day.
That's just me personally, but I can see how it's based on the individual and what they're specifically trying to achieve.
Katy Milkman: I love that. I have to say that personally, I follow a similar path, that commitment devices are for really big events. We talked a little bit about how losses loom larger than gains.
Commitment devices involve imposing losses on yourself. They are fairly painful. So if you can get there another way, you'll probably find more joy if you can avoid those constraints. But sometimes we need the most powerful tool and we need to pull out that loss aversion and constrain ourselves in order to get there.
So I like to think of it as a tool for the bigger challenges as well. And I try to solve as many as possible with the carrot approach rather than the stick, making it fun.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, the day to day fun. Is there anything that we haven't talked about, but it's so important, you would shout it from the rooftops, you just can't share it enough.
Katy Milkman: Yes, I have one piece of advice that we haven't talked about that I think is really powerful, and especially as two women having this conversation, both of whom are busy having careers and trying to have impact and balance all the things I think is particularly useful, though I think it's useful to anyone.
And that is, there's some research that was done by a woman named Lauren Eskreis Winkler on the power of advice giving to actually help an advisor achieve their own goals, which is sort of a bizarre thought, but what she basically looked at is, she was looking at people who were underperforming.
Students, salespeople, you name it, there's a population that's struggling. She was interviewing them and trying to figure out what might help them turn it around. This is part of her dissertation work. And she found an interesting thing in these interviews, which was, these folks who were struggling, they loved being asked for their thoughts on what might work and they they said basically no one ever gives us an opportunity to offer our own insights.
They're constantly coming and offering advice. It's very demoralizing, right? Because I'm not doing so well. And then somebody sort of like, thinks that with their five seconds of thought, they can give me wisdom that will be so handy. Thanks a lot. Also she thought that the things they were saying were amazingly insightful.
People really do know what they need to do. Sometimes it's about motivation in many contexts. This isn't true necessarily if you're struggling in calculus, then you probably need a good instructor and to learn some information. But if you're struggling to motivate yourself and achieve a goal, often it's not a knowledge gap.
It's a motivation gap. And she thought when we put ourselves in the position, or when we're put in the position of advice giver, it has some magical things that it does. One is it puts us on a pedestal. It makes us realize there's someone who could benefit from my knowledge. That it boosts our confidence, which is often one of the things we need.
It also forces us to introspect about what would work for us. And we may think more deeply than we would if we weren't accountable to someone else. We didn't need to offer up advice. And if we do come up with some strategies, which most people seem to be able to do, we're going to feel like a complete hypocrite if we don't walk the walk after talking the talk.
So if I tell you, Lainie, you need to do X, Y, and Z, and then I don't do those things, I'll feel ridiculous. So it's going to change my behavior and my confidence. And what Lauren has found in a series of randomized controlled trials is that's exactly what happens when we put people in position of giving advice on a goal they are also pursuing.
Giving advice improves your own outcomes. So it's like a double benefit, right? Hopefully you're helping those receiving it, especially if they have sought the advice, right? We just talked about not everyone likes getting unsolicited advice, but sometimes people raise their hand and say, I do want advice.
So when you offer it in that context, by coaching and mentoring others, you're actually supporting them, which PS feels great, has benefits for them, but it also benefits you. And as a teacher and communicator this is one of my favorite insights. It's like, oh, no wonder I love my job so much. It's actually helping me grow and get better at everything I'm talking about.
But it's led also to the realization I have this group of women who are all professionals with similar career goals and similar stages. And we started, we called it a no club. I now think of it as an advice club. We were so overcommitted. We were trying to figure out, can we create a group that would at least hold us accountable and help us make sure we didn't take on too much.
And we'd reach out when we had to decide, should I do this talk I've been invited to do? Should I write this book? Should I do this thing? I'm not sure. Am I saying yes to too much? And we'd all chime in and give each other advice. And initially the thought I had about why this advice club or no club would be so useful was, Oh, free consulting kind of from some wise friends.
I figured it'd make us more socially connected, which is nice. These are amazing women. But what I hadn't appreciated and since doing some research with Lauren on the power of advice giving and frankly, just experiencing this club, what I realized is, every time I offer advice, I'm getting this huge benefit, because the challenge that someone else faces, I can see from an arm's length distance, right, without emotional baggage, and I can think clearly about it, I often give very clear advice, if the same exact thing were on my plate, 10 days earlier, I might have struggled with it because I'd be too in my head.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah.
Katy Milkman: But once I've given advice to someone else on it, now I see the same kind of challenge coming up in my own life, I know how to solve that. I just told Madhupe what to do. I can figure this out. So in teaching we learn, as I think Seneca has been given attribution for that statement which I think is very wise.
And in coaching and advising, we gain benefits and achieving our goals. So I would encourage everyone to think about how can you mentor and coach, but you might even just think about having an advice club with people with similar life goals. If there's something you want to achieve, you get the social connection and benefit.
You do get their wisdom, but you also benefit from giving advice. And it's been one of the most wonderful parts of my career, actually, to have this group of women who advise each other. And I'd encourage everyone to think about something similar.
Lainie Rowell: Absolutely, and I know a good portion of our listeners are K 12 teachers, and I think about reciprocal teaching, and one of the ways that you can really engage kids is to have them teach something to someone else.
And so, kind of in a similar vein, right?
Katy Milkman: Very similar, yeah. And actually one of the randomized controlled trials, the one that I got to be involved in on this, was just having high school students, we randomly assigned them to spend eight minutes at the beginning of, a fresh start at the beginning of the second semester, right after January 1st, they spent about eight minutes answering questions about how to study more effectively.
And they were told truthfully that their answers would be provided to students who are a little younger than they were and who could benefit from their wisdom. So some were multiple choice questions, you know, how do you avoid distractions? Where do you recommend studying? Some were open ended.
And that eight minute intervention actually led to a significant improvement in the students grades who gave the advice over a control group that didn't go through this exercise. It was a small improvement, right? We're not turning C students into valedictorians. It's like a one point improvement on GPA, but for an eight minute activity, it's an incredible result.
And I think it's really important to think about not only how can students teach each other, but also when they're thinking about their own strategies for organization and success and good study habits, that's another area where they can give advice and by coaching, they can learn.
Lainie Rowell: I love it. Oh my goodness.
So I could talk to you for hours. I know I got to let you go here pretty soon, but I just want to say thank you so much for this conversation. And what are the best ways for people to get in touch with you and stay connected to your work? I mean, please tell them the name of your newsletter. It's so much fun.
Katy Milkman: Oh, first of all, Lainie, thank you so much for having me. This has been a pleasure. And second, my newsletter is one good way to stay in touch and keep up with insights. It is called Milkman Delivers. I will admit, I was going to call it Katy's Newsletter, and then I sent a joke email out to a bunch of my former MBA students at Wharton that said, Hey, I'm going to start this newsletter.
I thought about calling it Milkman Delivers. Ha ha, that's so ridiculous. It will be called Katy's Newsletter. And I have never gotten such a high response rate to an email. I got hundreds of messages back from my former students saying, Katy, are you crazy? It has to be Milkman Delivers. What are you thinking?
It's gold. So they named it for me. I thought I was making a joke and that's a monthly newsletter where I share insights from science that can help you make better decisions. Choiceology, which we talked about is my podcast. And then How to Change is a book I wrote that shares the science on how we can achieve our goals more successfully.
So those are the best ways, but I have a website, KatyMilkman.Com, Katy with a Y. Just like Katy Perry , that provides all those resources too. And also links to my research if you want to nerd out and read the original studies.
Lainie Rowell: Okay, well, I have to say, I mean this, I'm not just saying this because you're on the show, I have not found another book, and I've read a lot of books on change and habits, and to me this has been the most impactful, this is one that I am constantly coming back to, it's one that I share with people.
And I just really appreciate it. And I just, I'm going to go back a little bit and just say that one of the things I loved about you when you're talking about the advice giving is I just really think that's a great way to make people feel seen, heard, known, and valued. And I think that there's a lot of ways that we can do that.
do change for ourselves. And I also appreciate that the work that you do talks about how can we help others and change with others. And so I just really appreciate that work.
Katy Milkman: Oh, thank you. And by the way, I think thinking about how your community supports you and how you support other people is one of the most important things you can do both for your happiness and to succeed.
And a lot of my work at the moment is in that direction of sort of creating social belonging and social support structures. And so love that, that, that message already came through to you in the book. And thank you for the very kind words.
Lainie Rowell: Oh, you're very welcome.
All right, friends. Thank you for listening.
