#73 Achieving Your New Year’s Resolutions: Science of Getting Where You Want to with Katy Milkman

What this episode is about

Katy Milkman, a Wharton professor and expert in behavior change, explores the science behind achieving New Year's resolutions by focusing on understanding and leveraging one's impulses rather than striving for perfection. She shares insights from her book, illustrating how individuals can effectively alter their habits and improve their lives by using strategic approaches to behavioral challenges.

Key takeaways

• Success isn't about perfection; it's about outsmarting your own weaknesses and refining strategy.
• Even the most talented can falter without a strategic approach—Agassi's renaissance is a lesson in adaptability.
• Behavior change requires understanding obstacles—it's less about willpower, more about tactical maneuvering.
• Big goals can mislead; sometimes, it’s the small, strategic adjustments that yield extraordinary outcomes.
• Your toughest opponent is often yourself; identify those internal barriers to unleash your true potential.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Lynn Tomman (Host) · 15 min speaking
• Katy Milkman (Guest) · 22 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Brad Gilbert, Google LLC, Jim Courier, Michael Chang
2. 15:00 – 20:00: New Year's resolutions, Google LLC, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games
3. 20:00 – 25:00: Google LLC

Notable quotes from "#73 Achieving Your New Year’s Resolutions: Science of Getting Where You Want to with Katy Milkman"

• With Katie Milkman she's a professor at Wharton host of choiceology podcast and she's also been an advisor to dozens of companies including Google and Walmart on how to Spur…

  about Google LLC · at 0:29

• Spite of his talent and he had this really important dinner it was a dinner with a potential new coach the coach who he was hoping to lure to join his team was Brad Gilbert who…

  about Brad Gilbert · at 2:59

• Only allowed myself to listen to tempting audio novels like James Patterson's books or Harry Potter The Hunger Games when I was exercising and I found that cured two problems…

  about Harry Potter · at 15:36

• Question the first thought that had come to mind for me as you mentioned was New Year's resolutions we know that people are more motivated to pursue their goals at the start of…

  about New Year's resolutions · at 18:48

• Study of housekeepers at hotels where she randomly assigned some of them to just get the information that every day the job that they do meets the cdc's definition of adequate…

  about CDC · at 29:33

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Brad Gilbert — Person · Referenced expert / coach in case study · 3 mentions · first at 3:11
  Presented as the strategic coach whose mental-game approach helped Agassi reframe goals and improve performance; also referenced as author of 'Winning Ugly'.
• Michael Chang — Person · Referenced competitor (tennis) · 1 mention · first at 2:37
  Mentioned alongside Sampras and Courier as outperforming Agassi at the time, illustrating Agassi’s underperformance relative to expectations.
  Of his childhood opponents who everyone expected him to blow past in the rankings were outperforming him people like Pete Sampras and Michael Chang and Jim Courier and agy's…
• Jim Courier — Person · Referenced competitor (tennis) · 1 mention · first at 2:42
  Included as another peer outperforming Agassi, helping situate the Agassi narrative in the competitive landscape of early-1990s tennis.
  Of his childhood opponents who everyone expected him to blow past in the rankings were outperforming him people like Pete Sampras and Michael Chang and Jim Courier and agy's…
• James PATTERSON — Person · Referenced author (temptation bundling example) · 1 mention · first at 15:38
  Used as an example of 'tempting' audiobooks Milkman allowed herself only while exercising, illustrating temptation bundling as a behavior-change tool.
  The gym when I was a graduate student I only allowed myself to listen to tempting audio novels like James Patterson's books or Harry Potter The Hunger Games when I was…

Books & papers

• Harry Potter — Book · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at 15:40
  Used as an example of tempting content for temptation bundling strategy.
• The Hunger Games — Book · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at 15:40
  Used as an example of tempting content for temptation bundling strategy.
  Only allowed myself to listen to tempting audio novels like James Patterson's books or Harry Potter The Hunger Games when I was exercising and I found that cured two problems…

Companies & orgs

• Google LLC — Company · Case study · 3 mentions · first at 0:37
  Mentioned as a company Katie Milkman has advised on behavior change strategies.
• CDC — Company · Referenced institution · 2 mentions
  Mentioned in the context of defining adequate physical activity.
• Harvard — Company · Affiliation · 1 mention · first at 0:16
  Mentioned as one of the institutions where the host is a board member.
  Three key takeaways that person has learned over their lives and their careers and now your host and board member of schools at Harvard Princeton and Columbia Lynn tomman hi…
• Columbia — Company · Affiliation · 1 mention · first at 0:21
  Mentioned as one of the institutions where the host is a board member.
  Three key takeaways that person has learned over their lives and their careers and now your host and board member of schools at Harvard Princeton and Columbia Lynn tomman hi…

Places & events

• New Year's resolutions — Event · Strategy · 1 mention · first at 18:50
  Discussed as a key moment for behavior change due to the psychological fresh start effect.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 welcome to the three takeaways podcast which features short memorable conversations with the world's best thinkers Business Leaders writers politicians scientists and other newsmakers each episode ends with the three key takeaways that person has learned over their lives and their careers and now your host and board member of schools at Harvard Princeton and Columbia Lynn tomman hi everyone it's Lynn tomman welcome to another episode today I'm excited to be here with Katie Milkman she's a professor at Wharton host of choiceology podcast and she's also been an advisor to dozens of companies including Google and Walmart on how to Spur positive change her new book is how to change the science of getting from where you are to where you want to be Katie your friend and mine Angela Duckworth best-selling author of gret says in her forward to your wonderful book that people describe you as crazy productive a machine and

1:02 superum but you weren't always that way you studied Behavior change and found the secret to a better life and getting to where you want to be is not to be perfect or even to try harder but to understand your impulses outsmart them and whenever possible to make them work for you rather than against you I'm excited to learn how many of us with the help of your ideas Katie can turn the odds in our favor Katie welcome and thanks so much for being here today thank you I'm really excited to be here I was mesmerized by your story about Andre agasse can you tell us about him yeah I would love to and I'm so glad you enjoyed it it was frankly tremendously fun to write that story because I was an Andre Agassi fan as a child I was a tennis player as well so it was exciting to get to open my book with a story when I realized that was the perfect way about one of my favorite players of all time and the

2:04 story involves a moment that was really pivotal in his career so if you're not familiar with Andre agasse he was one of the greatest tennis players of all time and he had this huge potential in so many expectations but in the early 1990s he really wasn't living up to them he was a young Phenom and yet he was ranked around 30th in the world at the point in the book where I pick up my story he wasn't in that number one slot and many of his childhood opponents who everyone expected him to blow past in the rankings were outperforming him people like Pete Sampras and Michael Chang and Jim Courier and agy's coach of many years had just left him unceremoniously and he was kind of in a rut he was best known for his imagees everything Cannon commercials and really hadn't actually achieved substance on the pro tour in spite of his talent and he had this really important dinner it was a dinner with a potential new coach the coach who

3:08 he was hoping to lure to join his team was Brad Gilbert who had just written a best-selling book called winning ugly and the premise of the book was that to be a successful tennis player you had to play smart tennis and you had to understand and master the mental game and understand your opponent and outsmart your opponent and of of course naturally the conversation at the dinner turned to these topics When Brad Gilbert sat down with Andre Agassi he said look if I had your talent I would be dominating Brad Gilbert by the way had been sort of an ugly player in terms of his strokes and his skills on the court he won through strategy and he actually had reached the ranking of number four in the world which most people would have said he had no right to so when he sat down with Agassi what he said was look you are playing a self centered game of tennis you aren't thinking about your opponent you're going out there you

4:03 have all these big shots and you go for Big Winners and you just play your game and you ignore who you're up against if you just focus on your opponent and play a strategic game and occasionally let them lose instead of forcing the winner every time you could be dominating and I can help you get there and agasse was riveted and he realized this was absolutely right he had been playing a game that was entirely focused on him and not thinking through who am I up against what strategy can I use to outsmart them to outplay them and he hired Brad Gilbert as his coach and this sort of began his Ascent he ended up winning the US Open that year even though he was unseated it was a historic Victory someone who was unseated and hadn't won in decades and went on to hold the number one spot after that and he held it for a total of 101 weeks in his career and of course there were ups and downs but figuring out that he

4:57 needed to develop a strategy outsmart his opponent as opposed to playing the self- focused game that was the key and I use that to make a key point about the nature of behavior change because what works at least in my experience is very similar and too often when we are trying to change our own behavior or other people's behavior we aren't strategic we just pick up a idea from off the shelf you set big audacious goals or visualize success we go after it in a way that doesn't acknowledge the opponent we're facing if we instead are strategic and recognize oh in this case the reason Chang isn't happening is that it's actually a chore to do the thing I need to do it's really unpleasant and that is the barrier or it's not top of mind it's not salian it's not easy enough I haven't made it simple I haven't made it the path of least resistance I'm not confident I don't believe I can whatever the barrier

5:54 is once we understand it we can actually tailor our strategy to outsmart it and out perform it new science to help it's obviously different than a game of tennis your opponent is inside you instead of across the net but it's very much the same principle and that's why I told agy's story and it was tremendously fun to do it so interesting that Andre Agassi was failing because of his goal of hitting more winners he was already hitting a lot of winners and his goal was hitting more winners but because he couldn't hit all winners he was getting discouraged and losing he had the wrong goal so fascinating I couldn't agree more and watching it happen live in the 1990s watching his transformation made it even more powerful to get to write about his story in the book which by the way I should note he has an amazing Memoir called open which was a source for my opening story that I recommend to anyone

6:49 it's an incredible story of change and roadblocks and he talks both about his personal life and his life on the court I obviously focus on his career but he had a lot of interesting changes in his personal life a lot of challenges and overcame a tremendous amount to find his way the most important thing is to figure out what is standing in your way and it isn't always just one thing sometimes there are a number of roadblocks that you need to counter but figuring that out is critical to then taking the next step and using the best science available the best strategies available to overcome whatever it is that's standing in your way before we talk about the key parts of your evidence-based approach to change can you tell us Katie how you first became interested in change were you always perfectly productive in your life and studies no quite the opposite actually my friends and I who studyed this topic

7:45 we often joke that there's two kinds of researchers who study behavior change there's the people who are really outstanding and have never had many problems in life and they sort of look at these other creatures these mortals around them and they say wow it's weird that these people have all these problems maybe if I do some science I can make sense of all the people around me so there's that type and then there's the other type for whom it's really me search they've been struggling their whole lives their decision- making is a mess and they say gosh maybe I can fix myself if I just do some science on this I definitely fall into the me search category that's how I started was struggles that got me interested you know why can't I motivate myself to stick to a healthy diet to get to the gym to get my work done on time for my classes what's wrong with me I don't understand how can I fix it so that's

8:38 what got me going I would say it was more of a almost like a hobby at the beginning I was writing papers about this but I was writing papers about other topics too I was an engineer by training and thought my Niche was using big data to better understand decisions people made in the internet era using new sources of data from online companies cuz I guess I'm a little bit older now the internet was this brand new shiny thing when I went to grad school and it really wasn't until I was a professor at Wharton and assistant professor and I wandered over the medical school for a research talk we had a really fantastic group and still do doing behavioral economics which is my area and behavioral economics and health research and I was in a seminar presentation and someone put up a slide that had a graph on it that really changed my life and I know that's a super nerd thing to say that a graph changed your life but it's true it did

9:32 it was a pie chart showing the proportion of premature deaths in the United States that are caused by different sources and what boggled my mind was that the largest wedge was behaviors that people could change 40% of premature deaths in the US are due to behaviors we could change so decisions we make about what to eat whether or not to be physically active whether to smoke and drink whether or not to be safe when we get into Vehicles these things accumulate in a way that I truly had no appreciation of I would have been off by an order of magnitude if I had estimated the impact that this all has cumulatively and so seeing that was just really eye openening that there was an opportunity if I turned my me search from a hobby to a focus and a programmatic approach to have a huge positive social impact once I saw what the impact was on health it was easy to make the leap that okay these things if

10:30 they accumulate so much there they must also accumulate in a meaningful way when you think about decisions that people make about their finances and about their happiness and about their education and so the opportunity seemed even bigger than just the health space if we could understand Behavior change there were so many ways that we could really make people's lives better change is really hard that is absolutely true I definitely want to emphasize that and it's almost always even if you're successful to steps forward one step back there's always bumps in the road that's part of it it's just challenging so many things are working against us from our tendency to overweight the things that are instantly gratifying and dramatically underweight the long-term benefits will'll achieve from a decision to forgetfulness and the tendency to take the path of least resistance so there are so many obstacles but if I had

11:21 to say why I think most people don't set themselves up as well as possible for success I would say it's because of this tendency not to think strategically enough I think we could change more effectively be more successful if we start to understand okay what are those barriers and what are the tools and techniques that can help us outsmart them it's not to say that it's going to guarantee that change will happen My Hope Is if someone reads this book and implements the strategies maybe I make them 10% or 15% more effective it's not a cure all but there is a lot that we now know that can set people up to have a much better probability of success I would say an important starting point is understanding okay first of all what is the change goal right are you trying to change your diet your exercise you trying to change your productivity in that case is it that you want to work longer hours or spend less time on

12:16 social media or change how many meetings you have a day do you want to be a better Mentor a better parent the more specificity around the goal the better and it's important to try to do one thing at a time I should also note there's some really great research by UCLA's Steven Spiller and collaborator showing that when we have a lot of goals and then try to make plans for all those different goals it actually can be demotivating because we feel like oh my God I can't do all these things it's too much so it is important to start by figuring out what is it that you want to achieve and my book and my work really pick up there with an assumption that there is some objective that's known and then you can diagnose okay what is the barrier what is the thing that is holding you back or what are the set of things and then let's start figuring out what are the salves we can offer let's talk about some of the most successful

13:05 strategies can you talk about how making hard things seem fun is a much better strategy than making hard things seem important this Insight I should note is really from Ellet fishbach of the University of Chicago and Caitlyn woolly of Cornell University who's ellet's former doctoral student it's so important I done some research that danced around it but they brought it into clear Focus focus when they did this work showing if you ask most people how are they going to pursue a new goal say getting themselves to the gym more often or eating healthier or studying more effectively most people say I'm going to look for the most effective way I can achieve that goal so for instance going to the gym I'm going to look for what's the maximally efficient workout I can do maybe it's the stair Master it's punishing but so many calories per minute it's great that's what I'll do but a small fraction of people take a

13:58 different approach they instead look for the most fun way to pursue their goal so they go to the gym and they say I think I'm going to take a Zumba class with my friends because I'm going to really enjoy that and it turns out that even though of course in that first attempt maybe you don't get quite as far towards your goal you're actually much more likely to persist because the experience is enjoyable so they've run randomized controlled trials showing that if you encourage people to pursue their goals in ways that are fun or help them pursue them in ways that are fun they stick to it long it's such an important insight and it's clear why it works we know from behavioral economics that people are present biased that in general whatever is happening in the moment we dramatically overweight the gratification that provides relative to these long-term payoffs and so if that's the case instead of fighting this uphill

14:48 battle and trying to just do it as Nike would prescribe and push through and and do the hard thing that is unlikely to work because we're going to overweight well you know the gym that works workout was really unpleasant I'm going to sit on the couch today but if you can make it enjoyable so you're not fighting that uphill battle then you're going to stick to your goals and so I think it's a really important insight and and I've done some research on techniques it was more of a hack that I was interested in studying which I call Temptation bundling and that's linking something that you find really fun like binge watching TV or listening to your favorite podcast or audio novel with something that feels a bit like a chore but you need to get done like laundry or vacuuming or whatever it is you need to do or cooking fresh meals for your family or in my case getting myself to the gym when I was a graduate student I

15:36 only allowed myself to listen to tempting audio novels like James Patterson's books or Harry Potter The Hunger Games when I was exercising and I found that that cured two problems at once one I stopped wasting time at home on indulgent entertainment when I should have been doing my homework and two I started craving trips to the gym to find out what happened in my latest Thriller and the trips became a pleasure instead of a chore and so it worked so well for me that I ended up studying this and showing oh it's I'm not alone this kind of strategy can help lots of people I was fascinated that this strategy of making hard things fun can be used everywhere I love your example of the piano stairs can you tell us about them thank you yeah this is a really fun video that I show for my students at Wharton and executive audiences just to make it Vivid a way that you can make things fun and it was a cute Volkswagen

16:32 advertising campaign where they went to a subway station in Stockholm and they installed piano stairs usually people coming out of the subway they have a choice between taking the stairs and taking an escalator and the escalator typically wins out because it's the path of least resistance but overnight these Engineers installed piano stairs so if you walk up the staircase first it looks like piano keys and second it plays music and naturally when people now encountered this Marvel on their commute they made a different Choice 66% more people according to this video chose the stairs over the escalator when they appeared because now you can make music and have fun while you're walking up and down and people go back up and down to play their songs and get a little bit of exercise it's one of those things where maybe the novelty would wear off after a little while but it's a delightful example of how we can invent fun ways to

17:26 pursue things that are better for us in the long run and Delight Factor can change the equation can you tell us about Fresh Starts and how they can help us achieve change I was intrigued that a fresh start can be something as mundane as a Monday resolution yeah this is work that has been some of the most interesting I've done in my career it came out of a visit I made to Google about a decade ago where I was presenting some of my early research on Behavior change and some of the strategies that could help nudge employees towards making healthier decisions and being more productive and saving more for retirement so I shared these tools and a leader in their HR Group they call it them people analysts asked me this amazing question he said okay totally sold that we should offer up these tools and nudge people towards better decisions Katie but is there some ideal time to do that is there some

18:24 moment when people are particularly motivated and likely to follow through and to make good use of these tools it was like a light bulb went off it was such a great question I had never actually seen research that really answered it so I went back to my team my doctoral student then hang chandai who's now a UCLA Anderson professor and my friend Jason Reese the senior fellow at Wharton we started talking about this question the first thought that had come to mind for me as you mentioned was New Year's resolutions we know that people are more motivated to pursue their goals at the start of a new year that moment when there's this transition we learned it feels to people like a fresh start right you have the social Norm of setting resolutions but also this sense that if I didn't achieve it last year that was the old me and I have a blank slate now and a fresh start and the new me can do it so you can dissociate

19:14 yourself from those past failures and be more optimistic and you're also more likely to step back and just think big picture about your goals and what we found in our research is it's not just at new years's that's one big Fresh Start moment that we're all familiar with but there's actually a lot of moments in our lives that give us that sense of a clean slate and a chapter break and a new beginning and they can be small like a Monday turns out to be a fresh start to most of us we feel like okay it's a new week it's a new beginning that can be highly motivating but there's also other dates dates like celebrating a birthday or even the beginning of a new month or the celebration of a holiday that feels like a fresh start so think more Labor Day un less Valentine's Day but there are some holidays we associate in our minds with fresh start s we found that people are more likely and more motivated to pursue

20:02 these goals naturally at those moments so if we look at when people go to the gym for instance or when they search for the term diet on Google or when they set goals on a popular goal setting website about everything from Health to finances to education it happens naturally at these moments the beginning of a new week month year the celebration of holidays that feel like Fresh Starts the celebration of birthdays a semester break for students those things trigger more activity around our goals and then also we can nudge people at these moments so if we invite someone to start getting reminders to pursue their goals or to sign up for a 401k to save for retirement and we highlight a fresh start date oh your birthday is coming up do you want to start then or it's the first day of spring how's that as a start date we see higher takeup and higher savings rates for instance so commitment devices are another one of

20:52 your hacks can you tell us about those commitment devices are so fascinating if you're thinking about impulse ivity and you're thinking about how do I overcome it one of the ways is the carrot and that's the make it fun approach figure out how to actually give yourself instant gratification from the activity that feels like a chore so that the equation is changed but the other way you can change the equation when it comes to temptation is actually just the stick so you can change the reward structure so that the penalty or the cost or the barriers are so high to doing the thing that's bad for you that you won't and we are very used to other people imposing these kinds of costs and barriers and sticks on us right the government is often doing it like you get fined if you speed so your impulse to speed will be held in check if you take drugs that are bad for you same kinds of penalties right so we're used

21:42 to others setting up these systems of rewards and penalties but what's weird about commitment devices is that there are tools we can use to create those kinds of penalties and structures for ourselves when we anticipate some Temptation that might take us off track and there's a lot of different ways you can do this one of my favorite studies of commitment devices involved savings it was a study run by Nava ashro and Dean Carlin and Wesley y three really terrific economists who were interested in whether or not they could help people save more if they gave them access to a different kind of savings account than we're used to a commitment savings account so this was an account where if you put your money in it earned the typical interest rate the same one available in a standard savings account but if you wanted to take your money out you couldn't until you reached a predetermined savings goal that you had

22:33 selected or a predetermined date that you had selected and they offered these kinds of accounts to hundreds of people they randomly assigned people to either get access to a standard savings account or a standard savings account and this commitment account and they looked first of all how many people were interested in then in total among these two groups one offered the account and one not what was the savings rate and they found first of all about 30% of people actually elected to use these wacky accounts where you don't have access to your money regularly it's like a financial chastity belt again you're getting no better interest rate and you're going to have less liquidity so that's surprising from an economic standpoint that people found that attractive but it makes sense when you look at the results of the savings outcomes so the group that had access to that account including the 70% of people

23:23 by the way who didn't use it just that whole group compared to the group that had only access to a standard account the commitment account access gave 80% more savings year-over-year people who might have been tempted certainly were tempted to go dip into their savings oh there's a birthday coming up or a festival or some reason that I'm going to let my savings goals go by the wayside and instead dip into that account those people couldn't because they'd set themselves up for success by creating these constraints and so their savings ballooned I love that examp example but there's also research showing you can do this in a more straightforward way which is with a cash commitment so you can actually put money on the line that you'll forfeit if you fail to achieve some goal and there are websites like stick sti.com and beinder that let you do this they set up like a contract for you they take your credit card information and

24:19 then send money to a charitable organization you choose if you fail to achieve a goal and you choose a referee who reports on your success it could be a digital referee like digital scale or AIT bit that you link up what's really interesting about these self-imposed fines is again there's evidence that they can really help one of my favorite studies also led by Dean Carin who was by the way one of the co-founders of stick and a really I think brilliant behavioral Economist he showed that if you randomly assign people who are trying to quit smoking to either have access to sort of the usual stuff the usual tactics and encouragement or all of that plus a cash commitment where you put money in an account and you'll have to Forfeit it in six months if you fail a urine test for nicotine or coine it increases the successful quit rate by 30% so really powerful tools but a lot of people shy away from them because

25:11 putting a cost or constraint on your future self is a little bit scary but you have found that even without putting a cost or constraint on your future self just the very idea or the very Act of making a commitment one of your examples a doctor just committing to prescribe less antibiotics there's no cost there and yet the commitment simply changes the action I found that fascinating yes that's true and there are ways to create these kinds of commitments that don't have strict costs they're more costs like shame or you're accountable to someone else and you'll be embarrassed if it doesn't work out psychological costs they tend to be a little bit less effective on average naturally because the penalty is lower but they can still be effective and you're referring to this really interesting study where doctors who were overprescribing antibiotics for unnecessary things where it doesn't help

26:11 but you're tempted to do it because your patient comes in and begs for the prescription they want relief and they think this might work and it's not good net to do it because one it has side effects for the patients and two it actually increases antibiotic resistance but it's tempting to just give them what they want it's not that costly and so a lot of doctors overprescribe these unnecessary antibiotics and there's this experiment where doctors were randomly assigned to either just be encouraged not to do this or a condition where they signed a pledge and put it up in their waiting room saying I am not going to be prescribing antibiotics for these unnecessary conditions and signing the pledge and posting it publicly in Waiting rooms led to a huge decrease in the unnecessary antibiotic prescription rate in those doctor's offices and the follow-up period it's another kind of commitment device it doesn't involve

27:00 cash but it does involve your reputation accountability and so can also work planning prompts are another one of your strategies to accomplish goals can you tell us about those yeah this is based on the work of nyu's psychologist Peter golwitzer and Peter discovered that a lot of people make plans the wrong way most of us when we have some goal we want to achieve we just have an intention right so we think I want to learn a new language on Dual Linko and I'm GNA spend more time on that goal but a small fraction of people make plans A Better Way which is they actually have specificity they form sort of an if then plan if it is a week night at 5m I'll spend an hour practicing on Dual lingo when you have that specificity in random assignment trials you're more likely to follow through and there's a bunch of reasons for that but one of the most potent barriers I think it helps overcome is the forgetting problem with

27:57 s now when I have a specific plan there's a trigger cue that moment that I said I would do it that cues memory that's how memories are stored so at 5:00 pm on a week night I feel accountable oh this is the time I said i' do it and it has that accountability hook too because we don't want to break our past commitments even to ourselves it's also just stored more deeply in memory once you think through all those details you might also think through obstacles like oh shoot well at 5:00 pm actually I'm going to be commuting that's not a time when it's convenient so you think those things through in advance so for all those reasons making these kinds of if then plans is a really valuable tool and we've shown you can also nudge other people to make them so I've done research showing for instance if you randomly assign some people to get a prompt to write down the date and time when they plan to get a flu shot at a

28:45 workplace Clinic that's going to be open for just a couple of days that really increases turnout relative to just sending them a standard reminder letting them know about the clinic and we think it's the same psychology when you're prompted to make that plan you're more likely to remember it you have a cue associated with that date and time you might put it on your calendar think through obstacles and also you're making a more concrete commitment so failing to follow through feels like breaking your commitment to yourself instead of sort of oh well I just put it off I was fascinated that you found that we can even just use expectations to shape or change reality I loved your examples of the housekeeper and the math student can you tell us about those this is really not my work for the most part but it's so interesting Ali crumb who's a Stanford psychologist did this amazing study of housekeepers at hotels where

29:37 she randomly assigned some of them to just get the information that every day the job that they do meets the cdc's definition of adequate physical activity that they're getting exercise at work and it's really good for them and she didn't tell some other housekeeper so she randomly assigned some people to get that information some people didn't and then she looked a month later ler at physical markers of health and positive exercise outcomes and found that there was significant health benefit by the people who' learned that their work was exercise so they lost a couple of pounds and their blood pressure improved and this is actually an example of well known phenomenon which is the placebo effect that once you mentally code something as working you may behave differently and you may literally have different physiology and different physiological reactions to it for example when someone told me that the house IID moved into

30:30 which is a townhouse that I was so lucky that going up and down that stairs was passive exercise it made me realize oh I'm lucky to get to running up and down the stairs when we forget the ketchup on the roof deck at dinner and I would volunteer to do that and happily do extra loads of laundry I'm getting my exercise in my guess at what happened would be that recognizing that their work was activity maybe they were more likely to run up and down the stairs or to really lean into the vacuuming in a way that ends up having benefits it's not huge benefit but it's a small benefit there's lots of research on the placebo effect which is so well known that when you take a sugar pill but you believe it's going to improve your outcomes it really does that our beliefs shape our reality and the other story you mentioned was about this math graduate student George Danzig and this is a wonderful story that I actually

31:15 learned from Carol DW who's a professor at Stanford and author of the best-selling book mindset and a brilliant researcher who's thought and done a lot of work on how much our mindset matters to our outcomes the story of George denig is that he he was this graduate student he walked in late to a class and saw a couple problems on the board and jotted them down as soon they were homework they were hard took him a little longer than usual but he eventually turned in the solutions to his professor and his Professor came a couple days later and said did you know those were unsolvable problems that you solved and sort of moral of the story is if he hadn't thought they were homework where there was an expected solution it seems likely he wouldn't have solved them having that expectation may have shaped his motivation and his performance and ability to solve those important problems Katie you've talked

32:01 about so many terrific strategies they're all practical they're all pretty easy and none of them cost anything if I could ask you a personal question how have your strategies worked for you in engineering change in your own life I use this stuff all the time it's the only thing I found that works is to figure out okay what's going wrong and how can I outsmart it so I use Temptation bundling to get my physical activity and I have a year-old son by the way and I also use it as a trick with him he may have strange habits as an adult because when he watches TV in the evening he gets to watch a little bit of screen time he eats green vegetables that's the rule those things go together so there's no arguments anymore about eating the green vegetables and have this fantasy that he'll go to Super Bowl parties and ask people to pass the Brussels sprouts when he's an adult so I use it in my own life

32:50 and then you know there's lots of other strategies in the book that I use as well I certainly make these concrete if then plans when I have something that I want to achieve rather than the vague intention in one chapter of the book about the power of our social ties and learning social information that the people who surround us show us what's possible they shape our self-confidence they shape the information we have I absolutely use a tactic I call copy and paste when I see someone else that's doing something smart that works for them I try to adopt it immediately figure out how I can incorporate it into my own life I also use a strategy related to self-confidence that I talk about in the chapter of of the importance of beliefs and expectations it can be really powerful when you actually are asked for advice on how to achieve goals and you become a mentor to someone else that can actually improve

33:37 your own achievement because you believe in yourself more when you see someone else is looking up to me and I have an advice Club wonderful faculty members who are my peers at other institutions and have similar research goals and career goals we send each other emails when we have a challenging decision to make about our careers and give each other advice and coaching and it's really wonderful to have this sounding board and these amazing women to give me feedback when I'm struggling to make a choice and that is invaluable and questionably and of course the social bonds that we've formed are invaluable but I've also found I benefit a lot from giving advice to my colleagues because when they face a problem it's likely to be one that I might face in the future so thinking through it helps me set myself up for Success boosts my confidence in my ability to think through these challenges and so that's

34:23 another strategy that I use and highly recommend others consider before I ask for your three takeaways that you would like to leave the audience with today is there anything else that you would like to mention that you haven't already touched upon I think the biggest thing that we haven't talked about yet is just durability when I first started studying change I was looking for a silver bullet kind of solution where we could teach someone some tactic or put them through a program for say a month and change them forever after we let go and the program and whatever strategies we were given them and they would be forever after better off and what we've realized is that that was a silly idea that these barriers the things that stand in our way they don't evaporate they're part of human nature and so if we're going to equip people with tactics and strategies and try to help them change or if we're

35:14 going to try to change ourselves we need to be in it for the long run not thinking of it as a okay for a month I'll Temptation bundle and then I'll have a habit around going to the gym and I can drop it or whatever else it really is a long-term commitment that we can see durable change when we keep using these tactics and strategies as opposed to thinking of them as short-term solutions that will get us to a long-term goal Katie what are the three key takeaways that you'd like to leave the audience with one try to be really strategic about change if you understand what the barriers are and then you match the solutions you try to deploy to what is standing in your way whether it's a confidence barrier and maybe you need to surround yourself with people who show you what's possible and maybe you need an advice club or forgetting barrier and then making plans and scheduling reminders that are timely can be really

36:02 valuable thinking about those tricks that's the first takeaway be strategic the second takeaway is that change is a journey it isn't a one-time fix or a quick fix that if we want to get there we need to be in it for the long haul and use these strategies persistently rather than temporarily the third is that there's a lot to be learned from science and so look for evidence sometimes the things that work are count inuitive and the things that don't work are counterintuitive and so evidence can help and and so i' encourage people to look to evidence Katie this has been terrific thank you for all these strategies to stack the odds in our favor and your book is wonderful thank you so much thank you so much for having me this was really fun though if you enjoy today's episode and would like to receive the show notes or get new Fresh weekly episodes be sure to sign up for our newsletter at 3 takeaway.com or

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Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "#73 Achieving Your New Year’s Resolutions: Science of Getting Where You Want to with Katy Milkman"?

Lynn Tomman (Host), Katy Milkman (Guest).

What is "#73 Achieving Your New Year’s Resolutions: Science of Getting Where You Want to with Katy Milkman" about?

Katy Milkman, a Wharton professor and expert in behavior change, explores the science behind achieving New Year's resolutions by focusing on understanding and leveraging one's impulses rather than striving for perfection. She shares insights from her book, illustrating how individuals can effectively alter their habits and improve their lives by using strategic approaches to behavioral challenges.

What is mentioned in this 3 Takeaways episode?

11 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Brad Gilbert, New Year's resolutions, Google LLC, Michael Chang, Jim Courier, Harry Potter. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "#73 Achieving Your New Year’s Resolutions: Science of Getting Where You Want to with Katy Milkman"?

The episode runs 37 min; the transcript is about 7,193 words in 43 timestamped sections.

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