104. How to Change: Building Better Habits and Behaviors (And Getting Out of Your Own Way)
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Hi, Matt here. I invite you to look into Stanford Continuing Studies. For over 20 years, I have taught in the program. Discover a diverse range of courses available both online and in person to anyone, anywhere in the world. Classes cover everything from fundamental business skills to the fascinating world of AI. This fall, join me for Communication Essentials for Work and Life, a new course designed to enhance and hone your communication skills in various situations.

Each week, guest speakers will join me for interactive lectures and Q&A sessions on topics like persuasion, storytelling, nonverbal presence, and reputation management. The course starts September 24th and registration is now open. Learn more at continuingstudies.stanford.edu. When it comes to achieving our own personal goals, sometimes the biggest impediment is ourselves.

I'm Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Today, I am really excited to speak with Katie Milkman. Katie is a professor at Wharton and co-founder and co-director of the Behavioral Change for Good Initiative. She hosts the podcast Choiceology and is the author of How to Change, the science of getting from where you are to where you want to be.

Katie and I met a little over a year ago when she was so kind to offer advice about authoring my latest book. I'm super excited to continue our conversation here. And Katie, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

One of the reasons I'm so excited to speak with you is that your work pulls together and synthesizes many of the topics we've discussed here before. We talked about habits with BJ Fogg, motivation with Suu Kyi Huang, and behavior change with Bob Cialdini. A lot of your work focuses on how we can change and maintain attitudes and behaviors we want to adopt.

Before we get into how to do that, I'd like for you to share some of the things that get in the way of realizing these changes that we want. What are some of the barriers that you've identified and worked with? Thanks for asking that question because it's critical to think about before you can actually figure out what's the solution. You have to understand what you're working against. Some of the key barriers that I think about are internal. I should

I should say there's lots of external barriers to change, but the internal ones are where my research focuses. So the getting started problem is a barrier. How do I find the motivation to get going on this? We have looked at impulsivity.

The fact that we focus more on the rewards we'll get today than the rewards that will be delayed and procrastination, which is really the flip side of impulsivity. One that I think gets neglected is forgetting, but it's really important if it's not top of mind, we can't get things done. I talk about laziness, which it sounds worse than it is. I actually think we're wired to look for the path of least resistance and efficiency, and that's normally a good thing, but it can get in the way when we want to make a change.

That's another challenge. And then two final barriers that I write about and think are important are believing in yourself, really having the sense that you have what it takes, you have the confidence and self-efficacy that this is possible for you.

And related to that is, and this is where we start to bleed a little bit from internal to external barriers, who you surround yourself with, because we have a tendency to conform to the people around us. And if we are surrounded by people who show us our limitations, that can be a barrier too.

Those barriers, I mean, there are a lot of them. And as you were rattling them off, I'm going through in my own mind the things that have prevented me from doing some of the things that I want. And so I'm hoping in a little bit we can talk about how to reduce some of those barriers and achieve the changes that we're looking for. One of them that I find fascinating is this notion of present versus future.

And I know that you have thought a lot about this and done some research on this, that we tend to be motivated by the now and not so much what's in the future. What impact does this have and what advice do you have for managing our present versus future goals and selves? I think the focus on instant gratification over long-term delayed rewards is one of the biggest challenges. In terms of advice, I actually think

There's some really wonderful wisdom that comes from research done by Islet Fishbach at the University of Chicago and Caitlin Woolley at Cornell University. They've shown that most of the time when we're focusing on pursuing a goal, we neglect this issue and we just follow the advice of Nike, which says, "Just do it." We think, "All I have to do is want it enough and that will get me through." We focus on finding efficient paths.

to our desired outcomes, and we neglect thinking about whether we'll enjoy the path and the goal pursuit. And it turns out that's a mistake, because if we aren't finding it gratifying in the moment to pursue our goals, we tend not to persist. So they have some really nice research showing if you encourage people to pursue their goals in a way that they find fun, as opposed to a way that's maximally efficient, you actually end up with better results. A really

concrete example would be think about going to the gym, you could either get on the maximally punishing Stairmaster or you could go to Zumba class with a friend. And you will, of course, probably get fitter faster if you're on that Stairmaster. But if you find it miserable, it'll be a one time only visit. Whereas if you're doing something you enjoy, you're going to keep it up and your results will be better in the long run. I think this is really important. I like to

call it the Mary Poppins effect that she says, put a spoonful of sugar on it, right? That's the advice for how do you get kids to do things. But actually, this is true for adults too. We need a way to make it more enjoyable to pursue our goals. And I've studied one tactic for that, which I call temptation bundling, which is linking something that would otherwise feel like a chore

with a source of temptation and pleasure and instant gratification. So for podcast listeners, maybe you love listening to podcasts. What if you only let yourself listen to your favorite podcasts while you're working out or doing household chores or some other activity that would otherwise be a source of pain? And we can think about other ways of temptation bundling, right? You only get to go to your favorite restaurant that has unhealthy burgers you crave when spending time with a difficult mentee. When we temptation bundle, we

seem to improve the rate at which we engage in these behaviors that otherwise would feel like drudgery.

I love this notion of find the fun and temptation bundling. I didn't know what I did when I grade was actually had a name. So I love what I do. Grading, as you well know, Katie, can sometimes be burdensome. I love peanut M&Ms, and I only allow myself to eat peanut M&Ms while I'm grading. And to me, it helps me get through that. And in fact, it's nice to know that you've done some research that actually can help others.

I'm wondering with some of these barriers, have you found that technology can help? Because I'm thinking that setting up reminders on my phone or time allotments where things go on for a certain amount of time could help. How does technology help manage some of this stuff? Absolutely. Reminders on your phone is a great example because forgetting is a huge barrier. We underinvest actually in reminders. We have some research showing that when we offer them for sale to people, pay

pay 10 cents and you'll get this reminder to do this thing. And P.S., if you don't do this thing, you lose a whole bunch of money later in our study. People are like, I don't need to spend 10 cents. Of course I'll remember. And then they forget. We underused reminders to our detriment. A lot of people neglect planning, which is a big issue. And technology helps with that immensely, too. So there's wonderful research by NYU's Peter Golwitzer that people who have goals, but that's where they leave it, don't

end up getting the same results as people who have goals and then make detailed plans about exactly when and where will they implement those actions that are necessary in order to achieve the goals. And technology is a great planning tool, right? Keeping your calendar, blocking off the exact amount of time you anticipate you'll need, having buffer time because we're overly optimistic about how long things will take, making sure you set reminders for all the key ingredients in your life.

You highlight the notion of planning. I have a personal goal to become more physically flexible. As I've gotten older, it's harder to like bend down and touch my toes, for example. And so I'm taking notes that I not only have to have the intent to be more flexible, but

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

follow through on the things that they're willing to try. Well, we talked a little bit about the idea of outside accountability, right? You might make your calendar visible to other people or have support groups. One of the things that helps a lot with follow through can be something called a commitment device. Commitment devices

Sound counterintuitive. We're really used to others imposing commitments on us, right? Your boss who gives you a deadline and says, or else, or you think of the government that says, you know, maintain a speed under this limit or else. Those are incentives, essentially, or constraints.

A commitment device is when you do that to yourself. So for instance, you say I will find myself X dollars if I don't hit this deadline and you literally put money on the line and a credit card down their website that I have no affiliation with like stick and be minder where you can do this and the money gets sent to a charitable organization. If you don't succeed and PS if you want to make sure it's painful, you can choose a charity you hate because they have charities on either side of contentious issues and you choose a referee someone else who will hold you accountable. Did you

hit the deadline for the project you were working on or did you go to the gym the number of times you intended to go one of my favorite studies on this is actually with smokers who were trying to quit and they were randomly assigned to two groups one group got all the standard tools for quitting and the other group got the standard tools plus they could put money into a

savings account and they knew they would have to forfeit all of that money if they failed a nicotine or cotinine urine test six months in the future. And indeed, it turned out just having a way to put that money down increased quitting. So the group that had access to an account that they could put money in and forfeit if they failed to achieve their goals, they quit at a 30% higher rate. So

I think these commitment devices, tools of accountability are really important to keep in mind for yourself. Again, we're used to others doing it. Someone else sets a deadline and says or else or finds us. But you can do the same thing to incentivize yourself to follow through on your best intentions so that when temptation strikes, there's more skin in the game. There's more consequence if you give into it.

I really find that fascinating, this notion of setting up accountability for ourselves. I had not thought about the negative consequence, right? So donate to a charity that's totally opposite your point of view would be very motivating. I'd like to look at the role communication can play in achieving our personal goals. How do framing and feedback influence our success?

Those are great questions. They matter a lot. So feedback is important in that it helps us demarcate whether or not we are making the progress we hope to. It helps us celebrate the small wins. Framing also matters a lot. One of my favorite studies that I got to be involved in was led by

one of my students named Anish Rai. And it was in partnership with an organization called Crisis Text Line. And they were trying to figure out how do we help motivate our volunteer workforce

to follow through on getting to the 200 hours of yearly volunteering that they've committed to do for us. And they were already receiving reminder emails each week, please fulfill that commitment. And we knew something about the science of framing and the importance of making goals feel more bite-sized and achievable.

And what we suggested and tested was whether it might be more effective than highlighting that 200 hours yearly goal. We said, that's four hours a week. Let's just reframe that big commitment into a more bite-sized component so that it feels approachable and you know exactly what you wanna check off and achieve this week or in this next two weeks. And what we found is just reframing those goals

led to about an 8% increase in volunteering over and above what they were achieving normally. So I think that's a nice example of how important it can be to communicate clearly about bite size goals. And feedback is really important in that context, too, because otherwise you can't see am I getting there? Am I making the progress I hope to make? Really interesting and insightful that the way you look at the task itself and the way you frame it for others and personally help. I

I know that when I look at, again, being very self-serving here, when I look at wanting to lose weight, for example, if I reframe that as I want to be healthier, it's much more motivational to me. And I look at what I do differently. So just the way we frame things in my own life has made a big difference. I'm curious, in your own life, what have you found to be most impactful for yourself, Katie, when you're trying to achieve something you want to achieve? What are the things you do? One of the

most important things for me is this notion of trying to make it more fun. But a big way I do that is through social connection. So I

I'm very careful to bring in collaborators who make it a joy and a pleasure to do the work. It creates accountability because if I'm doing something on my own, I can put it off forever. But now there's someone else who's waiting for a draft or waiting for a response. It also makes the work more enjoyable because I'm very careful, as I said, to choose collaborators. I choose people who make it a joy. That's absolutely critical to my productivity and happiness.

Thank you for sharing. And some of the work you do and the collaborators you have are amazing. And in fact, I'd like to focus now on different work that you have done. And one of the things I'd like to bring up, it has to do with a collaboration you had with one of our previous guests, Jonah Berger. The two of you conducted some research that has been very, very frequently cited. And it's on how online content goes viral.

Can you share the results of that work and any suggestions you have to make our ideas go viral regardless of if it's online or not? Thanks for asking about that work. I really love that project. It actually was motivated by former Stanford professor Chip Heath.

who came and gave a talk when I was a graduate student at Harvard about some of the amazing work he had done on what kinds of stories we pass on. And he was studying this in the lab and I thought, gosh, it would be so interesting if we could look at what goes viral in the wild.

I was really fascinated by field data and I was an avid New York Times reader. And they had this little feature on the New York Times website that showed what were the top 25 most shared articles that day. And I was like, let's scrape that data and actually see what drives things to go viral online. What we saw is that stories that were more emotional were much more likely to go viral. Interestingly, in the context of the New York Times, more positive news was slightly more

more viral than negative. Now, any news that was emotional is better than being sort of not triggering that kind of reaction, but positivity was winning out. I don't think that's true in the necessarily social media world we inhabit today. But on The New York Times circa 2009, 2010, which is when we did our data collection, that was a nice finding. We also found that it was emotions evoked more of a sort of heart raising reaction. The term in

psychology is to call them arousing but that has other meanings in common that's not what it it's not what it sounds like it's emotions that just make your heart race so think awe and anger much more than emotions like sadness that lead you to share scientific articles interestingly were really commonly shared more so than many other categories of article of course opinion pieces but but if there's something surprising and awe-inspiring it it does make us want it

connect with others and make sense of it and discuss. And I think that's such a positive result and something we can all think about. How do we use that for good?

Before letting you go, I know that beyond studying goals and how we achieve them, you also do work on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and a very important topic to me personally, and we've talked about it a lot on this podcast. What has your research shown to help in this regard? What can we do to help the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion?

Let me first say something that doesn't work, that we've invested way too much time and energy in. We have done some research looking at whether or not online diversity trainings add value and found that they really don't seem to add the kind of value we all would hope. What we have seen is much more promising in our research is solutions that change the environment where decisions are made to facilitate more

I'll say inclusive kinds of decisions. I'll give you a very concrete example. We did one experiment where we looked at whether or not people who are making selection decisions, so think I'm hiring someone or I'm choosing who will be up on a panel at a conference,

We varied whether or not a decision maker was choosing a whole set of individuals to hire, right? Like five, I'm going to make five hires for different slots on a team or put five people on this panel, or they're just making one choice. They get to hire one person to fill an empty role on a team. What we see is that people choose more women and minorities when they're hiring in

in sets rather than singletons. Now you might say like, well, yeah, of course, because I got five slots. But to be clear, we're comparing, you know, for every five choices made, how much diversity do we see when people are choosing one at a time versus in sets? And we see much more diversity in sets. And the mechanism seems to be when we're, say, hiring a group of five people all at once, as opposed to one person a month for five months,

we notice a lack of diversity in the choice set we come to the table with. And we adjust it because most of us are not intentionally discriminating. Obviously, there's exceptions to that. But what a lot of our research points to is that when we have the opportunity to look at a whole group and say, does this meet my goals in terms of the diversity I'd like to see on my team? Does this meet my goals in terms of who I would like

to make sure is at the table, we adjust and we do not hire five people who all look the same. We want diversity in groups. So try to hire in sets because you can't even think about diversity if you're just hiring one person, right? What is a diverse hire? That's not a thing, right? No one person has diversity. So that's my favorite result from our work.

Well, Katie, you know, before we end, I like to ask the same three questions of everybody. And I'm very excited to hear your answers to these questions. Are you up for that?

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

benefited you personally in reporting the results that you find in the research you do? - Absolutely, I think it's really important. I don't think of myself as a storyteller primarily. My first love is collect and analyze data, find truth in numbers, but to communicate that truth so that it's sticky.

and so that other people will understand it clearly and remember it. You have to make it come to life. We have to do the hard work of the science and collecting the data, but then to communicate it successfully and ensure that other people understand it and use it, storytelling is so critical. - You are a very good storyteller in your book and you do a great job of eliciting stories as a podcast host from your guests.

So question number two, who is a communicator that you admire and why? The communicator I picked is a very dear friend, Angela Duckworth.

She's one of my closest collaborators and an absolutely extraordinary communicator. She wrote a brilliant book called Grit. She has one of the most viewed TED Talks of all time. Some of the things that make her such a great storyteller and communicator are the same. She has a beautiful way with words. She understands that it is critical

to make things personal and to have poignancy in the story she tells. She opens her book, Grit, by talking about her father and her childhood. The fact that he used to point out that she was no genius.

And that motivated her to work harder and harder. And actually, she did eventually win a MacArthur Genius Award. And her big contribution, or she has many contributions, but one of her biggest contributions is recognizing that we overweight this idea of genius and that so much of success is really about grit. Angela communicates so clearly about the importance and the oversight in our culture. She's so fantastic at explaining the importance of this

I have seen that talk a number of times and you're right. Her ability to be very clear and poignant are very, very powerful. Question number three, what are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe? Clarity, brevity, and vividness. Those are my three.

Talk to me about vividness. I think clarity and brevity make sense to me. What is vividness doing in that list? I'm a judgment and decision-making scholar, so my thinking is heavily influenced by the work of other judgment and decision-making scholars, particularly I'm thinking of Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky. And some of their work has highlighted that one heuristic we use when we're making judgments is

how vivid something is. So we overweight the likelihood of shark attacks and homicides, for instance, because those are really overrepresented in our mind relative to other kinds of incidents because they're splashed all over the news. We talk about them, we're scared of them. Vividness really matters to the way we calculate frequencies and estimate the importance of things. And it's also important for communication because if you want people to weight your message, it needs to be something that

stands out in their mind. And so, you know, great advertising, great communication recognizes this bias and deploys vividness. It sticks in your mind just like a shark attack.

Right. We're taking advantage of the way the brain is wired to process information. And if we can do that, be vivid, but also very clear and brief. I think we've got the total package. Katie, this has been a true delight. I knew it would be. I have enjoyed our conversations prior to this one. And thank you very much for giving us very specific advice on things we can do as we strive for goals and change in our own life.

And I appreciate expanding beyond just that, but also talking about information going viral and diversity, equity and inclusion. I encourage everybody to learn from Katie in multiple ways. Katie hosts the popular podcast Choiceology, and she has an amazing book, How to Change the Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. Katie, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much again for having me. This was a real pleasure. Thank you.

Thanks for joining us for another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast from Stanford Graduate School of Business. This episode was produced by Jenny Luna, Michael Reilly, and me, Matt Abrahams. For more information and episodes, visit gsb.stanford.edu or subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts. Finally, find us on social media at Stanford GSB.

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