YouSaid · the spoken record

Katherine Milkman

lines on the record: 34
first: 2026-01-01
most recent: 2026-01-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And also the power of accountability and sort of the people around us in our lives making us see the path that's best for us. So it's also pretty wonderful that you were there to motivate your dad to make that important health change and highlights how much having a partner and change is important. I'm tearing up a little.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The value of diversity and recognize the property of a set that, like, maybe I don't want five people who sort of have the same background in terms of their training and their upbringing and, you know, where they worked before. And that might not be optimal. And I want some diversity in that. And if you hire one at a time, there's no such thing as thinking about the diversity of an individual and you're not focused on that broader team as much that they're joining. So one simple way to increase diversity that many organizations might want to be considering is sort of making sure whenever they can that they're batching hires so that they evaluators are responsible for bringing in a group and will just attend simply to diversity in the ways in which it can be an asset as opposed to having that feel like an invisible feature because every individual is sort of equally diverse in some respect.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it turns out that a lot of the science that we can use to achieve other goals also is relevant in this context. One of my favorite findings, that's a really simple one is just that related to how we hire. So when we make hiring decisions, often it's sort of one-off one at a time. We're making choices. Does this person fit? You know, should I hire this person to join my team? And sometimes that's by necessity and there's no other way to proceed. You have turnover and you have to replace headcount of one. But what we have shown in our research is that when people hire in sets, meaning, you know, let's hire five at a time. We'll bring on all our new folks together. We'll hire five people all at once in April instead of sort of one person per month from January through May. When people hire in sets, they actually tend to hire more diverse groups of people than when they hire one off over time. And the reason for that is when we look at a set, we start to think about”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That setbacks are actually the norm, and it doesn't mean there's something wrong with you, the more we can prepare people for that, then the less hopefully discouraged they will be. And the more they can adopt a growth mindset and have mulligans and so on and use these strategies that will allow them to overcome it. But I actually can't think of any canonical example of change that's particularly hard. I think the answer is it's all harder than you expect it to be.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mean every change people think will be easier than it turns out to be almost maybe the most consistent thing about change as we have inappropriate expectations about how straightforward it will be because we have the tendency to imagine all the ways we'll succeed, but we tend to have to be disciplined to think about all the bumps in our path. And this is part of why, you know, if you've ever planned a project, whether it was a renovation project or a product launch, you're always behind because you envision all the”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Matters not only for changing micro decisions, but it can be really appealing for changing big more consequential decisions as well, because so often people are just worried about the ease of execution. And if you can show that you've taken care of that, that can be very persuasive.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The more hoops people have to jump through, and the more they have to think about it, the more resistant they'll be to change to the extent that you can make it one click or one step like, here's the memo you send out to make this happen. Like, I've already written it for you, and here's the E-List to popularly, like just everything you can do to take thinking out of the equation and make it one step, just like that sort of one click shopping, that is really helpful. And to the extent that those are barriers that as someone in the middle who's advocating for a kind of change that someone at the top is sort of worried, oh, how would I get this done? You show them the easy path. You've got the plan already. All they have to do is sort of sign on the dotted line, and it's, and you'll take care of the rest.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Favorite tool of persuasion, which Relates to some of the barriers to internal change as well is understanding the power of conformity or the power of pointing to others who are, say, early adopters and are making progress. It turns out that if people are told, hey, the majority of my peers are doing thing X, it makes me much more excited to do it. So if you already have decent adoption, you're just trying to bring along sort of the last 40%, which by the way is often the case. just by being a decent leader and saying we're making this change maybe you get 60 of people to do it but then you've got 40 who are really not bought in but often one of the things that can persuade those laggards is to point out look 60 the majority of your peers are already doing this thing and that really changes behavior because no one wants to feel left out or missing the boat”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, there are many. I do think it's a bit of a different kind of change than what we've been talking about, right? So now we're shifting from the person wants to change and what are the tools we can give them to support their success to I need to persuade the person to change. And then, of course, once they're persuaded, they may need all the same kinds of tools. But the persuasion challenge is the first challenge when it comes to leading an organization and trying to facilitate change. My favorite research on persuasion comes from Robert Chaldini, who sort of wrote the book on influence. It's called Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion, and it has a series of principles that walks through that are evidence-based, not in a yucky way, actually. It's sort of focused on avoiding coercive attempts at persuasion. How do you dodge that and also how can you ethically persuade others to join in a direction that's good for everyone? So I highly recommend that book. Probably my”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But four hours a week while I'm motivated almost right away because I can chip away at that progress quickly and see that I'm really getting close to the end. If you're a leader and you're thinking about productivity, to think about sort of what are the things you want your team to achieve this year, this quarter, and how can you break those down into bite-sized components and remind people regularly of sort of what you're expecting from them, whether it's on a daily or a weekly basis in a way that isn't vague but rather concrete so they can feel that goal gradient effect.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who are sitting waiting to talk to someone who needs support in a moment of crisis? The problem with these volunteers, they go through a ton of training, but it's a hard job, right? And not everybody fulfills the 200 hour commitment that they make to the organization each year. And having those volunteers on hand is critical to the success of this organization. And we said, hey, we know something about goal setting. We know that it's really important when you have a big goal like that to break it down into bite-sized pieces for people so that they will see how they can make proximal immediate progress. So we said, let's change what you're saying. Let's just remind them that's four hours a week. Sign up for your four hours a week to get there. Let's just do the math for them. And when we made that small change, we actually saw about an 8% increase in productivity across the board. People were volunteering more. There's something called the goal gradient effect where we're more motivated when we get close to a goal. And that means if you have a 200 hour yearly goal to do something, you're not going to be motivated for a long time until you get really close to.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. So I think there's a lot of different ways to think about nudging that might lead to more productivity benefits. You might, for instance, do something like set defaults on everybody's calendar regarding deep work time. If you feel that's something that's missing, maybe you, if there's something that you'd like to see people do more of sort of sending calendar invites and breaking out time, of course people can decline it. They can opt out. They can schedule over it, but you might think about sort of that kind of a default or a nudge that could be very useful for productivity, helping people set goals is a kind of nudge. We did some research. This was with a volunteer organization, but I think it highlights the power of specifically nudging people towards productivity goals. So it was work with this organization called Crisis Textline. It's a resource for those times of need. And it's powered by a volunteer army of crisis council.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Will automatically choose a bunch of things for you that are normally popular and that are normally good choices. So you don't have to make $100,000 before the computer works. And we want to think about how we can snudge ourselves into better decisions with defaults. You can think about defaults in your home in terms of like, what are the snacks available in the pantry? That's the default. It's low friction to reach for whatever's there. Do you have carrots and hummus that are available to you when you get the munchies or Doritos? Of course, if you're dying for Doritos, you can hop in the car or walk around the corner and get some, but you've created a default when you set yourself up so that the thing that is most available that's on hand is the thing that's good for you. So making the lazy and easy path the one that is healthy and beneficial in the long run.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm glad I didn't name my book Snudge because I don't think it would have been a bestseller. But you never know. Richard is brilliant. He won a Nobel Prize. Maybe his title would have been superior to mine. We talked a little about making a plan, sitting down and saying like, when will I do it? Where will I do it? How will I get there? Being prompted to do that, that's a nudge. If someone who cares about you is trying to encourage you to follow through on your goals, they might prompt you to form a plan. Another example of a nudge maybe the most well-known nudge is a default, a change in default. A default is the outcome you will get if you don't take some other action. So think of, you know, you get a new computer, you boot it up, and it has like defaults, you know, it does a default font size. You don't have to decide where you want all the icons to appear on the desktop or what font or sort of what color scheme.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Love that you brought up Cass. He's one of my favorite people and my favorite co authors of mine. Cass is amazing. So nudges are tools that motivate behavior change without changing your incentives or the information you have sort of not using the typical policy levers that we think of, right? Like all tax, sugary beverages, and that's how we'll get people to drink less of them, or I'll ban them entirely. Those are the kinds of tools policymakers usually use. But a nudge would just make something more psychologically attractive without actually making it more expensive or sharing calorie information that might update your beliefs. So there are quite a lot of nudges that can be effective when it comes to behavior change. And actually, this whole research body is really at the heart of what I study. So Cass's co-author on the best-selling book, Nudge, Richard Thaler likes to say my research is all about nudging, self-nudging, which”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, New Year's is just one, so actually, every Monday seems to be a very powerful fresh start when we look at our data. And they come around conveniently once a week. So that's a great one to peg yourself to start a new month also seems to do it for some people. And by the way, I think the psychology of fresh starts exists because it is so common for us to have these setbacks when we're pursuing goals. And it's essentially our psychological immune system giving us a way to set that aside and be optimistic despite what has gone a little bit wrong in the past. So that's my sense of why we probably noticed these naturally and naturally go about life in a way where we're sort of looking for the next clean slate.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of it, you will quit very quickly. So it's in contrast to sort of the ethos of Americans sometimes and certainly the Nike just do it mantra. We think we should just push through pain and maybe pain, in fact, is even good for us and sort of builds character. But the science shows that it's a terrible strategy and that what we actually need to do is try and find a way to make it enjoyable to pursue our goals. Anything you can do to sort of follow the Mary Poppins advice that a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down will improve outcomes.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of all, you need to set a goal. I'm just sort of taking that for granted. So critically, you have to know what it is you're trying to achieve. And then you need to plan how you're going to get there. So say you want to exercise more regularly. Some people think planning means saying something like, well, I'm going to exercise more regularly by joining a gym and going. That is not a plan. A plan is detailed. A plan has an if-then statement. You would stipulate exactly when will you go to the gym and for how long. So, you know, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 5 p.m. That's when you'll find me at the gym and I'll stay for 30 minutes and I'll do a cardio workout on the elliptical. That's what I mean when I say a plan. You also might stipulate how will you get there? And do you need to arrange child care so that you can get there? So the more you get into those details, the better. And another thing that people overlook that comes up a lot is just finding a way to make your goal progress pleasant. If you find it miserable to pursue your goal if you're just sort of hating every second.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Believe in yourself, you're like, oh, I just, I'm not the kind of person who can run a 5K, or I'm not the kind of person who can save reliably or who can get that promotion and sort of scale the ladder at work. If you don't believe in yourself, it's really hard to invest the effort necessary to make that kind of progress and achieve those goals. And then the final one I want to highlight, and this is the one that sort of bridges a little bit from internal to external, is conformity. So we're very influenced by the people in our social circle.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Some of the big ones are the challenge of impulsivity that we are really drawn to things that feel good in the moment and we tend to care less or weigh less the long-term returns to our investments. On the flip side is procrastination, which is sort of driven by impulsivity. But I like to think of them as distinct because I think they have slightly distinct solutions. Laziness. I mean that actually in the most positive possible way. So my PhD is technically in computer science and we worship laziness when it comes to algorithms. The best algorithms take shortcuts. They don't search the whole possible space for solutions. And the human algorithm turns out to be similar. We're very well designed to seek the path of least resistance we develop habits so we don't have to think about what we're doing and just fall back on those habits. However, the tendency to be a little lazy and look for the easiest way out can be a major barrier to change. Confidence. If you don't believe that you can achieve something, it's really difficult to get there.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's a great question. And the beginning of the answer is that it requires understanding what are the obstacles that you face. And by the way, there's sort of a cute term for this. We've been talking about medical decision making. So it's a medical term. It's called a pre-mortem as opposed to a post-mortem. A pre-mortem is just thinking, you know, if you fail, what will have gotten in your way? And it can be really valuable to think like this. It sounds kind of pessimistic and negative, right? But actually contemplating carefully what are the obstacles that might hold you back from achieving your goals is a really important step. And once you do understand what are those obstacles, you can solve for them using science.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But your employer allows you to do that, and you can set up auto deductions from every paycheck. Well, using your motivation at a fresh start moment is a great idea. You just need that temporary boost. You need to sort of take one action and then it'll carry you forward. And guess what? Like magically, every paycheck will have a little deduction taken and your retirement account will start to grow. Similarly, if there's some important cancer screening, like a colonoscopy that you've been putting off, you could sort of sign up for that in that moment. And as long as you follow through, it's sort of a one and done. But the problem is most of our New Year's resolutions aren't one and done. Most of them require effort over time as opposed to a single action that will be valuable. And for those, the problem with fresh starts is that they really only give very temporary motivation. Sort of as soon as you get to February, it doesn't feel like a fresh start anymore. And this is one of the reasons we know that gyms are packed in January, but the attendance drops down again. You need more than just a little motivation. You need more tools, frankly.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At moments in our lives that feel like chapter breaks, we have this sense that we're turning the page and that there's a clean slate that awaits us. January 1st is sort of the biggest of all fresh starts. It's the one where 40% of Americans step back and set resolutions. Now, of course, there's no actual change, right? January 1 is no more different from December 31st than December 31st is from December 30th. But in our minds, those kinds of shifts, just like a Sunday shifts to a Monday, that demarcate a new period in our life, they make us feel more separated from who we used to be. But a big problem with fresh starts is that all they do is they give us a temporary boost in motivation. So they're actually really great moments to do something that's sort of a one and done. If you're thinking about starting saving in, say, 401k, a tax advantage retirement savings fund, and you just haven't gotten around to it.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'm so glad that you brought up fresh starts. This is actually something that I've studied extensively with my collaborator, Heng Chen Diet, UCLA, and Jason Reese at Wharton. We have done research looking specifically at this peculiar phenomenon that drives not only New Year's resolutions, but actually our tendency to be healthier and set more goals at the start of new weeks, following birthdays at the start of new months and following holidays that we associate with new beginnings.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Changed my research trajectory because I thought, hey, I've been studying decision making, but doing it sort of out of curiosity for the most part, just trying to learn. And there's this opportunity to use this science to make a major dent in really important problems, like making people live longer, happier, healthier lives.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was in a seminar one day where someone was presenting some of the research, and they put up a graph. Showing the percentage of premature deaths in the United States that are due to various causes. So things like accidents, environmental exposures, genetics. And one wedge in that pie chart was devoted to decisions we make in our daily lives that can add up. So think things like getting a cancer screening, taking your medications, eating healthily, avoiding cigarettes and alcohol, buckling your seatbelt. So this pie chart kind of blew my mind and changed my life because it showed that 40% of premature deaths are due to behaviors we could change. I was just blown away by the magnitude of our daily decisions on our longevity. And when I learned that, it really”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, absolutely. The big moment for me was actually as an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, I worked at the Wharton School, which is the School of Business at Penn. And we have a really amazing medical school as well. And I like talking to people from all different backgrounds, interdisciplinarity is sort of in my blood. So I started hanging out over at the medical school with a group of people who studied medical decision making just to learn what I could learn from them.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think initially I was just drawn to the truth of it, if that makes sense. So certainly there was an element of me search as opposed to just research. Like I saw myself in the models and in the research findings I was reading, which by the way, I'd never seen myself in sort of the social science coursework I'd been exposed to before. I ended up being an engineer as an undergrad because economics did not make sense to me. I just thought, why would you possibly think that people are perfectly rational decision making agents and model the economy and their decisions that way? This is absurd. Have you met me? Have you met my roommates? So I was really turned off by social sciences initially. And when I got to this understanding that actually there's a whole field trying to understand our imperfections, I was just riveted and it was primarily, again, I just thought it was.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Part of behavioral economics. It's a field that focuses on the ways in which people make mistakes, even when they're trying to be perfectly rational. And specifically, it focuses on the systematic and predictable mistakes that we make with our decisions. Things like our tendency to be impulsive, things like our tendency to find losses much more painful than we find gains rewarding. And so take steps to avoid losses that might look irrational. We do funny things when we evaluate probabilities. So I was really fascinated when I learned about this field and I decided that's what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It does, yeah, and PS, I don't like the sight of blood, and I get nervous and intense situations. I would be a terrible brain surgeon. So thank goodness I found another calling. I didn't even learn this was a field or a possible path until I was a PhD student, actually, which is a little late in one's trajectory in academia. I got a PhD in computer science and business thinking that this wacky thing called the internet seemed to be taking off and maybe learning something about that and how it would affect our choices. the organizations we worked in could be interesting. And it was actually while I was there that during a required microeconomic sequence, I was introduced to the work of folks like Danny Kahneman, who's a founder of the field, author of The Bestselling Book, Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow, who very sadly passed in early 2024. So Danny founded this field of behavioral economics and essentially behavioral science is.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not when I was growing up. In fact, I think when I was growing up, my most common answer when people asked was that I wanted to be a brain surgeon, which I had no actual aspiration to be. I think I just liked that it sounded impressive and it made jaws drop and I got that positive feedback like wow.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This rule really transformed my experience. Suddenly, I would start looking forward to going to the gym to find out what was happening to my favorite characters. The basic idea is called temptation bundling. It can be applied to lots of things in life. Anytime there's a chore that you're dreading and some temptation that you maybe feel a little guilty about indulging in, if you could combine those two things and only allow yourself access to the temptation when you're doing the chore, what it does, it changes the experience of the chore and it actually changes the equation in terms of our impulsivity so that you look forward to doing that thing you'd otherwise dread.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was kind of an audiobook addict, and I really enjoyed digging into novels that were lowbrow. And that wasn't the best use of my time. So what I ended up doing to solve my own problem, and others have told me I did the exact same thing, was just engineering a solution where I only allowed myself to enjoy these temptations that I craved, these audiobooks when I was at the gym. That was my rule.”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Imagine there is some chore You are struggling to motivate yourself to pursue. In my case, when I started doing this, it was exercising regularly. I was just really dreading that. Knew I needed to do it. It was important for my mental health and good for me in the long run, and it felt great afterwards. It's just that at the end of a long day, that is not where I wanted to be”
2026-01-01 · Masters of Scale · The science of fresh starts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT