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Katy Milkman

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65
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2021-12-27
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2021-12-27
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1
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  1. “These opportunities? Is there some ideal time to give them a nudge? And I have the same insight that you just mentioned New Year's resolutions. I know New Year's is a thing. 40% of Americans make resolutions. Something's going on there. There's something about that timing. But what it led me and my collaborators to realize when we started thinking carefully about this question and this problem is that New Year's is actually just one moment that has a feature that's really important and it's shared by all these other moments. And that feature is that It feels like a new beginning. It essentially marks a chapter break in the way we think about time. And when we encounter a new beginning in life, we feel like whatever happened in the last chapter, well, that was the old me, and this is the new me. And the new me doesn't have that baggage. The new me can do it, you know, last year I didn't make good investment decisions or last year I didn't quit smoking. Whatever the failings I had last year, I feel like that's all.”

    2021-12-27 · Capital Allocators · #3: Katy Milkman – How to Change, EP..199 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Well, first, I love that you said what comes to mind as New Year's resolutions because that small insight that New Year's resolutions are sort of a special moment is actually what got me going on research on getting started. So I was giving a talk at Google about some of my work on how we could nudge people to make better financial decisions, better decisions about their health. And I got this question that was so, I thought, important and unstudied as far as I could tell, which was, okay, Katie, we're convinced that we should be using these tools and tactics to change our employees' behavior so they'll be more productive and healthier and more excited. But is there some ideal time to provide?”

    2021-12-27 · Capital Allocators · #3: Katy Milkman – How to Change, EP..199 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “To conformity. And this is where the social comes in. Who are your peers? Are they obstructing change or they supporting change? Are they showing you the way? Are they showing you that it's impossible? So conformity is a really important barrier and sometimes solution to change. And finally, the last chapter isn't really about a barrier so much as the important question of how do we keep at it, how do we maintain change and change in the long run.”

    2021-12-27 · Capital Allocators · #3: Katy Milkman – How to Change, EP..199 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Forgetting problem, which I could probably just as easily have termed flake out. What's salient? What comes to mind? Whether or not we can keep it top of mind when it needs to be, which I actually think people underappreciate the importance of and can be really valuable to get that right. From there, I turn to the challenge of laziness, which I actually would argue is a good design feature for the human mind that we prefer the path of least resistance. We generally look for the easy way out. It makes a lot of sense. It's very efficient, and yet it creates challenges when we want to change. So laziness is a big one. From the laziness chapter, I turn to confidence because another barrier to change is believing that we can. So figuring out how to make sure we have the confidence and the self-efficacy to put it in the term psychologist would use Albendura's word to actually pursue change is really important. And then from there, I turn.”

    2021-12-27 · Capital Allocators · #3: Katy Milkman – How to Change, EP..199 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Figuring out what obstacle they're up against. They instead just look for sort of a shiny, nice sounding solution, a one size fits all, like let's set big audacious goals or visualize success, and that'll get us there. But if you don't take account of what is actually blocking change, what are the barriers? You can't use the best scientific principles to solve the problem. So the book is organized around these different problems. So the first chapter is about the getting started problem, which is just how do you get yourself over the hump from saying, yeah, someday I'd like to actually taking action or being ready to take action. I start with the getting started problem. Then I pivot to impulsivity, which is essentially temptation, the challenge that we overweigh things that are good for us in the short term and underweight the value we'll get in the long run. The next chapter is about procrastination, which is very closely related to impulsivity. From there, I turn to the”

    2021-12-27 · Capital Allocators · #3: Katy Milkman – How to Change, EP..199 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Well, the book is organized around a key principle that I've come to believe is the most important insight from all of the research I've done on behavior change. And that is that in order to successfully achieve change, we first have to understand what is the specific obstacle that we're up against in a given situation. The situation I just described where I was having trouble getting to the gym, my obstacle was impulsivity. It wasn't tempting to go to the gym. It was tempting to sit on the couch. And so I didn't have the willpower to actually get myself off the couch and to the gym. And I needed to make it tempting to exercise. So that's one example of a barrier. It's really different if the barrier is, say, forgetting. You can't remember to take your medication. That's the reason you're not doing it. You need a totally different kind of solution. And I've seen that too often organizations and individuals that are trying to change don't recognize the importance of”

    2021-12-27 · Capital Allocators · #3: Katy Milkman – How to Change, EP..199 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “And so I recognize that barrier. I found an engineered solution. And for me, it was a huge, huge gain. And temptation bundling, of course, I have since realized and recognized can help with lots of things, not just getting you to the gym, but you can use temptation bundling as a lore or a hook to get you to do things like studying by only allowing yourself to pick up your favorite coffee drink or other snack on your way to hit the books or only letting yourself listen to your favorite podcast while doing household chores or cooking a fresh meal for your family. There's all different ways that I've found a temptation bundle that can make it exciting and fun in the moment to do the thing that's good for you in the long run.”

    2021-12-27 · Capital Allocators · #3: Katy Milkman – How to Change, EP..199 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Those entertainment temptations when I was exercising at the gym. I actually did it with audiobooks because I found the sensory input from TV was a little too much for my puny little brain at the end of a long day. But I'd go to the gym, I'd listen to the latest in my James Patterson novel or sometimes this Harry Potter or Hunger Games Twilight, pick your lowbrow fiction that's fast-paced. I couldn't wait to get there. I'd come home, rush to the gym to find out what happened next. The time would fly while I was at the gym. I didn't even notice it was passing. So I got a great workout and I came home and I was ready to get my work done and my grades improved. My happiness improved. It was fabulous and I realized, okay, what had happened there was I'd recognize the challenge of getting myself to do the things that were good for me in the long term required me to find a way to make them instantly gratifying, make them rewarding in the short term, or else I would never motivate myself to do it.”

    2021-12-27 · Capital Allocators · #3: Katy Milkman – How to Change, EP..199 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “The first insight from my research had to do with the struggle I had as a graduate student when I was in an intense engineering program. I had to take economics classes and computer science classes and all these problem sets. And I would come home exhausted from listening to the lectures that I had to attend. And I needed to get to my work. I needed to do my problem sets and write code. But I also needed exercise because that was the only thing, frankly, that kept me sane was to be in good shape and moving. And I couldn't motivate myself to do either. I'd come home and all I wanted to do was curl up on the couch with a juicy page turner or binge watch TV and I couldn't figure out how do I resolve this problem? I'm not getting any of the things done I needed to get done and I came up with a solution. I call it now temptation bundling and I've studied it in research research. And the idea was I just only allowed myself to enjoy those temptations.”

    2021-12-27 · Capital Allocators · #3: Katy Milkman – How to Change, EP..199 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “I just couldn't believe how large the effects were of those small decisions, the way that they accumulated was it was vastly larger than I would have expected, an order of magnitude. And that moment really changed my focus. I realized, okay, the stuff that I've been doing sort of as a hobby for fun, this research on behavior change, if I really focus on this, there's a huge opportunity here to have a big social impact because if we can figure out”

    2021-12-27 · Capital Allocators · #3: Katy Milkman – How to Change, EP..199 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “To go to the gym, why can't I get myself to do my problem sets at the end of a long day? Oh, here's an idea, and then it would grow into a research project. So I pivoted, and then it really all clicked for me, actually, when I was an assistant professor at Wharton. I'd been doing research on behavioral science. A little bit of it was this change-oriented work due to my research interests, but it was all over the place. And I went to a seminar presentation over at the medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, and I saw this graph. There probably aren't that many people who can say their lives were changed by a graph, but my life was changed by a graph. And it was a graph showing the percentage of premature deaths in the US that are due to different causes. And the largest wedge in that graph was 40% due to behaviors that we could change. So decisions about things like eating, drinking, smoking, vehicle safety”

    2021-12-27 · Capital Allocators · #3: Katy Milkman – How to Change, EP..199 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Had sort of a revelation. The course was introducing all your classic economic concepts, but then it also blended in some of the new theories that were coming out of this new growing field of behavioral economics, which acknowledged that people are imperfect decision makers, that were impulsive and overweight present utility or present value and underweight the long-term rewards of our actions, for instance. And so all of these problems that are systematic with the way we make decisions were part of the class. And it just clicked for me. I loved it. I thought, oh my gosh, this is a perfect description of me, my life, everyone I know. It's fascinating. And once I understood that there were these mistakes people made, I started seeing opportunities in my own life to try to correct them. I started actually doing work on change initially just as a program of me search rather than research. Why can't I get myself?”

    2021-12-27 · Capital Allocators · #3: Katy Milkman – How to Change, EP..199 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Well, my road was very winding, so I'm not sure I'm the example of how one goes about this, but I went about it as an engineer, actually, as an undergraduate. I studied operations research and financial engineering. And then I decided to get a PhD in computer science and business, again, an engineering school that was granting the degree and studying change was nowhere near my mind. And I had to take a graduate sequence in microeconomics to get my degree. And while I was in that class,”

    2021-12-27 · Capital Allocators · #3: Katy Milkman – How to Change, EP..199 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Our conversation covers Katie's path to studying change and her new book, which is framed around identifying obstacles to change and using scientific principles to get past those obstacles. We outline the eight obstacles in the book and dive in on the challenges of getting started, confidence, conformity, procrastination, laziness, and making changes last. Along the way, we touch on some applications of her research to investing and to her own life. Please enjoy my conversation with Katie Milkman. Katie, thanks so much for joining me.”

    2021-12-27 · Capital Allocators · #3: Katy Milkman – How to Change, EP..199 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Hello, I'm Ted Sides, and this is Capital Allocators. This show is an open exploration of the people and process behind capital allocation through conversations with leaders in the money game, we learn how these holders of the keys to the kingdom allocate their time and their capital. You can keep up to date by visiting capitalallocators.com. Guest on today's show is Katie Milkman, the James Dinan Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, host of Choiceology, Charles Schwab's popular podcast on behavioral economics, the co-founder and co-director alongside Angela Duckworth of the Behavior Change for Good Initiative, and most recently the author of How to Change, The Science of Getting From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.”

    2021-12-27 · Capital Allocators · #3: Katy Milkman – How to Change, EP..199 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source