rss-bridge 2021-07-05T14:00:00+00:00

You, But Better

Think about the resolutions you made this year: to quit smoking, eat better, or get more exercise. If you're like most people, you probably abandoned those resolutions within a few weeks. That's because change is hard. Behavioral scientist Katy Milkman explains how we can use our minds to do what's good for us.

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[A backcountry skier hikes to the top of a mountain.]

You, But Better

By Hidden Brain Staff

/ July 6, 2021

Think about the resolutions you made this year: to quit smoking, eat better, or get more exercise. If you’re like most people, you probably abandoned those resolutions within a few weeks. That’s because change is hard. Behavioral scientist Katy Milkman explains how we can use our minds to do what’s good for us.

Additional Resources

Book:

How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You are to Where You Want to Be, Katy Milkman, Portfolio, May 4, 2021

Research:

Holding the Hunger Games Hostage at the Gym: An Evaluation of Temptation Bundling, Katy Milkman, Julia Minson, Kevin Volpp, Management Science, 2013

For the Fun of It: Harnessing Immediate Rewards to Increase Persistence in Long-Term Goals, Katilin Wooley, Ayelet Fishbach, Journal of Consumer Research, 2016

Temporal Landmarks Spur Goal Initiation When They Signal New Beginnings, Hengchen Dai, Katherine Milkman, Jason Riis, Psychological Science, 2015

The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior, Hengchen Dai, Katherine Milkman, Jason Riis, Management Science, 2014

Using implementation Intentions Prompts to Enhance Influenza Vaccination Rates, Katy Milkman, Josh Beshears, James Choi and David Laibson, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2011

Procrastination, Deadlines, and Performance: Self-Control by Precommitment, Dan Ariely, Klaus Wertenbroch, Psychological Science, 2002

Overcoming Salience Bias: How real-time feedback fosters resource conservation, Verena Tiefenbeck, Lorenz Goette, Kathrin Degen, Vojkan Tasic, Elgar Fleisch, Rafael Lalive, Thorsten Staake, Management Science, 2016

Grab bag:

Odenplan, Stockholm Sweden piano stairs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipMib6ejGuo

SEINFELD: George quits his job, but regrets it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urYTSujzfTI

Transcript

*The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode.
Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio.*

Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. There are two kinds of challenges we face. One kind involves a novel problem. We don't know why we're sick. A new disease suddenly sweeps the world, and it doesn't have a cure. Novel challenges call for discovery, invention. As a species, we are very good at coming up with such discoveries, but many of the setbacks in our lives are not caused by such problems. They're caused by problems whose solutions were discovered a long time ago. Think about the leading causes of death in most countries. They are connected to smoking, diet, and sedentary lifestyles. We know what we ought to do to live better. We should eat right and exercise and get a good night's rest live, within our means. So, why is it so hard to actually do those things?Katy Milkman: Some of us figure out that we have two selves and that they are in conflict, and this is a challenge we need to resolve, but some of us go through life without paying a lot of attention to this fact, or trying to find ways to overcome it.Shankar Vedantam: This week on Hidden Brain, how to engineer our lives and our minds to do what we know is good for us.Shankar Vedantam: Think about the resolutions you made this year. Did you decide to read more, work out more often, quit smoking? If you're like most people, you probably abandoned your resolutions within a few weeks. Change is hard. Katy Milkman is a behavioral scientist at the Wharton School. In her new book, How To Change, she studies how we can use the mind to combat the limitations of the mind. Katy Milkman, welcome to Hidden Brain.Katy Milkman: Thank you for having me.Shankar Vedantam: Katy, we're going to tackle some of the biggest questions facing us as individuals, communities, and nations. We'll talk about how to overcome people's hesitancy to get vaccinated and how to get around the challenges of meeting our health goals. But I want to start our conversation at a more basic level by understanding the forces within our minds that make it difficult to do the things that we know are good for us. These everyday mental limitations are the building blocks of many of the problems we confront in the world. I want to start with one of the most common problems, the problem of distraction. We walk into a room, we can't remember why we're there. We mean to make an important phone call, we get sidetracked. You once experienced a spectacular moment of distraction on a bus. Can you tell me what happened?Katy Milkman: Yes. I take the bus to work most days, at least I did pre-pandemic, and I was going to work, my usual route, but I had a suitcase with me because I had a trip planned. I put the suitcase up on the side of the bus when I got in, the place where you can place your luggage, I took my seat. And then I got off the bus as usual at my stop and I forgot to grab my suitcase. My computer was in it, lots of things I needed for the trip I was about to take were in it. I had to go into Wharton and teach my MBA class, so I didn't really have a lot of time to deal with the disaster. I will just say, my husband is my hero. I called him, I told him what had happened. He went and stood on the bus route. It was a bus loop around the city and he intercepted every bus that stopped until he found the one with my suitcase, so I do have the world's most amazing spouse.Shankar Vedantam: The story itself is so revealing Katy, because it describes something that I think happens to all of us. I feel like, on a routine basis, I open my email to send a note to my friend, but when I open my email, I see an urgent email from someone else. And answering that email requires me to go look up a study, and 45 minutes later, I look up and realize I haven't sent that note to my friend. There's something like that happen to you all the time, too?Katy Milkman: All the time. Absolutely. Yes.Shankar Vedantam: Being distracted is one pitfall. I want to talk about another, which is being impulsive. We often make decisions quickly and then regret them later on. I'm thinking of this classic scene from Seinfeld, where the character George Costanza gets upset and tells his boss exactly what he thinks of him.Jason Alexander as George Costanza: This is it. I'm done. Through, it's over. I'm gone, finished. Over. I will never work for you again. Look at you. You think you're an important man, is that what you think? You are a laughing stock. You are a joke. These people are laughing at you. You're nothing. You have no brains, no ability, nothing. I quit.Shankar Vedantam: Katy, you once dashed off a note to a colleague because you were really upset, and you dashed off this note somewhat impul

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Original source

📄 deadlines.pdf