Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific AmericanIt is Science quickly, My name is Kendra Pierre-Louis, I’m replacing Rachel Feltman.
Hello and happy new year! I love the first days of a new year. It evokes the feeling that change is possible. This feeling partly leads some of us to make New Year’s resolutions.
An estimated 40 percent of American adults make resolutions each year. We promise ourselves to save money, exercise regularly, or spend more time with friends and family.
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And yet, for many of us, as that feeling of novelty wears off, so do our resolutions. Some research suggests that up to 88% of Americans abandon their resolutions within two weeks.
But it is not necessary that this be so, according to Katy Milkmanbehavioral economist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of How to Change: The Science of Getting From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.
Katy says there are scientific tools we can use to create positive changes in our lives. This involves not only asking high-level questions about what we want to achieve and why, but also finding ways to make the path to achieving those goals fun.
Here is our conversation.
Pierre-Louis: In your book, you explain how moments like a new year, or even a move, you talk about as a new beginning, and can you tell us a little about what a new beginning is and how they can be useful in changing our behaviors and even, also, their limits?
Katy Milkman: Yeah, absolutely. One of the topics I have studied closely is the “fresh start” effect. This is work that I did with Hengchen Dai from [the University of California, Los Angeles,] and Jason Riis, a former colleague here at Wharton.
We really got interested in this after visiting Google in 2012, I think, and learning that they were having trouble motivating their employees to take advantage of many wonderful benefits. And they brought in a group of outside speakers to share ideas about what could be done to inspire people to make positive changes; I was one of them. And after presenting some research, an audience member asked me this great question: Are there times when people are more open to making a change in their lives, and that’s what started this research program. The immediate response was, “I don’t know. The research hasn’t really looked at whether or not our motivation varies over time.” But my collaborators and I all immediately had a very strong intuition – and this is what pushed us to work on this question – that there was are moments that give us additional motivation; Of course, the first one that comes to mind is New Year’s Eve. But what we did was start looking at the literature on how people think about their lives and what causes that effect.
We learned that there is a whole literature on what we call “autobiographical memory” and that the way we think about time is not linear. Instead, we actually think about our lives as if we are characters in a novel and there are chapter breaks in that storyline, if you will. So you can have, you know, years of living in a certain city, years of college, years of working for a certain employer. They are chapters of your life story, in the way you tell it and think about it. And instead of thinking that every day has the same weight, these chapter breaks actually matter.
When we enter a new chapter, we feel a sense of discontinuity and new beginnings, and we feel disconnected from who we were in the previous chapter. We can say, “Oh, that was the old me, and the old me didn’t do XYZ the way I wanted to do it, but the new me will be different.” » This gives us optimism about what we are capable of, and with this sense of possibility, we often think more about these chapter breaks and think about the bigger picture.
What was really interesting about our work, though, is that these chapter breaks don’t just happen during major life changes. We have found that they occur at many moments that signal a new beginning in miniature. So the start of each new year is a kind of new beginning in miniature, isn’t it? It’s not a major chapter break in the story of your life…
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.
Milkman: It’s like moving to a new community or taking a new job, but it’s a minor issue, and it also comes with social pressure to make changes because everyone starts talking about New Year’s resolutions—about 40 percent of Americans make them.
We’ve also found that there are other times in the calendar, like New Year, that haven’t been as widely discussed and have the same effect to a lesser extent, so every Monday is a new beginning in miniature…
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.
Milkman: The start of a new month, celebrating birthdays and other holidays that we associate with new beginnings, for example Easter or Rosh Hashanah, Eid, so each religion has its own marker of new beginnings. And all of these dates tend to spark positive behavior change. In our research, we looked at when people show up and attend the gym; when people Google the term “diet,” which is the most popular New Year’s resolution, for better or worse; and we also see it when we look at when people set goals on a popular online goal-setting website on everything from their health to their finances to the environment.
Pierre-Louis: So one of the studies that you reference in your book about traded baseball players is that new starts aren’t always positive, right? Can we talk about it a little?
Milkman: Yes, Hengchen did a number of experiments and also analyzed data on Major League Baseball players. What interested him was the fact that trades in Major League Baseball have different implications on your performance statistics depending on whether you are traded between leagues or within a league. So if you get traded between leagues, all your stats for the season are reset because you’re in a new league and it’s kind of a different playing field, if you will. But if you get traded within a league, all of your stats from the season carry over and you just continue to work off that baseline.
She was interested in these two people who are experiencing essentially the same thing: they’re both moving to a new city; they’re both working with new teammates, but one of them has a much bigger fresh start than the other. They have a performance reset. Is there a difference in how it affects them? And what she found is that there are differences in a really interesting pattern: If you have a good season and your performance gets reset, that’s harmful.
So two people, both are traded, both performed very well, but one of them has to deal with the fact that they’re starting their season again in terms of stats, that person is more hurt than the one who keeps their record. On the other hand, however, for two players who have both underperformed the season so far and are both traded (one of them keeps their record and the other doesn’t), the clean slate is beneficial and improves the performance of the person who gets that clean slate despite having a rough season.
So it’s sort of the double-edged sword of a new beginning in a really great field study, showing that when things are going well, these kinds of new beginnings and disruptions can be harmful.
Pierre-Louis: And I felt like that kind of foundation was a question like, “What happens to our habits? And when we try to make a big change, in many ways what we’re trying to do is change our habits, right? For example, if you want to get in shape, you don’t do it overnight; it’s like days and days and days of repetitive behavior. And so I think that’s the thing that most people struggle with: “How do we develop and maintain these consistent habits, and when we get disrupted, how do we get back to them?” Can you tell us about some tips and techniques people can use?
Milkman: I think one of the most important things is to plan for disruption. If you go on vacation and you follow a routine that works for you, whether it’s meditation or exercise or, you know, practicing Spanish on Duolingo, if you’re like me, whatever it is, when you’re away, it breaks up those routines; it breaks those cycles. It’s no longer going to be automatic to engage in the same sets of routines when you return, and so you need to be deliberate about planning: “Okay, when I come back, how am I going to get into this habit that I’ve been building again? How am I going to make sure that it’s built into my schedule?” This can be done by making explicit plans – it’s boring but important – like, you know, when are you going to do it? Where are you going to do it? Put it on your calendar. Set yourself a reminder.
And it can also be done by deliberately using some of the other tools that we know help a lot with habit formation, like making sure it’s rewarding and you have a fun way to do it. So maybe it’s about finding ways to combine something you consider a chore with something you truly enjoy. So exercising, the example is, like, you know, “I only let myself watch my favorite TV shows while I exercise.” Maybe you only listen to your favorite podcast or open your favorite bottle of wine when you’re cooking a fresh meal for your family, and you set that as a rule for when you want to get back into the habit.
Maybe this is the accountability you need. Maybe he’s someone you’ll exercise with, right? And in fact, research shows that when you have a workout partner, it can increase your chances of going all the way by making exercise fun and making sure you’re accountable to someone. Or you could have a commitment scheme: you can put money on the line that you have to forfeit if you don’t comply. But fundamentally, you need to use these tools that we know help us adopt healthier habits after a disruption.
Pierre-L yes: I know in the book you talk about the “Mary Poppins effect,” the idea that “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down” – pairing something really enjoyable, like your favorite TV show, with exercise, for example. But something that struck me while reading this part of the book is: sometimes it seems like people set goals that they like, want want to set; they don’t necessarily want it.
So they want to be healthier, so they want to exercise, right? But in their minds, because of the way we talk about exercise in society, it becomes very prescriptive, so they’re like, “I should run a marathon because that’s what fit people do.” »
Milkman: Mm-hmm.
Pierre-Louis: But they hate running, and maybe instead of focusing on running, they should take up ice skating because they always wanted to ice skate when they were kids, and maybe they couldn’t afford it, and now they can.
But it also seems like sometimes, especially with New Year’s resolutions, we kind of lose a forest for the trees, where we focus on one specific area. form exercise or type of food and not a broader view of what healthy eating looks like or what exercise and finding joy in the things we naturally want to do can look like.
Milkman: I love the takeaway from the book and I agree with you 100% that one of the things we can do is just step back and take a big picture look at whether we’re setting the right goals and what the higher level goal is and if there’s another path to the higher level goal that’s easier. I’m used to work, so if your main goal is “to be in shape this year” and you’ve chosen to pursue it in an unpleasant way that you don’t enjoy, then take a step back and ask, “Is there anything I can do that I’ll enjoy more to achieve the same result?” Because one of the best indicators of success is whether you enjoy the process of pursuing your goals. If you find it unfortunate, you don’t persist.
So yes, ice skating rather than running a marathon [Laughs] if it can bring you joy. Any way you move your body is good for you, whether it’s going to a dance class with a friend, taking a morning walk in the fresh air with a cup of coffee and someone you enjoy talking with – you know, making it social is another very important way to improve how much we enjoy the pursuit of a goal, and the same goes for eating well and, frankly, achieving goals at work.
Pierre-Louis: One of the things that I found really interesting is that, for example, we talk about making things enjoyable, but you also talk about the constraints that we put on ourselves and how sometimes, in order to achieve a goal that we want, we can choose to accept constraints to achieve that goal. Can you talk a little about it?
Milkman: Yes, I think this is some of the most counterintuitive yet powerful research in behavioral science and goal pursuit. The idea is really, you know, we know how helpful it is when we have a great boss or a great teacher or a great parent who, you know, holds our feet to the fire and says, “These are the deadlines. These are the consequences.” This can be Really effective in motivating us to get things done. But what I think we often fail to understand is that we have the power to be our own boss. [Laughs]our own teacher or our own parent and create constraints and deadlines with consequences in a way that will motivate us and help us achieve more.
So let me give you a very concrete example of a study that I think illustrates how powerful this way of thinking can be. This is a study done by Dean Karlan of Northwestern University and his colleagues, where they were looking to see if they could help people quit smoking…
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.
Milkman: So, like, a Really difficult goal, right?
Pierre-Louis: Yeah.
Milkman: There is even an addiction here. The tool was: randomly assign people to either a standard smoking cessation program or this standard program plus what we call an engagement device. An escrow facility, in this case, meant a savings account that you could put your own money into – it’s optional – but you learn that if you fail a urine nicotine or cotinine test six months later, all the money will be taken away. This savings account will disappear. So you basically have the option of fining yourself if you continue to smoke. And what the researchers found was that those who had access to this account quit at a rate 30% higher than the standard group.
So finding a way to keep your feet to the fire by penalizing yourself if you don’t succeed can be very powerful. And there are many ways to do this. You can do this with friends. You can ask them to insist that you pay them [Laughs] or invest money in a charitable cause if you fail to achieve a certain goal. There are actually websites that I have no affiliation with that allow you to do this: Beeminder is one of them; Stickk.com with two kThis is another one: you can put money on the line and you will have to give it up if you fail to achieve a goal.
And they can also be as simple as just creating friction in your life, so it doesn’t necessarily require money. You can think about, you know, not having junk food in your house – you empty out all your cupboards. It’s a commitment device because now you’ve created a constraint: you’ll have to leave your home or pay delivery costs to get the junk food you crave. So there are many different tools that we can use that fall into this category of creating constraints for ourselves, behaving like our own boss, in order to set ourselves up for success with our goals.
Pierre-Louis: One of the things I really enjoyed about your book is when you talk about how people often insist that [more than] 80% of people who set New Year’s resolutions fail, but that means 20% succeeded, right?
Milkman: Look, it’s brave to try to make a change. The easiest thing to do is to do nothing. And so I think it’s great anytime someone wants to find a way to improve themselves – just because New Year’s is a nifty time to jump on the bandwagon doesn’t mean it’s not a good time to make a change. And yet you can give yourself a better chance of success if you do more than just say, “I’m going to try to be healthy this year,” “I’m going to try to improve my performance at work,” or “I’m going to try to improve my relationships with my family.”
Be more concrete. Think about: what measurable goal do you want to achieve? How are you going to do it? You know, strategize, just like you would if you were given a big project at work. Use the science we talked about on the show to give yourself a better chance of success.
And then, PS, if it doesn’t work this time, that doesn’t mean New Year’s resolutions are a bad idea next time. And PS, you can make a new resolution next Monday, early next week, on your birthday, or any arbitrary day, because this is all in our heads about a fresh start anyway. [Laugh.] So give yourself some grace and do your best, and if it doesn’t work, try again next time.
Pierre-Louis: Thank you very much for being with us today.
Milkman: Yeah, thank you very much for having me.
Pierre-Louis: This is our episode. Be sure to stay tuned Wednesday, when we examine the impact of the Trump administration’s policies on children’s health.
Science quickly is produced by me, Kendra Pierre-Louis, with Fonda Mwangi, Sushmita Pathak and Jeff DelViscio. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck check in on our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more recent and in-depth scientific news.
For Scientific American, This is Kendra Pierre-Louis. See you next time!