Impulsivity, procrastination and forgetfulness are just some of the things that get in the way of us doing better and getting from where we are to where we want to be, says a behavioural scientist.
Dr Katy Milkman is a best-selling author and host of the podcast Choiceology.
Science can help us make changes in our lives that last, she told Jesse Mulligan.
Dr Katy Milkman Photo: supplied
“I think one of the most common mistakes I've seen made both by organisations, and individuals, who are trying to figure out how to make important change come about is that there's a focus on the goal immediately, which is important, you do need to know where you want to go in order to get there.
“But there's not a lot of attention paid to the obstacles that might stand in the way and it's by figuring out what those obstacles are, and using science-based tactics to overcome them, that we generally see the best results,” she says.
By being entirely focused on end goals, we miss potential stumbling blocks, she says.
and we're unable to overcome them. And we don't get where we want to be.
Those stumbling blocks are mostly predictable, she says.”
People don't find it terribly fun to do some activities. Some people love it, but most of us who are struggling, I think most of the people who love it have already solved the big problem.
“But most of us find it a bit unpleasant and need to figure out how can we actually make the experience better, so that we won't be lazy. In fact, that is one of the key ways to avoid laziness is that it doesn't feel effortful, to do things we enjoy.”
This could mean making exercise more fun, for example, she says.
“Making exercise fun by combining it with listening to your favourite radio show or watching your favourite lowbrow TV show at the same time, or doing it with a friend and making it a dance class instead of hopping on a painful device.”
We all tend to be present biased, she says.
“Present bias is our tendency to prefer doing things that are instantly gratifying over things that will bring us long term gains and value.
“This can help explain why even though you may have a goal to stay healthy and watch what you eat, you pick pizza over salad for lunch, because it's just more instantly gratifying to eat the pizza even if it's worse for you in the long run.
“The same explanation applies to deciding not to go to the gym but to sit on the couch and watch TV even if you know, in the long run, you'll be better off if you hit the gym.”
She offers some techniques to help us get over these obstacles.
“One of my favourite strategies comes from research by my colleague, Marissa Sharif at the Wharton School, who has done some really interesting work showing when we set goals, we, of course, want to set tough, ambitious goals for ourselves, we don't want to slack on our goals.
“Because the more ambitious, the more we push ourselves. But that comes with a double-edged sword. Because if you set yourself a tough goal, you're more likely to stumble and have this ‘What the hell effect’.”
What the hell is when a routine breaks down and people just give up, she says.
Sharif suggests still setting tough goals but retaining some ‘get out of jail’ cards.
“She calls them emergency reserves. When you are say trying to exercise every day, it's best if you literally say I want to do it seven days a week, and don't give yourself a wimpier goal of five days a week, because seven will push you further.
But seven is also more likely to have a failure. And to get around that she's found the best thing to do is give yourself seven days a week goal. But say I'll give myself two emergency reserves.”
It seems that is more effective than setting a five-day goal, she says.
“Framing matters immensely, because if you're thinking about pushing yourself, and then you're giving yourself these Get Out of Jail Free cards, you're very unlikely actually to slack, you're most likely to actually hit seven days a week or maybe six. Whereas if you give yourself a wimpier goal, once you've hit it, you'll stop.”
Another technique is one she calls the temptation bundle.
“Temptation bundling is one of my favourite hacks for making habit formation easier.
“One way that I've studied of overcoming the barrier that it's often unpleasant to pursue our goals is by encouraging people to link an activity that feels like a chore with something that is a guilty pleasure.”
That could be watching a trashy TV show only at the gym, she says.
“It's this sort of magical combination, you can do this in lots of places in life where you have some chore that you're dreading, you can temptation bundle with it.”
A commitment device is another technique, she says.
“Another strategy that's been empirically proven really effective is actually set steep penalties or constraints for yourself if you fail to achieve your goal.
“So just like we're used to being fined for speeding by the government, we can actually fine ourselves or punish ourselves, if we don't achieve our goals, we can act as our own incentive creators.”
That could be making a donation for failure or sending pictures of an unhealthy snack to your nutritionist, she says.
“People quit smoking at a 30 percent higher rate, for instance, when they're randomly assigned to have a way to put money on the line that they'll have to forfeit if they fail to pass a nicotine or urine tests six months later.”
Her research also showed too much rigidity if routine is counter-productive, she demonstrated this by observing two groups: one who conducted an activity at a set time and another who were less constrained.
“Consistency ended up being the enemy of habit, the group that was encouraged to be more variable in the way that they pursued this goal ended up doing it more in the long run.”
The group that had more of a routine became super rigid, she says
“If they missed their usual time, the one they got used to using for this behaviour, they just don't go to the gym at all, if they become a 7am workout person, it’s 7am or bust.”
This surprised her, she says.
“I honestly went into this research thinking, we should encourage routinisation. That's really the key to habit formation. And by the way, 80 percent of the psychologists we surveyed when we got the results of this study expected that to be the winner.
“This was a surprising but I think important finding. And it makes a lot of sense if you think about it in the context of the way we say practice.
“You would never practice always doing things under optimal conditions, A tennis player would never practice always hitting a forehand and exactly right position, you’ve got to run around, hit it off balance, and that's how you get good.
“It's sort of the same for habits and behaviour change. We've got to get flexible, we have to practice doing things in optimal and suboptimal conditions to build really robust behaviour change.”
