Everyone, we assume, wants to be their best person. Few of us, perhaps, none, hits all their marks in this pursuit even if the way toward the goal is generally apparent. If you want to know how to do a better job hitting those marks, whether its walking 10,000 steps, learning Esperanto, or quitting smoking, a good person to consult would be Katy Milkman. Working at the nexus of economics and psychology, Milkman – the James G. Dinan Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and co-founder of the Behavior Change for Good Initiative at Penn – studies the almost alchemical process of turning good intentions into solid actions.

In this Social Science Bites podcast, she details for interviewer David Edmonds some of the biases and some of the critical thinking processes that both define and then overcome the obstacles to changing our behavior. These range from concepts with such academic names as present bias and temptation bundling to the more colloquial ‘what the hell effect’ and its antidote, the emergency reserve. But the point of her research – especially as it gets translated to the public through her podcast Choiceology or her 2021 book How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be – is to find practical ways to change yourself.

For example, she explains that “it’s important for goals to be measurable and achievable, although they should be a stretch. You know, if your goal is ‘exercise more,’ how can you measure that? How could you even set a commitment device, for instance? … It’s also important to have a plan of, sort of, when will I do it, where will I do it, how will I get there. These are called “implementation intentions.” I think the most important part of them is they associate a cue with the action. So just like an actor needs a cue to know when to say their lines, we need to not forget to take action on our goals.”

Her influence in turn is felt practically. Choiceology, for example, is sponsored by the brokerage house Charles Schwab, and Milkman has been a consultant for organizations ranging from the U.S. government and Walmart to 24 Hour Fitness and the American Red Cross. She is a former president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making and a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.

To download an MP3 of this podcast, right-click this link and save. The transcript of the conversation appears below.

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David Edmonds: You want to exercise more. Simple, just do it. Unfortunately, it turns out that changing our behavior – even when we want to – is not straightforward. There are many psychological obstacles to change. But Katy milkman can help you. Professor Milkman teaches at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and presents the podcast Choiceology. She is also the author of How to Change.

Katy Milkman, welcome to Social Science Bites.

Katy Milkman: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Edmonds: Today we’re talking about change. How to change, if we want to. Perhaps you can explain what forms of behavior we’re talking about. What sorts of things do people typically want to change in their lives?

Milkman: Yeah, well, for this, it’s, I think, easiest to think about new year’s resolutions. That’s a moment when a lot of people are thinking about this kind of change, trying to improve some aspect of their personal, their work, their spiritual life, their finances, right? Maybe people are thinking, I want to save more, or I want to run a marathon and get in shape, or maybe they have professional goals that have been unachieved. They want to climb the corporate ladder or become a serious academic and figure out how to complete a dissertation. So, whatever those goals are, they’re all aspirational goals of changing some aspect of your life through greater achievement.

Edmonds: So obviously there are lots of obstacles to change. Some of these obstacles are external; they’re things I can do nothing about. There might be laws against what I want to do. But what you’re talking about is understanding internal obstacles, psychological obstacles. These are the ones you’re mainly focused on, obstacles in the brain, in the mind.

Milkman: That’s right, yeah, there can be many, many external obstacles to change. Maybe you don’t have the financial wherewithal to make the changes that you dream about, or maybe your physical health is an obstacle. And I don’t study those obstacles. They’re very important, but they’re outside of my area of expertise. What I study is, even if you have everything lined up magically, which is very hard to do of course, in your external situation, there are still things inside you that can be barriers to change. A lot of people who have all of the resources you could imagine, still struggle to stay fit or to save sufficiently or to achieve their goals at work or their relationship goals. So, it’s really about understanding what can get in your way that’s inside you, and how can science help you overcome those barriers.

Edmonds: When I think of those psychological barriers, I’m principally thinking of weakness of the will. Part of my brain wants to diet. Another part loves chocolate. Is that the main mechanism preventing us from achieving our goals, or there are others?

Milkman: I don’t call it ‘weakness of the will,’ I’d call it ‘present bias,’ but that’s certainly a big one. Or you could call it impulsivity, and this is this very well studied challenge we have where we have long-term objectives and then we have short-term impulses, and they’re not often aligned. And specifically when it comes to thinking about the way our brain works, what present bias means is I overweight instant gratification over a long-term reward. So if I’m choosing between something that will be good for me now and something that will be good for me later, you might think that the balance would be even. I’d sort of weight those evenly. Or you might think that the balance would be tipped in one direction or other. Maybe I overweight the future because the future looms large. But that’s not what happens at all – I dramatically overweight the present. It looms much larger. It’s called present bias, and this can be a major challenge. You know, tomorrow I’ll go to the gym. Tomorrow I will get my finances in order. Tomorrow I will get back to all of the folks waiting for email replies and so on.

Edmonds: So that’s present bias. But that’s not the only obstacle.

Milkman: That’s right. Present bias is just one of many obstacles that can get in our way. Some of the others that I think are important are forgetfulness, which, of course, we tend to forget how much this can get in our way, but if something is not top of mind, we’re very unlikely ever to get around to it. So we have to find ways to keep things high on our level of attention. Habits are really critically important. I think of this barrier as having to do with our focus on efficiency. We look for shortcuts and sort of what’s the easiest way out.

In my book, I call this laziness, but I think some people take that as an insult, and so I’m describing it in a little more academic terms here. In general, our operating system is designed to prefer the easiest, shortest path to our goals, and that means we fall back on habits when there’s a little bit of friction that gets in our way, we are easily deterred, and so we have to overcome that feature of the way our mind works.

Some other barriers that aren’t always present, but can be present depending on the circumstances, are things like confidence. If you don’t believe you can achieve your goals, then it’s going to be very difficult for you to actually put your mind to it and put your effort towards goal achievement. And there are situations where confidence can be an obstacle. There are also plenty of situations where people have plenty of confidence and they still don’t succeed. But confidence is an important barrier to be on the lookout for in certain cases, and it can be particularly detrimental to groups