Do you often sign up for online courses but never really start learning?

Do you often decide to eat healthy food when you are sick but go back to your old ways as soon as you recover?

Do you often aspire to find better career opportunities but do nothing more than consuming a few inspirational videos?

I often do. In fact, all of us do. It’s a problem called the “Intent-Action” Gap.

On this Episode, I have Anurag Vaish, Co-founder of India’s leading Behavioural Science firm, Finalmile Consulting, to help us understand the reasons for the huge gap between what we commit/Intend to do and what we really do. At Finalmile, Anurag has led projects across domains such as Financial Services, Health Care, Education with the goal of designing system to achieve compliance and Adherence. On this Episode you will learn

1. 3 major reasons for Intent - Action gap

2. How to strengthen your commitments

3. The power and limitations of “Inspiration” in driving action. 

List of Questions from the Episode

1. Does reading Behavioral Science books such as Nudge, Thinking fast and slow etc. help people change their Behaviors (04:50 )
2. What are the major reasons for Intent Action Gap? (07:40 )
3. Is it practical to recreate the decision making context (13:25 )
4. Consider a person who wants to move out of his job and become a food blogger. How can the idea of setting relevant goals and constantly evolving your goals help him stay persistent? (15:54 )
5. Do you think tangible, visible feedback for your actions can consistently push you forward (23:21 )
6. What is a commitment & how can we strengthen our ability to act on commitments (25:43 )?
7. Do you think joining communities (Online or offline) increases our chances of acting on our commitments (31:28 )
8. By writing our commitment, do we fool our brains into thinking that we have already acted on it? (35:58 )
9. In what situation is removing barriers more beneficial than providing nudges to achieve the required behavioral change? (38:27 )
10. Can you walk me through the process you use to identify barriers that a person is facing while performing an action? (40:36 )
11. How effective are inspirational books and speakers in influencing human behaviors in the long term? (45:38 )
12. Are we humans by default very lazy? (47:30 )
13. Summary of 3 big take aways (50:57 )