Ep 205. Katy Milkman: The Science of How to Change

Katy Milkman is an award-winning behavioral scientist and the James G. Dinan Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She hosts Charles Schwab’s popular behavioral economics podcast Choiceology and is the co-founder and co-director of The Behavior Change for Good Initiative, a research center at the University of Pennsylvania with the mission of advancing the science of lasting behavior change.  This work is being chronicled by Freakonomics Radio. Katy  has worked with or advised dozens of organizations on how to spur positive change, including Google, the U.S. Department of Defense, the American Red Cross, 24 Hour Fitness, Walmart and Morningstar. 

In this episode, Stew talks with Katy about her new book, How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. Katy shares her very practical advice about how to craft a way to get things done that is tailored to your own particular stumbling blocks whether it is failure to launch, impulsivity, procrastination, forgetfulness, laziness, lack of self-confidence, or a desire to conform to expectations. Katy describes some of her book’s evidence-based strategies for overcoming these obstacles to change -- strategies such as temptation-bundling, commitment devices, and cues -- and when and how to use them to increase your chances of successfully implementing change in your life.  

Here then, is an invitation, a challenge, for you, once you’ve listened to the conversation.  Think of something you’d like to change but haven’t yet and come up with a temporal link to your actually doing so by defining your starting time as a fresh start or reset in the creation of a new definition of who you are.  Share your reactions to this idea, this episode, and suggestions for future episodes with Stew by writing to him at [email protected] or via LinkedIn. 

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