Katy Milkman, a Professor at The Wharton School, blends psychology and economics to tackle personal change. She discusses viewing change as both a mindset and a practice. Katy shares insights on navigating a male-dominated field, emphasizing community support for resilience. She highlights the power of fresh starts for motivation and the effectiveness of commitment devices in achieving goals. Additionally, she reveals how peer influence can shape our choices, making it essential to surround ourselves with achievers for personal growth.
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Temptation Bundling Personal Success
Katy Milkman shares how she used temptation bundling by listening to audiobooks at the gym to stop procrastinating exercise.
This personal experiment led to research proving combining fun with chores increases engagement and reduces procrastination.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Build a Peer Advice Club
Form an advice club with peers to support saying no and build confidence in male-dominated fields.
Giving advice boosts your own confidence and competence on shared challenges.
insights INSIGHT
Limits of Fresh Starts
Fresh start dates motivate goal pursuit by marking a new chapter in life.
However, without proper structures, fresh start motivation is fleeting and often leads to early failure.
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Atomic Habits by James Clear provides a practical and scientifically-backed guide to forming good habits and breaking bad ones. The book introduces the Four Laws of Behavior Change: make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, and make it satisfying. It also emphasizes the importance of small, incremental changes (atomic habits) that compound over time to produce significant results. Clear discusses techniques such as habit stacking, optimizing the environment to support desired habits, and focusing on continuous improvement rather than goal fixation. The book is filled with actionable strategies, real-life examples, and stories from various fields, making it a valuable resource for anyone seeking to improve their habits and achieve personal growth[2][4][5].
How to Change
The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be
Katy Milkman
In this ground-breaking book, Katy Milkman reveals a proven path to help readers move from where they are to where they want to be. Drawing on her original research and the work of her world-renowned scientific collaborators, Milkman shares strategic methods for identifying and overcoming common barriers to change, such as impulsivity, procrastination, and forgetfulness. The book offers innovative approaches like 'temptation bundling,' using timely reminders, and creating 'set-it-and-forget-it systems' to make change more achievable. It emphasizes the importance of tailoring solutions to specific roadblocks and using science to stack the deck in favor of successful change.
How would you approach change if you saw it as BOTH a practice AND mindset?
Katy Milkman has researched this and it’s clear she’s on to something. In today’s conversation and in her bestselling book, How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, Katy Milkman shows us how change is BOTH a combination of acquiring practical skills AND a rewiring our brains through new behaviors.
Katy Milkman is a Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and ALSO holds an appointment at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. Her research uses psychology and economics to explore how we can change for the good.
Katy has an accessible, practical demeanor and she’s able to distill complex bodies of research into easy to digest insights and she’s refreshingly honest about her own struggles with change. This episode is full of practical tools and helpful insights, and she also talks about how she’s learned to be more confident and assertive in the male-dominated world of higher education, and science.
She’s also one of those people you meet in life and talking with them is this lovely ride. And when you’re done you realize - HEY…I just learned A TON and that was really fun, too!
Show notes:
How To Change: The Science of Getting From Where You Are to Where You Want To Be: https://www.katymilkman.com/book
Spotify playlist for this episode: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2kjrnKaHpWmwmPJra47fjW?si=dae22796abb64144
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