The Science of Identity, Believing in Yourself & Setting Goals w/Katy Milkman Part 1 EP 1151

Today's guest is Katy Milkman, who is an award-winning behavioral scientist and Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She hosts the popular behavioral economics podcast Choiceology, and is the co-founder and co-director of The Behavior Change for Good Initiative. Her research is regularly featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and NPR. And in this interview Lewis and Katy get to dive into some of the research for her new book, How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. This was such a powerful and enlightening conversation that we had to split it up in 2 parts!In this first episode Lewis and Katy discuss the biggest internal barriers holding you back from changing your life, how our sense of identity helps and hurts us, what science says about how to believe in yourself more, why setting big goals is actually hurting your ability to succeed, what “Commitment Devices” are and how they lead you to a better life, and so much more! For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1151Check out Katy's website: www.katiemilkman.comThe Power of Erotic Intelligence with Esther Perel: https://link.chtbl.com/732-podFind Lasting Love with Matthew Hussey: https://link.chtbl.com/811-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 1,151 with behavioral scientist Katie Milkman.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:28Lewis Howes?

  William Shakespeare once said, "We know what we are, but not what we may be." And neuroscientist Abhijit NASCAR said, "Global harmony is only the reflection of humankind's internal harmony." I'm excited about this. Katie Milkman is an award-winning behavioral scientist and professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and she hosts the popular behavioral economics podcast, Choiceology. She's the co-founder and co-director of the Behavior Change for Good Initiative, and her research is regularly featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and NPR. And in this interview, we dive into some of the research of her new book, How to Change: The Science of Getting From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. It's such a powerful and enlightening conversation

• 1:12Lewis Howes?

  that we made it into two parts. And in this first episode, we discuss the biggest internal barriers holding you back from changing your life, how our sense of identity helps and hurts us. This was huge for me. What science says about how to believe in yourself more, why setting big goals is actually hurting your ability to succeed, what commitment devices are and how they lead you into a better life, and so much more. And if you're enjoying this, make sure to share this with someone that you think would be inspired by this as well. And a quick reminder, click the subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to subscribe to the School of Greatness so you can stay up to date on the latest and greatest from this content here on this podcast. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Katie Milkman.

• 1:58Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. Very excited about our guest. We've got Katie Milkman in the house. So good to see you.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  So good to be here.

• 2:05Lewis Howes?

  Very excited. I've been excited to learn more about your research, all the science, all the studies you've done on how we can really change from where we are to where we want to be. And I feel like a lot of people are stuck in their lives, whether it be relationships, finances, or just in their own mind of like feeling lazy and not motivated. And you've been breaking down the science for a while and I'm excited to dive into this. There's a stat that I saw, a recent survey by one poll that said 80% of people feel stuck in their lives. I'm curious, why do you think it's so hard for people to want to change and create the life that they truly want, the desires they have, the dreams? Why is it so hard when there's that many people feel stuck to actually make those changes?

• 2:48Speaker 01

  It's a great question. And I think there's, there's sort of two categories of barriers that are important. One of them is structural and social and sort of outside of your own control.

• 2:58Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Right? We've got inequality. We have, you know, just the world is tough and it throws a lot at us. That's, there's not as much we can do about that in this conversation. So I want to focus on the second category because that's what I study and that's the internal barriers that can prevent us from reaching our goals and that can make us feel stuck. And internal barriers, one of the biggest actually is status quo bias. This is something that behavioral scientists have been studying for many decades. It's a tendency to want to stick to whatever path you're on, to feel like any deviation from it will be a loss. It's frightening. It's overwhelming. And so it leads a lot of us to keep doing things that aren't productive, to stay in ruts.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  And, you know, the book I wrote and the science I do is really focused on, okay, say you want to change and status quo bias is working against you. What are the tools and techniques that you can then use to figure out how do you, how do you get like escape velocity from that status quo bias?

• 4:00Lewis Howes?

  So give me an example of, or I'll give you an example of, there seems to be like a lot of people who are in relationships that aren't fulfilling them. Or maybe they talk about their partner or their spouse to their friends and family often about what's not working and what they don't like about this person or. Them thinking about getting out of it and they're doing this for months or years. But maybe they're so used to the pain or they're just comfortable with the frustrations that it's, they stay in it because it's less painful than the unknown of something else or being alone or what? Would that fit into the status quo bias?

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it absolutely would and it would also fit into escalation of commitment, which is another bias that has been extensively documented, the tendency we have when we're on a path to stick to it in part because we tend not to ignore sunk costs. So a sunk cost is like something that you can't recover, like.

• 4:54Lewis Howes?

  It's like three years of my life with this person, all this time invested, I can't get that back.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  That's right. You can't get it back. All the birthday presents that you purchased and obsessed over.

• 5:04Lewis Howes?

  The house we bought together, the trips we've taken on, the family integrations.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  All of those things that they're irrecoverable, they're historical, they're behind you, you can't get them back. So maybe the house you bought actually is recoverable and not called a sunk cost.

• 5:17Lewis Howes?

  The time.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  But yeah, the time. We tend to wait that and we shouldn't. What you need to do is think about what are my options going forward? You know, what are the costs and benefits of either path? Staying with this person or, you know, moving on? What are those cost benefit paths? But we focus on these sunk costs and think, oh, I can't give that up. But you're not going to get it back no matter what, whether you stay in it or not.

• 5:37Lewis Howes?

  It's in the past.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  It's in the past. And so this is a really pernicious bias. And I think it's part of the reason that we would stay in a relationship or in a job that isn't working out. Escalation of commitment is really common and the sunk cost bias is a big part of that.

• 5:49Lewis Howes?

  Escalation of commitment, status quo bias. So what's the biggest interior, internal barrier that holds us back, would you say?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Oh my goodness. Well, I mean, this is the barrier in the sense to deciding you want to change, right? So right now, we're sort of like before I even write my book, which is about how to change once you've decided to. There's a lot of people who haven't decided they want to change. So I would, I would say status quo bias and escalation commitment are like sister brother biases. They're, they're really closely related. They're both. Keeping us stuck in the mud. And then where most of my research comes in is, okay, you actually have already raised your hand and said, like, I know I need to change. It's time. How do I do it? And so that's, that's a whole different set of barriers, actually, that become challenges. Because even once we decide we want to change, even once we've ignored the sunk costs and gotten over this, that it's quo bias, now we have a whole bunch of things holding us

• 6:41Speaker 01

  back from actually getting to where we want to be.

• 6:44Lewis Howes?

  What are those things?

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:46Lewis Howes?

  What are those things?

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Let's go. Let's do it. Okay. So there's a whole bunch of them. The first one is actually literally the getting started problem.

• 6:53Lewis Howes?

  Yes, yes.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  So you know you want to change, but like, when are you really going to do it? You know, when are you going to jump into the deep end? So that's, that's a first barrier. And I opened the book with that because obviously, you know, where you can open a book about change is with getting started. Then I go to probably the, the next most important, and that is impulsivity. The fact that we tend to overweight the instant gratification we'll get from our decisions, like, it's going to taste so good to eat this, or it's going to feel so great to scream at this person, or, you know, it's going to be really exciting to buy this instead of setting aside money for retirement. All of those kinds of, we focus on the present at the expense of our long-term benefits.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  That's another major barrier, figuring out how do you get through that hump.

• 7:40Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Procrastination is related to impulsivity. We put things off because they don't feel great in the moment. So I think of that, it's a closely related, but it's another barrier. Then we've got forgetting, which I actually think most people underestimate the importance of, but we, you know, we forget a lot of important things and we put, we don't get to things because it's just not at the top of the priority list and we don't put it there and we mean to put it there and we don't. So forgetting, I think is-

• 8:05Lewis Howes?

  What do you mean by forgetting? What's an example of that?

• 8:07Speaker 01

  So another way it's often talked about is like flake out. Like, you know, I'm gonna start focusing on retirement saving. I'm gonna set up the auto deduction eventually. I'm gonna get a colonoscopy. I know I need to get one of those, but I haven't gotten to it and I just keep flaking out on it. It doesn't come to top of mind when I could do something about it. We put it off, we put it off and suddenly we're at retirement without accumulating any savings. And suddenly, you know, we're having an exam and we find out if only we had early detection, we would have had a better outcome. Right? So those, that's what I mean when I say sort of forgetting or flake out. So that's another category of barrier that can forget change. It's like sort of on the priority list, not high enough that you ever- Make it at the top and and you keep putting off and forgetting. So that's another.

• 8:47Lewis Howes?

  Why is it so hard or why is it so hard for us to get started? Once we know, OK, now it's time to make the change. But it's still hard to actually get started in doing that. What holds us back from that starting step?

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, our motivation to make change is actually just like our motivation to do anything. By the way, tends to be sort of, you know, it ebbs and flows. There are times when we are in a more reflective, action oriented, change oriented mode. And times when we're more pessimistic or just sort of going with the flow because we're, you know, in the middle of things. And so actually I've done some research on something I call the fresh start effect. This is with Heng Chen Dai, who's down the street at UCLA, my former student and Jason Reese, senior fellow at Wharton. And what we have have shown in our work is that there are certain moments that feel like a new beginning in life.

• 9:38Lewis Howes?

  Like when?

• 9:39Speaker 01

  So one that you know about already.

• 9:41Lewis Howes?

  New Year's or?

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly right. Like you didn't need me to come here and tell you about any fancy science. You're like, yeah, I know about New Year's.

• 9:47Lewis Howes?

  Birthday, New Year's, yeah.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, there are moments that feel like, like, OK, I'm turning a page.

• 9:53Lewis Howes?

  An anniversary, a graduation.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Move to a new community.

• 9:57Lewis Howes?

  A new job, a new city, yeah.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  You got it. Those are all fresh start moments. Actually, there's trivial ones too, but they can matter. Like the start of a new week can feel like a fresh start.

• 10:06Lewis Howes?

  That's true.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  You sort of sit down and you go into work maybe for the first time in a couple of days. You feel fresh at your desk, ready to sit and think about what are my priorities in a way that you wouldn't in the middle of a week. Start of a new month, following celebration of certain holidays, particularly the kind that we associate with fresh starts. So those are all moments when we feel like we've opened a new chapter. And we we have a couple of things that go on at those moments. One is that we feel like, OK. This is a moment when I want to step back and think big picture about things. Because you recognize that there's that break point. You think actually about your life, like you're a character in a book. That the way we organize our memories and structure them, it's not linear completely. Instead, it's like, you know, the college years, you know, the years playing sports.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  The years, the years living in Boston, whatever they are. That's how you structure your memories. And that means there's actually implications for the way you live your life. Because when you get to one of those chapter breaks, that's when you do this big picture thinking.

• 11:03Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  And you also tend to feel like your identity is shifting, right? So you like step into a new role as you, you know, I'm, I'm turning 40 in the year ahead. And that feels like a big break to me. Like I will be in a different age category. When I became a professor, I vividly remember. Like that was a huge shift in my identity. I felt like a different, okay, I have a different set of expectations and roles and ways I should sort of dress and talk. And that identity shift that can come, even if it's something as, as small as, you know, you're stepping into a new year and you feel like the new year knew you, you can look back and say, well, you know, last year, my old job, when I was a graduate student, I didn't manage to eat right. But that was the old me and this is the new me.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  And so you feel this sense of optimism and disconnect from those past failures.

• 11:50Lewis Howes?

  Right. I've had this belief, maybe correct me if I'm wrong, or maybe you have some science that could back this or dismantle this. I had a belief that living a good life is not enough for you to want to change. There's got to be some type, like if you're, 80% of my life is good. Like I've got a good relationship, I've got a good job, I've got, things are 80% there. It's like, I feel like there needs to be some type of breakdown, massive breakdown for us to realize, okay, there's a near death experience that I had, a near death or a death in the family or a friend. There's a, a loss of a, a relationship, there's a loss of a job, there's a loss of an expectation that you really had a dream for.

• 12:31Lewis Howes?

  These kind of bigger breakdowns, I feel like make us reflect stronger towards wanting to make a change.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  I totally agree. So first of all, I will say, I do not personally have fantastic data on this, but there are survey studies suggesting that those kinds of experiences lead to identity shifts, which can lead, of course, as I've described in this other line of work, to the sense of a fresh start and the belief that you want to turn the page. So it's the same principle at play, absolutely. And I think the mechanism, to use like a nerd term, is really the same, right? So it's that something shocking happens, it's sort of a wake-up call, leads you to step back and do that big-picture thinking, and it creates this disruption in your narrative.

• 13:15Lewis Howes?

  Because I feel like it's easy to procrastinate, or kind of feel lazy, which is part of your process as well. It's easy to feel that when things are okay. When things are like good, but they're not like, it's not a big enough pain for you to be like, I need the moti- now I have motivation to make a change.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, I agree with that.

• 13:34Lewis Howes?

  Do we need a bigger pain, or is it possible to create exponential change or transformation when things are okay or really good, in your thought?

• 13:43Speaker 01

  It's so interesting. You know, I do think that even when things are good, we can have these kinds of fresh start

• 13:50Lewis Howes?

  We gotcha.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  ...experiences that shape us in positive ways. I'll give you an example. I was, I had a phone call, I was driving here from Santa Barbara this morning, I had a phone call with a friend who just got tenure. And he is thinking big, his life is great.

• 14:06Lewis Howes?

  For those who don't know, what does that mean?

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, fair enough. Not everyone is part of my weird world.

• 14:10Lewis Howes?

  Academic world, yes.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Okay, so in academia, if you're a professor, this is like the be-all and end-all of your career. You're working really hard, you get your PhD, you get your assistant professor job, you work really hard, you write a bunch of papers, you teach a bunch of classes. And if your university says, you know, you're doing great, if you're good enough, they bestow upon you tenure, which means permanent job. Job security basically can't be fired unless you do something illegal. And they're saying like you have now total academic freedom. We're no longer going to be evaluating you.

• 14:38Lewis Howes?

  We trust you.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  We trust you. And it's like this bizarre institution. It's created to help people take risks. But it is a big moment in the life of an academic when they get to that milestone. It's like there's nowhere else to go. You've climbed to the top of the mountain. And so it's really exciting. It often happens to people around their 40s, sort of like midlife, when you might already be having some introspection going on about like, why am I here? What's my purpose? So a lot of academics step back at that moment and think, what do I want to do now? What do I want to do next? I've been climbing and climbing to this point. And I was having this conversation with a friend on the, on the drive here, who had reached that point and was having that exact, okay, what's next? And wanted to talk about writing a book since I'd written a book. And like, what is that like?

• 15:23Speaker 01

  He thinks that might be the next big adventure for him. But nothing is wrong. Everything is right. It's just that he reached a moment. He reached an achievement. He, he got to the top of a mountain and looked around and realized, okay, I've climbed to my goal. And it's time to figure out what the next one is. And I think that can be a fresh start too, when it's positive.

• 15:41Lewis Howes?

  Identity is something that is, is interesting to me. How important is the way we shape our own identity or view our identity in terms of where we are to where we will be? Like if we stay stuck in old identities, how do we shed identities? You know, how do we create a new identity even though we've never actually lived it? Will that help us get there? Can you share more just about identity in general on how it hurts us or helps us?

• 16:07Speaker 01

  It's, it's a fantastic question. And I, I'm going to give you a somewhat, first I'm going to give you a somewhat frustrating answer. It frustrates me. I don't feel like academic research has wrapped its arms around identity the way I would like it to. Because I think it is unquestionably so important, right? The labels we put on ourselves obviously matter. But I feel like we don't know nearly as much as we should. It's one of the things I'm most interested to study.

• 16:32Lewis Howes?

  It's your next book.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Moving, maybe, maybe. We know a little. What are the things I think is most relevant to the way? I think about identity is mindset. Which is, it's different than identity, but a mindset can come with, or it can be triggered by an identity. And one of the barriers we haven't talked about yet to change that I think is really important is whether you believe you can change. And identity and mindset are a big part of that. So, we know a lot about mindset from work, for instance, by Carol Dweck at Stanford, who's done this incredible-

• 17:04Lewis Howes?

  Growth mindset versus fixed mindset.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  Exactly. And that's sort of an identity, right? You identify with being someone who can grow, or you identify as someone who is X, right? Like, you know, I'm only this smart, I'm only this capable. So, in a sense, there's an identity that comes with believing you can grow, or an identity that comes with believing you can't. There's also wonderful research on the placebo effect. And how that extends beyond just medicine, right? We know about it in medicine, that like, if you believe a sugar pill is going to make you healthier, you actually experience physiological benefits. But there's some really interesting research showing it's beyond, you know, we think of it in this medical context, and that's where it was first studied. Actually, I learned from a children's book. Like, Ben Franklin studied this, and I don't know if you know mesmerizing-

• 17:51Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  That term comes from Dr. Mesmer, who was the original, sort of charlatan in France, who was giving people fake medicine and making care-

• 18:00Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Anyway, and Ben Franklin figured it all out.

• 18:01Lewis Howes?

  Sounds like a freaking Amish show.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  It does. It was like, and it's also a wonderful children's book.

• 18:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  I wish I'd known that before I wrote my book, it would have been in there. Anyway, there's a lot more, though, than just the medical component to placebo effects, right? When we believe that we will achieve something that also can improve our achievement, right? When we believe we're gonna get an outcome. One of my favorite studies that I describe in the book, that I think is sort of related to mindset and identity, is work by Ali Crumb, who's a psychologist at Stanford.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  She did this really interesting work with Ellen Langer of Harvard, where they randomly assigned housekeepers to one of two groups. And those housekeepers were either told, every day when you go and do your job in a hotel, you are getting exercise at the level that's recommended by the CDC. So you're getting a great workout when you do your job.

• 18:50Lewis Howes?

  You're burning a thousand calories, or you're getting whatever, like you're...

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Right. I don't know if a thousand calories is the definition.

• 18:55Lewis Howes?

  You're getting a great workout.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Oh, good workout, yeah. Maybe it's more like 300.

• 18:58Lewis Howes?

  Okay, okay.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Just not to get too overburnt. And then, another group just wasn't told that information. And the question actually was, are there differences in the outcomes those two groups experienced a month later in terms of health? So does a group that believes they're, you know, doing a job that comes with health benefits actually end up losing more weight, having more controlled blood pressure? And the answer was yes.

• 19:22Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Which is, you know, on the one hand, you're like, is that magic? Like, what's going on? On the other hand, you can start to see how it actually would play out and how this would be applicable in other settings. So they believed their job could give them a workout. And all of a sudden, maybe they're choosing to take the stairs from floor to floor to get those extra calories, or like leaning a little bit more when they're, you know, using the vacuum.

• 19:45Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  I live in a townhouse in Philadelphia, and someone pointed out to me, like, it's so great that you live in a townhouse, all that passive exercise when you run up and down the stairs. And now I am the one volunteering to, like, you know, go grab the ketchup that we forgot if we're gonna have dinner on a roof deck. That's exciting. I can get extra exercise. So there's like different choices that you make once you start to have a different set of beliefs about, you know, what you're achieving. So anyway, I think of this as related to identity, because if you're, now you're starting to have the identity of, I am someone doing a career that's physically active. And now you lean into that, and then you experience the benefits. So I think, I think the work on mindset is the best work I have seen. It's really rigorous, and it relates to identity.

• 20:30Lewis Howes?

  Belief supports you getting those results you want or making the transformation of the change you want. How would you suggest that we learn to believe in ourselves more from a scientific point of view? Like, what's the data suggest on, okay, if you say these affirmations, if you look in the mirror and do this exercise, if you just smile at people and you create more reflection of joy, like, what is the thing that you've seen in data that helps increase belief in oneself?

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the most powerful thing is who you surround yourself with.

• 21:01Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 21:02Speaker 01

  So I think the social context you create, the people around you have so much to do with whether or not you believe in yourself. And by the way, I also want to, I want to add like a really quick footnote because the academic in me can't stand not to, which is to say, you can, you can have excessive confidence and that can be harmful. So this is a little bit of a dangerous like seesaw we're on here, right? You want to be confident enough and believe in yourself enough that you're gonna lean into the opportunities and, you know, work towards the goals that, because you believe you could achieve them. But if you're like, I've got this, I'm perfect, you're not gonna practice, you're not gonna work hard. So there is, anyway, it's a, it's a little bit of a delicate balance. But back

• 21:43Speaker 01

  to how do you get to that right level of belief? Everything I know from research points to the structure of, you know, the people you surround yourselves with, whether it's the people you work with, the people you train with, if you're an athlete, the people you socialize with, they give you a lot of those beliefs in yourself. And you, you can choose them, but they, they will, with the messages they send you about what's acceptable behavior, what's normal, what they're achieving and how you measure up, it, it shapes so much about our confidence.

• 22:20Lewis Howes?

  Really? There seems to be, I, I think this is true, and I also love the examples of Some of the great athletes who have accomplished so much that were doubted over and over growing up and kind of have this chip on their shoulder like no one believed in them and they said I'm gonna go prove them wrong type of mentality which I think can get you extremely far in terms of success and results but never feeling this fulfillment inside.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  You'd never choose that, right? So I think what you're pointing to is like it's not a necessary condition.

• 22:52Lewis Howes?

  Right, it's not the best environment.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  It's not the only, yeah, yeah, there are people who can thrive without it but if you get to choose and if you want to create an environment where you're gonna believe in yourself.

• 23:02Lewis Howes?

  So you think surrounding yourself with the right people, the right environment of people, the right community, what, what should those people be like? You know, what should their attitude, their energy, their communication style be like with you? If people were reflecting on their five to 10 people in their inner circle, what should they reflect on? They should have these qualities, they should say these things, or, or here's some red flags. If your best friend tells you you shouldn't do this, or your best friend says, eh, I don't think you look good doing it, whatever it is, what are those flags and what are those, I guess, positive signs?

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, okay, here, here, let me pivot a little bit to another, we're doing a lot of academic stuff, but obviously I'm an academic. I'm actually gonna tell you a story about a person in academia who is the most important person in my career, and that's my, my dissertation advisor, who, his name's Max Bazerman, he's a Harvard Business School professor, great human being, but, and a great academic. What he's truly exceptional at is mentoring. His PhD students have gone on to be tenured professors, now everyone knows what tenure is, at every elite institution in the world.

• 24:08Lewis Howes?

  So he's good at instilling belief in other people.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Unbelievably good.

• 24:11Lewis Howes?

  Confidence, belief.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  Unbelievably good, and he, he does all the other things that you need to do to help someone succeed, right? Like, you know, good coaches, right? You know, he, you know, the, the training, like the actual teaching of skills, all those things are part of it, but I think he creates an environment for people to thrive and it actually took me a while after I had graduated as one of his advisees and I was trying to advise my own students and figure out what was the secret sauce that made him so wildly more successful as a coach and mentor than anyone else in our field had really, I mean, stratospherically more successful. And what I realized is he had all the obvious stuff, all those obvious ingredients, like, you know, you know, responsive and knew his stuff and gives you, gives you feedback, but...

• 24:56Speaker 01

  But there was an unshaking belief, like he treated you like family. He was there for you. He believed that you could do it. He always was giving that positive reinforcement. Another thing that he did that I think is so interesting and related to research is he sort of created, I'll call it like mentoring circles within the students he was coaching. So that we were not always just being coached or mentored and advised by him. Right, but he would put us in the position to advise more junior students.

• 25:26Lewis Howes?

  Smart.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  So there's this wonderful research that I write about in the book by Lauren Eskris-Winkler, who's a professor at the Kellogg School at Northwestern. And she had this amazing insight when she was doing research for her dissertation. She noticed that she was interviewing all these people who were struggling to achieve their goals. And as she asked them what they thought might help them achieve more, because that's what she was interested in, how do we increase achievement? They all had these really deep insights, you know, struggling salespeople and C students. When she got them to introspect, they actually knew a lot. They maybe just hadn't gotten there and no one had asked them. They also really liked being asked, like, what's your advice? How would you coach someone who was in your shoes?

• 26:09Speaker 01

  And she realized most of the time when someone is struggling or when we're coaching someone, our instinct, even if it's unsolicited, is to just whip out some advice. Like, here are the seven things that I think will help you get further. And it can be really demotivating because it conveys like, I think you're kind of, you know, you haven't gotten your stuff together.

• 26:26Lewis Howes?

  You don't have the answers.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  I'm going to give you the answers. And that's our instinct. And she thought, what if we flipped the script? What if instead of putting our arm around someone and giving them advice, we said, you know?

• 26:37Lewis Howes?

  What would you do?

• 26:38Speaker 01

  What would you do? And actually, literally-

• 26:40Lewis Howes?

  How would you coach someone else?

• 26:41Speaker 01

  And not even just how would you actually have them coach someone else? Like, put you in the role of a mentor and coach to someone else who has similar goals so that you feel like you're on a pedestal. Wow, someone- Trusts me to give this kind of advice. I must, I must, you know, be kind of cut out for this. Maybe I'm better at this than I thought. And then you're going to start introspecting in a way you might not if it was just your problem. Because you've got to help someone else and you don't, you know, you don't want to let them down. And then when you do that, you actually figure out, well, I've got some good ideas. And like, maybe I do know something. And then, once you've told someone else to do it, you're going to feel like a hypocrite if you don't do it yourself.

• 27:17Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  So this is another sort of social trick. Max would put us in these sort of advice giving circles where the senior students are working with the junior. And he rarely gave advice, actually.

• 27:27Lewis Howes?

  He more facilitated the experience for you to learn and create the answer within yourself, I guess. By helping others.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  By helping others. And he would, you know, he's nudging along the way and like, good job, or like, maybe a little redirection. But, and if you go to him and you're like, I need to know how to do X, he tells you. But there wasn't a lot of steer, like, backseat driving.

• 27:49Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  If that makes sense. And I think that also helped build confidence that like, it made us believe in ourselves in those roles. And I now actually have an advice club of people who are former Max students. Maybe no accident. We sort of try to keep this going even beyond that point in our lives where he was coaching us. And each of us were at similar career stages, all professors, similar goals. And we reach out to each other for solicited advice whenever we're facing a challenge, a career challenge, and aren't sure what to do. And it's, it's just been totally amazing. So it's this peer group of people who support each other, care about each other. There's friendship, that's all built in.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  We see others achieving and it helps us see, oh, if they can do it, I can do it. But then also we get to give advice and we grow from that as well.

• 28:41Lewis Howes?

  What would you say are the top three or five things that a coach can do to instill belief in someone else that you witnessed from him or that you've also seen with your peer group?

• 28:53Speaker 01

  I think, I think a lot of positive feedback is super important. That that's like the predominant. Sense is that this person thinks I'm doing great, even if they're also telling me ways I can improve. Because you don't want to only, obviously. It's really important to also get, well, like, a little more like this. You need that nudging, but it needs to be with a positive. Sometimes people call it a feedback sandwich, right? You like start with positive, anyway. So I do think that positivity and conveying they believe in you. I think creating social structure for you, which is one of the things Max did. There was sort of a whole ecosystem of other students and supporters and who were all striving towards similar goals. And instead of feeling like we were in competition with one another,

• 29:38Speaker 01

  it was very clear that we were all part of a team. Almost every email starts with, "Hi, team." These are academics all vying for jobs and to sort of achieve. And you could see it being very cutthroat and competitive. We weren't on a team, right? We weren't playing for a team. But we were a team. And that was how we saw ourselves. And then the structuring, you know, everybody structured to help others who were below, you know, below them. It's sort of part of your role is working with them. So those are a few of the key things. I'm not sure I've hit your number.

• 30:07Lewis Howes?

  Positive feedback, social structure, supporting the team.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, putting people in the role of advice givers or supporters and mentors.

• 30:14Lewis Howes?

  I think you, yeah, he said, you said he believed in you. He treated you like family, mentoring circles, yeah.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, so maybe we have hit the number you asked for.

• 30:26Lewis Howes?

  That's great. I love that.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Those were the keys.

• 30:28Lewis Howes?

  I love that. How does someone build confidence within themselves if they feel like they're not confident? Maybe they don't have this mentor, this social structure to instill that. They don't have the people around them. Are there ways we can build inner confidence without other people believing in us?

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, well, so first of all, I do think you can go out and find these people, even if you don't have them, and that we should proactively be creating those structures, right? So say you want to, I'm going to make up a goal. Say you want to run a marathon, right? A lot of people decide at some point.

• 31:03Lewis Howes?

  I just, I just.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Did you run a marathon?

• 31:05Lewis Howes?

  No, yes, two days ago I started training for my first marathon, which is in three months, which is a small window of training time, but it's very sore today.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 31:16Lewis Howes?

  So I've been, I made the commitment earlier in the year, but then the marathon keeps getting delayed with the COVID. But now it's happening in November, so.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Congratulations.

• 31:24Lewis Howes?

  Well, I haven't finished it yet, but yes.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  You're going to?

• 31:26Lewis Howes?

  Yes, I will, exactly.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  I can see the confidence. I know you'll do it.

• 31:30Lewis Howes?

  I will.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  That's really exciting.

• 31:32Lewis Howes?

  I'm surrounding myself with a coach, with a team of support people who've done it before, who are encouraging. Like, I'm not just saying, I'm gonna go do this on my own.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Exactly, not downloading an app and saying it'll just be the app.

• 31:43Lewis Howes?

  Because I know it's gonna be challenging. I know it's something I've never done. It's something that has scared me my entire life. I know it's not supposed to be this easy, like, walk in the park. It's a marathon. And so I've set up the structure and the accountability and the schedule to follow through on the action steps needed in order to set myself up for the best possible position for, you know, staying healthy and finishing it and all these different things that I want to do for my goals.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 32:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  You already know all of this.

• 32:11Lewis Howes?

  I'm a former athlete, so I've learned this.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, in the athletic zone. That's funny. I do, I mean, obviously, I know you're a former athlete, but I do think we underappreciate, at least when we're young, how much those skills translate.

• 32:26Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  And like, so many of the lessons about, you know, how do you structure practice? What are the, you know, in my book, I was a tennis player, so I talk a lot about like, insights that actually came from that sport.

• 32:37Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  And then eventually influenced my research and understanding of, okay, if you want to build a habit, the best way to do it is not like, standing in the same place, doing it exactly the same way every single time.

• 32:47Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  That's never how you would practice in sports. And that would never work out when you're out on the field or out on the court, right? You've got to be in variable conditions and preparing for anything.

• 32:57Lewis Howes?

  Worst-case scenarios, yeah.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  Right. And yet, often, I think scientists and, you know, and anyone who's trying to create structures and success, make mistakes that if you looked at it like an athlete and you said like, well, how would an athlete tackle a parallel problem? We would know that's not going to work. Like, it's too rigid, it's too, it's too much expectation of things being perfect.

• 33:21Lewis Howes?

  Perfect, yeah.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:23Lewis Howes?

  You talked about habits and behavior. What is the difference between a habit and a behavior? And which one should we be focusing on more in order to get to where we want to be? Changing our behaviors or changing our habits?

• 33:37Speaker 01

  A habit is a subset of behavior. It's a pretty narrow subset, actually, if you look at the like true scientific definition. So Wendy Wood of University of Southern California is the, I think, the world's expert on habit. And she would define it pretty rigidly as something you basically do automatically without almost consciously realizing you're doing it, right? Like you sort of make the coffee in the morning with the coffee maker, you hit the buttons.

• 33:58Lewis Howes?

  Brush your teeth, you're just like showering.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  You shampoo your hair, right? And you're like, did I do the shampoo already? I was thinking about something else.

• 34:04Lewis Howes?

  You're drunk at work and you don't know how you got there. You're like, what?

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Because you're on autopilot, right? So that's like, those are the really rote activities. Like you hand sanitize if you're working in a hospital and you didn't even notice you did. Did I do that already? Those are habits. I think there's been a lot of excitement and growth of like in the popular press, the idea that a habit is anything that you want to repeat. And I think that would actually, a lot of the things that we think of and that we talk about casually as habits are probably more in the category of routines, which is different. Like often, it's like if you're going to the gym, is it really a habit? You probably remember deciding to go to the gym. Maybe you do it at this consistent time. Maybe you do it a lot. But I would start calling a lot of these things more like routines if you want to talk about the non-academic.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  At any rate, you know, a little bit like inside baseball, who cares? But I do think it's interesting, there's distinction in the processes that drive one versus the other. I mostly, I study behavior, which is like a super category. It's even above routines or habits where, and it's just all behavior change requires different behaviors to happen. Some of them are going to be on autopilot, some of them are going to be routine, and some of them are one-time decisions that have big implications for your life. So I actually think having all of those categories in mind when we think about change is really important as opposed to narrowly focusing on one or the other.

• 35:29Lewis Howes?

  So what is the definition of a behavior?

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Oh, that's an interesting, like, what is a behavior? A behavior is an action you take. Like, really, everything is behavior. If it's inside your head, it's not a behavior, then it's like a judgment. But any, any actual action you take is a behavior.

• 35:49Lewis Howes?

  Any action you take. So what is, what are the most common behaviors that we have? That, I guess, hold us back? And then what are the behaviors that?

• 35:58Speaker 01

  Okay, I thought you were gonna go with most common. And I was like, breathing.

• 36:01Lewis Howes?

  No, the most common behaviors that, that hold us back.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:05Lewis Howes?

  And then the most common behaviors of the ultra high performers, successful, you know, in business and sports. What are those behaviors that they tend to, to lean into? Versus the ones where people are stuck?

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Okay.

• 36:22Lewis Howes?

  Trying to ask you questions you've never been asked here.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  They're great.

• 36:25Lewis Howes?

  It's my role.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  They're great, they're really great questions.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Okay, let me start with some of the most common behaviors.

• 36:34Lewis Howes?

  That keep us stuck.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  That keep us stuck.

• 36:35Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think common behaviors where we get stuck are, and this is like, you know, what are the most common New Year's resolutions? They're to change those behaviors that we get stuck on. So the most common things we get stuck on are things related to our health, right? We aren't making good decisions about what we eat, what we drink, whether we smoke, whether we're physically active. Those are really common points where we get stuck. Our finances, right? Making good financial decisions on a daily basis about how we spend our money, how we save, who we give our money to. Those are places people often get stuck. We can get stuck in bad social loops. We sort of started by talking about relationships. So I think that's another place we get stuck, whether it's we're, you know, not, we're,

• 37:19Speaker 01

  we feel like we're too shy, we're not meeting enough people, we're meeting the wrong people, we're in the wrong relationships. That's another area where we get stuck. I think education and career are sort of, I'd put them, because they're like, one follows the other, and that, that's another category. Like, if you're a student, you're trying to achieve, but we often get stuck on not really studying rigorously and, and, you know, putting the time in, the focus in, and then that converts to work where we're not being as productive as we could be, we're not setting ourselves up for success. So I think those are some of the common categories that get us stuck.

• 37:50Lewis Howes?

  And what are the behaviors of the ultra performers or the elite who are accomplishing all their goals and pursuing their dreams? What are those behaviors that they do really well?

• 38:01Speaker 01

  So I have never gone and interviewed the ultra performers and said like, "List for me all your behaviors." So instead of answering your question perfectly, what I'm going to do is tell you some of the behaviors that research shows lead to great outcomes. And then certainly, I have seen lots of top performers where I go, "Oh, you're totally doing that." It's great. So I think one of the most important things is leaning on structure as opposed to expecting to just sort of follow the Nike just do it mantra. And by the way, when you talked about how you're training for your marathon, I noticed you immediately went to all the structures.

• 38:43Lewis Howes?

  Schedule, structure, accountability, coaching, investing money into it all. So there's more investment in it. So it's like, you've got to show up.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 38:52Lewis Howes?

  That is like, for me, it's so ingrained in me that if you want to accomplish your goals, you've got to schedule these things you've got to do on a daily basis and make it like...

• 39:01Speaker 01

  Break it down. What's the daily goal?

• 39:03Lewis Howes?

  What's the daily thing?

• 39:03Speaker 01

  When are you going to do it? What's going to cue you to do it? Who's going to watch you do it?

• 39:07Lewis Howes?

  Everything. What's at stake for you? What's at stake for other people? What's the higher purpose? That if you don't do this, who are you going to be hurting?

• 39:14Speaker 01

  And who is literally holding you accountable, right? You've got your coach involved. So those are the kinds of things that...

• 39:19Lewis Howes?

  So structure is one of the leading academic, the research that shows which will help you get more results.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Yes, and there's so many pieces of that. And like, each one of them, we could unpack and talk about studies from... You know, okay, a big one is too often people say, "I just have this big goal." You know, this big, I think if I set a big audacious goal. And by the way, that's good. It's good to set stretch goals. But then you've got to break it down, like into the, what are you going to do this week? What are you going to do today? What are those component parts? And people get a lot further. Research by Alvin Dura, the late Alvin Dura of Stanford, great thinker, sort of did some of the pioneering work on this. We just did a field experiment where we tested with thousands of people who wanted to be volunteering 200 hours a year. And they had committed to that goal. And we found that just...

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Sending them reminders not to volunteer 200 hours a year, but to volunteer four hours a week led to vastly better performance. Just that really simple change, even in the way you communicate about this. When you invite someone to start saving $5 a day instead of $150 a month, you get vastly higher take up.

• 40:28Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  Identical. So just little framing shifts where you think about, let's break this down into the bite sized component. Now it's harder to procrastinate on it. You can see how it's doable. It doesn't feel overwhelming.

• 40:39Lewis Howes?

  So you're saying if my goal is to save $105 or invest $105 a month, or whatever this is, are you saying it's not the best approach to say, I'm going to invest $105 a month, but I'm going to do $5 a day?

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, so 100.

• 40:54Lewis Howes?

  I can't remember what this.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's 150 because it's like 30 days roughly in a month.

• 40:58Lewis Howes?

  $150 as opposed to saying, I'm going to save or invest $150 a month. Trick your brain into saying, I'm going to invest $5 a day.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:07Lewis Howes?

  You're saying by doing that, what should happen?

• 41:10Speaker 01

  Many more people raise their hand and say, I can do this.

• 41:13Lewis Howes?

  As opposed, $150 is too big for some people.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  It sounds big. You start thinking like, oh no, where am I going to have to cut? Like that's a bit like, I'm not going to get to go out to dinner three times that I thought I was going to get to go out to, am I going to make my rent? So you're like focusing on that big category, $150. And this was an experiment that was done led by Hal Hirschfeld at UCLA with a savings app, Acorns. And they just invited people either some people get randomly assigned, do you want to save $5 a day or $150 a month? It's literally the identical outcome. They will take $150 out of your account.

• 41:48Lewis Howes?

  Monthly.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Monthly. But they framed it differently and you get vastly higher take up. Something like five times more people are interested. It just feels doable.

• 41:57Lewis Howes?

  Yes. I mean, it's like anyone can find $5 on their couch or like car, like the change is like, I can do this every day. But 150 bucks may be like a big stretch.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Right. But it is the same thing. And so that broken down goal is really important.

• 42:09Lewis Howes?

  So as opposed, so it's like if you're working out as opposed to saying, I'm going to run, I don't know, 50 miles a week. It's like, that may seem like a lot, but I can run, what is that broken down to? Three miles, four miles a day, five miles a day. It's more doable than thinking about the big number, right?

• 42:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:26Lewis Howes?

  That's interesting. How could you apply that in another area of life, do you think? In terms of like fitness, in terms of finances, and what about like relationships? I don't know, is there?

• 42:36Speaker 01

  I think you can break down most big goals into its component parts. It might not be as simple as like literally redoing the math. But it might be, you know, I want to have a better relationship and I want us to spend more quality time together. Let's try to spend a lot more quality time together this year. Well, first you can get more concrete, right, than a lot of. And so, say you had a monthly goal, it might be like, okay, I want to make sure that we go on, you know, five just us dates a month to have that alone time. You might say that means, you know, every Friday plus one Saturday, we're gonna do it. And that means, you know, once a week plus one time, one week that has two times. And we're gonna, let's go map out when they are. It all becomes more bite sized and achievable.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  And this is again, you said, you're like mapping out your schedules. These are the the component parts that actually add up to achieving your.

• 43:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and I would think of like, okay, what am I gonna do this week? What am I gonna schedule this week? Not like, I've got all this stuff to do for the next three months, like, what can I do for the next few days? And what's coming tomorrow? And then, okay, I see the full week and how am I gonna manage my time? And at the end of the week, wow, I can look at what I created and I can be proud of it and build for the next week.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's really important.

• 43:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and time's gonna keep passing. And in three months, you're gonna look back and say, oh, look at all those steps I took to get to me where I'm at.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 43:55Lewis Howes?

  Winning the LA marathon, I'm just kidding.

• 43:59Lewis Howes?

  Completing is the goal. Completing in five hours is my goal. Okay, so that's.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  So breaking down.

• 44:05Lewis Howes?

  Leading on structure.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Structure, let me, let me add another super important strategy that I think a lot of high performers use that research supports. And this one, I think, is vastly underappreciated, too. And it sort of relates to what I was poking at earlier, like the just do it Nike, like, no, that's not really right. I think this is really a misconception that's related to that. And the idea comes from research by Aileth Fishbach of the University of Chicago and Caitlin Woolley of Cornell. And what they showed is that if you ask people, when they have a big goal, what approach are they going to take to try to get to it? Most people say, like, I'm going to look for the most efficient route. It's all about efficiency. What's the most effective path to that end goal? That's how I go for it.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  And like, a small fraction of people say something different. They say, I try to find a way that I'll enjoy getting to that end destination.

• 44:57Lewis Howes?

  Have fun.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Have fun. So you could think about someone who wants to, we've been on marathons, say you're training for a marathon, you know, somebody who's like, I'm going to just go to the gym and get on the treadmill and grind it out.

• 45:10Lewis Howes?

  And be hard every day.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. And another person is like, I'm going to go on a run with a running group. We're going to go through, you know, on the most beautiful trails that I know. We're going to do it together. Maybe I'm even going to download some great reading material, listening material before I go, so that I have something fun in my ears. Those are really different paths, right? Like, this one might be more efficient, because you don't have to coordinate with other people. You'll do it every day. You're going to, like, know exactly your mileage. It's going to be really controlled.

• 45:37Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  But it turns out, if you don't enjoy it, you don't persist.

• 45:41Lewis Howes?

  Ah.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  And so, they've done experiments where they showed that if you just actually encourage people to choose the most fun way to pursue an exercise goal or study, they did this with students in math class, you know, giving them fun activities that were sort of going on in the background. You can use markers and play music and have snacks, versus just grind it out. People achieve more because they persist longer when they find ways to make it fun to do.

• 46:09Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  What's good for them. But we misunderstand this. We don't think we need that. We sort of think like, oh, that's kid stuff. Like, I'm just going to push through. And we're wrong. We won't, ultimately. And that's because of impulsivity, because we overvalue the present experience relative to the long-term gains. It's just how we're wired. We don't appreciate that about ourselves, so we make these mistakes.

• 46:31Lewis Howes?

  We'll probably quit more frequently when it gets harder and harder, if there's no, like, daily joy or fun, if you're just like... I got six months, 12 months, two years until maybe this goal happens. This is exhausting, it's draining, it's pulling me away from having fun in my friendships or these activities. So it sounds like if you can make the challenging steps the fun activity in your day-to-day life, then you'll stick with it longer is what I'm hearing you say.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Absolutely, and I think it's so underappreciated.

• 46:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's so true. What about, what else around structure? You said there's a bunch of subcategories within structure.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:06Lewis Howes?

  And the importance of having structure for high performers.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  Yes, okay, so another, another really key thing is having if-then plans.

• 47:17Lewis Howes?

  I love that.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  So this is based on research by Peter Goldwitz of NYU, who studied the way people, different people were making plans around goals they wanted to achieve. And he found that some people sort of said, you know, "I will eventually do it," or "I'll do it, you know, I'll do it once a week." And other people laid out real detail in their plans. And they had sort of if-then statements like, "If it is a Thursday at 4:00 PM, then I will go train for my marathon in this location." As opposed to "Sometime this week, I'll get around to it." The more structured, the more clear it was, what's the cue that's going to trigger the behavior, the more follow-through he was seeing. And then he started running a series of experiments where he would actually have people basically fill in the blanks. Like, fill in the "if X happens, then I will do Y" sentence,

• 48:02Speaker 01

  instead of just saying, "I plan to do Y." And looked at what are the outcomes and saw this really matters. It turns out, we've done research showing that if people are prompted to just write down the date and time when they intend to get a flu shot, they're more likely to get a vaccine. If people are asked, "When will you vote, where will you vote, how will you get there?" On a call, trying to encourage them to go to vote in an election, they're significantly more likely to show up. So these like very simple tricks are being used widely in healthcare now, in voter turnout, because it's so powerful to create those if-then plans, instead of just sort of the flimsy ones to get to an end goal.

• 48:41Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha, okay. I like the if-then plans.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  If-then plans are super important, yeah. We haven't talked about tracking or accountability, although we've alluded to them.

• 48:51Lewis Howes?

  Let's do it.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  So those are other really important pieces of structure.

• 48:53Lewis Howes?

  Tell me, tell me more.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  So tracking does seem to be really useful in terms of achieving goals because if you're not, if you don't have visibility into whether you're getting anywhere, it's hard to reward yourself and rewarding yourself as part of the loop that makes you keep feeling satisfied and doing something.

• 49:10Lewis Howes?

  For the actual behavioral change to be implemented, right?

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Exactly. So it's a really simple thing, but this tracking does seem to matter. One of my favorite studies of this shows it actually in water conservation, where people were taking showers that were long and they were committed to conservation, but their showers were long, so that wasn't totally working out for them. And then they were randomly assigned to two groups. One group's getting something they know they're being monitored and someone else can see how much water they're using. The other group gets a visual. They can literally see in real time how much water they're using.

• 49:43Lewis Howes?

  Three minutes left, two minutes, like whatever.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  Well, it wasn't a countdown. It was just showing total gallons used.

• 49:49Lewis Howes?

  liters or gallons.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Right. So it's really visible. It's going up.

• 49:53Lewis Howes?

  You're wasting this much every moment, yeah.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Right. And you can think, like, oh, how much did I use total yesterday? So you could imagine that kind of thing.

• 50:00Lewis Howes?

  It's like gamification.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's related to gamification, although there were no stars and bells and whistles. It's more just, I know where I am and I know how much I've used.

• 50:12Lewis Howes?

  I'm a horrible human being for wasting this much water.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, that might be the kind of thought. Hopefully it wasn't that extreme, because then it could come with negative. But it had a big impact.

• 50:23Lewis Howes?

  Tracking, tracking and measuring.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Just having a sense, because then you can say, like, I hit the goal. You can make the goals more concrete that way. Like, I'm going to do 10,000 steps a day. My little Fitbit jiggles and it makes me happy. That's gamification. That jiggle gives me so much joy. But the tracking gives you visibility into how you're doing. It's important. And then accountability, which you've mentioned a bunch of times, does, absolutely the research supports. When someone else you care about, when they're holding you accountable, it matters because it changes the cost benefit calculus of achieving your goals.

• 50:57Lewis Howes?

  Is there research around that that proves that, or is it?

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. My favorite work, so this is in the category of what's called commitment devices. So it's a category that economists have been studying for decades because they find them really weird. So economists get really excited when they hear about commitment devices because they're like, "These shouldn't exist. It breaks all our theories." A commitment device is when you create some sort of penalty or constraint on yourself. So we're used to the government doing that sort of thing, right? They put their speed limits. They fine you if you're tempted to speed. And we're like, "Yeah, that makes sense." But what if you fine yourself or penalize yourself for not achieving your goals? That's crazy. Who would ever do that? And yet, lots of us do, and it's effective.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  And someone who's holding you accountable is sort of like creating a penalty. Because if it's now visible to someone else whether you've achieved more, you're gonna feel shame if you don't. So that's the penalty. If it's invisible, how you're doing.

• 51:56Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Now, you could say, "Also, they're gonna see the upside." So maybe it's not only a commitment device. There's also an opportunity for pride and so on. But we tend to... Losses tend to loom larger than gains to us. Accountability tends to, I think, be most potent because of the sense that you don't wanna let... You don't wanna fall down when someone's watching.

• 52:16Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  And commitment devices are generally extremely effective. The most effective ones are actually when you put money on the line.

• 52:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  So you can put cash down that you will forfeit if you fail to achieve a goal.

• 52:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  And research shows that that helps.

• 52:33Lewis Howes?

  That works.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  It works really well, so...

• 52:36Lewis Howes?

  Putting money down and saying, "Okay, I'm gonna pay $1,000 to something I don't believe in if I don't accomplish this goal, or if I don't do the steps at least to get there by a certain time."

• 52:47Speaker 01

  Exactly. And it's like...

• 52:48Lewis Howes?

  That'll incentivize you.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  You incentivize yourselves, which is very counterintuitive. "Why am I fining myself?" But it works. My favorite study is on smokers who wanted to quit. Half of them are given sort of your standard Swedish stuff. "Here's ways to quit." The other half are given all that stuff plus a commitment device. You can put money into this account for six months, and it'll disappear if you fail in a nicotine or codeine test in your urine at the end of six months. Thirty percent higher quit rate.

• 53:17Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  And they just had the ability to put that money in there.

• 53:20Lewis Howes?

  Now, someone once told me that you pay attention to what you pay for. And so in the coaching world, when you're investing in a book or you're investing in a coach, usually the more the investment in that book or program or coach, the more you want to pay attention to, to getting the result. Would that be similar to this study that's like, okay, if I put a hundred dollars in this thing, in six months, if I stop smoking, people are like, eh, a hundred bucks doesn't matter. But if I put a hundred thousand dollars in, I'm going to pay attention because that's a lot more money that I don't want to lose.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  You know what's really fascinating is it goes back to the very first thing we talked about, which is sunk costs and the tendency we have not to ignore them. So, you know, if you buy a book, it's sunk cost. You can't go return it. And well, maybe you can. But in most cases, if you dog ear it a tiny bit, or you're probably not going to return it. So you should ignore it. It's irrecoverable. It doesn't matter. But we don't. That's not how we're wired. And as a result, as a result of wanting to sort of recover that sunk cost, we do work harder when we feel like, oh, I've invested so much.

• 54:20Lewis Howes?

  More money.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So it's a trick. It's sort of a mistake that we do it, but it works. And so let's hook into that and use it to motivate us to achieve more.

• 54:30Lewis Howes?

  So the more at stake you have of your own, whatever, money or time or energy, the more likely you'll achieve that, that goal or make that change.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  It's just, yeah, you can change the cost benefit calculus moving forward. You can also, if you've invested in the past, then the sunk costs that we tend not to ignore will feel like they should change that. So there's sort of two ways, prospectively and retrospectively. You can put a bunch of money into something and then you're going to feel guilty if you don't do it.

• 54:57Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  Or you can use these commitment contracts where you literally put money on the line on, say, a website, one of these stick or bee minder that you'll have to forfeit if you don't achieve your goal in the future.

• 55:09Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  They're both tactics that can work for different reasons.

• 55:13Lewis Howes?

  Why do you feel like so many people, oh, actually, I was going to ask you about this. With people putting penalties on themselves, even if they don't have accountability or it's not a public commitment or something like that. If we...

• 55:30Lewis Howes?

  Say we're gonna do something and then we break our word to ourselves. Does that shift our identity? Or does that keep us in a lower level identity of less confidence, less belief in ourselves? But actually, when we keep our word, we increase the level of self-esteem and confidence, whether people know about it or not? Like, how does that affect our belief in ourselves or our confidence?

• 55:52Speaker 01

  It's a really interesting question. So, and specifically, you're saying, when we fail and it's visible to others versus when we fail and it's invisible, how does that change our confidence?

• 55:59Lewis Howes?

  It's more like, when we say we're gonna do something and we don't take those actions and we constantly, I say I'm gonna work out five days a week, but I'm gonna do one day. And I keep saying, "I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this," and I keep not doing it. How does that affect our belief in ourselves and our confidence when we continue to break our own word to ourself?

• 56:18Speaker 01

  Got it. Yeah, that's, as you, as you, you know, the premise of the question is right. Like, it's not good for our confidence to continually fail. We do have a really amazing, what Dan Gilbert of Harvard has called a psychological immune system, where we, we sort of figure out ways to still end up satisfied and somewhat happier than maybe we would if we took everything at face value, so we can bounce back. And I actually think fresh starts and the fact that the fresh start effect exists may be related to sort of the psychological immune system for all the failure that we, you know, we constantly fail at our goals. Goals are hard to achieve, most of them we fail at.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  And, and we have built these ways to sort of stand up again and say, "Okay, but this time it's gonna be different." And, and it's probably a good thing, by and large. But of course, it's, it's not perfect. And the more we fail, the more difficult it is to, for that psychological immune system to, like, to win.

• 57:21Lewis Howes?

  And what about the more we keep our word to ourselves, do we build more confidence and self-esteem and momentum towards achieving other goals as well, the other way?

• 57:30Speaker 01

  Sure, yes, absolutely, especially if we're tracking and we can sort of give ourselves that pat on the back, if it's visible to others, sort of the more things that reinforce what we're achieving, I think, the better in terms of giving us that boost and confidence. And it's interesting, there's some new work that's starting to be done on the power of streaks and visible streaks and sort of seeing like-

• 57:53Lewis Howes?

  Like momentum, like-

• 57:54Speaker 01

  Exactly, like if you, there's apps like Duolingo, it's just trying to get people to learn a new language and they're really making it prominent to you, you know, look, you've done it five days and we'll keep the streak going and they're really trying to play into that momentum and psychological momentum and streaks, they do build and they make us feel like, okay, you know, I don't want to lose what I've achieved and accomplished, and that's very motivating.

• 58:15Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, okay. What would you say is the number one thing we need to know about changing our behavior for the better? Ooh, I love this. And if you want to know the answer to that last question, then make sure to check out part two, coming soon, where we talk about making pledges and why they're the key to accountability, how to temptation bundle, and why this skill is so important for creating new habits, why we need to be more flexible with our goals, and so much more. Part two is going to be just as powerful, but make sure to share this with someone that you think would be inspired on part one, lewishouse.com/1151, with Katie Milkman. Again, if this is your first time here, click the subscribe button right now over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, leave us a review and let us know what you enjoyed

• 58:58Lewis Howes?

  most about this episode and how it inspired you, the actions you're going to take in your life. And I want to leave you with this quote from Ralph Ellison, who said, "When I discover who I am, I'll be free." This is all about the discovering process of who we are in our lives, becoming more aware of what works for us, what doesn't work for us, where we are, and where we want to be. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, my friend, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And you know what time it is, it's time to go out there and do something great.