Katy Milkman's book, How to Change, is a love letter to science, a friendly reminder of human frailty and magnificence, and a kickass self-help book.
Trained as an engineer and computer scientist, Milkman approaches the “ooey-gooey” nature of human complexity as an engineering problem.
She reframes our bad habits and dysfunctional tendencies as “features” that we can turn to our advantage much of the time.
Lazy? Milkman thinks that's one of our best qualities. It prevents us from wasting time doing unnecessary stuff in unnecessarily arduous ways.
How to exploit our natural instinct to preserve energy: create defaults so that doing the right thing is the path of least resistance.
We can't use that strategy in every situation, but we can use it a lot more than we think.
Conforming? Everyone tells us to “be ourselves,” and parents warn against the risks of peer pressure by asking if we would jump off a bridge if everyone else was doing it too.
Exploit that impulse by surrounding yourself with emulable (not a word; thanks, little red dots in my editor) people and deliberately try to “copy and paste” their effective strategies and tactics.
Impulsive? Tie your challenging work to pleasure: listen to Harry Potter and Alex Cross when you work out (but only when you work out).
And so on.
The only fatal flaw in Milkman's universe, it seems, is hubris – a refusal to acknowledge our weaknesses and limitations, which then prevents us from acting to counter them.
In our conversation, we actually covered very little of How to Change, which is fine because you're going to get the book and read or listen to it yourself (on the treadmill is fine).
Instead, we talked about the nature of scientific research: the joy of discovery, the stepwise and unglamorous nature of progress, the benefits and challenges of increasing diversity and inclusion in the social sciences, and how scientists can disarm their own tendencies toward confirmation bias once they've woven particular theories into their identities.
We did spend some time on the tactic Milkman has dubbed “temptation bundling” – that trick where you take a task you're likely to procrastinate and combine it with a treat (audiobook, social time with friends, wine, etc.).
I love that it works, and I had several knee-jerk moral objections to it, all of which Milkman handled with ease. So my mind is changed, even though I'd prefer a world in which my prejudices were correct.
We talked about the one line in emails that dramatically boosted rates of vaccination in recipients, and the fact that we really don't know why it worked.
We covered the reexamination of the dogma (which I believed until this conversation) that external rewards suppress intrinsic motivation. (It turns out that this is almost certainly an artifact of the laboratory conditions of the studies that first proposed this theory – sorry, Alfie Kohn).
And we talked about Milkman's work on racial and gender bias, and how a very substantial and solid body of scientific evidence about what works to reduce bias has been collected, even as the public discourse remains polarized and moralistic rather than empirical.
You'll love this conversation if you love science, behavior change, and laughter.
Links
How to Change
KatyMilkman.com
The Choiceology Podcast
The Person You Mean to Be, by Dolly Chugh
Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely
Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do, by Jennifer L. Eberhardt, PhD
What Works: Gender Equality by Design, by Iris Bohnet
Blind Spot: Hidden Biases of Good People, by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald
Punished by Rewards, by Alfie Kohn
Dr Howie Jacobson
This podcast is a labor of love and a way to give back to the world that has given me so much. That's why there aren't any sponsors (except me :).
My day job is helping leaders and their teams master their mindsets to remove all obstacles to heart-centered high performance.
Here are three gigs that I do:
1. Executive and Senior Leadership Mentoring and Facilitation
I work with high performing executive teams in organizations — and executive teams that need to become high performing. My focus is mindset mastery, because it’s our mindsets that either support high performance or get in the way.
At this level, everyone’s got the skills and experience to excel and contribute at the highest level. What holds people back is mindset stuff: specifically the triggers that get them out of creative engagement and into fight-or-flight defensiveness.
My practice is all about teaching people to respond differently to those triggers by updating old maps — essentially removing the glitches that the triggers grab onto.
2. Executive Coaching: Quick Wins for High Performance
I work with individual executives and leaders, one on one. The program is called Quick Wins for High Performance, and what we do is, we work strategically on one or two areas that are holding you back and keeping you from performing at your best.
We reverse engineer the presenting problems — too much work and not enough time, underperforming employees and teams, maddening organizational inefficiencies, etc — and identify and rewire the suboptimal mindsets that are behind those problems.
The work is all about updating your mental maps so your actions and responses are always appropriate, proportionate, and strategic.
3. High Stakes Conversations for Fast Growing Small Business Teams
I help small business teams have high stakes conversations with skill, humor, and grace. When people feel safe, they can do their best, most creative, most collaborative work.
So that's what I do. If you'd like any of those results, drop me a line and tell me about yourself.
You CAN Change Other People!
Well, that's what Peter Bregman and I claim in our provocative book of that title.
What we really mean is, you can bring out the best in the people around you. If you think you're powerless to help people change, it's because you've been going about it the wrong way.
Discover our straightforward, replicable process here: You Can Change Other People.
Music
The Plant Yourself Podcast theme music, “Dance of Peace (Sabali Don),” is generously provided by Will Ridenour, a kora player from North Carolina who has trained with top Senegalese musicians.
It can be found on his first CD, titled Will Ridenour.
You can learn about Will, listen to more tracks, and buy music on his website, WillRidenour.com.
Gratitudes
Thanks to Plant Yourself podcast patrons – Kim Harrison – Lynn McLellan – Brittany Porter – Dominic Marro – Barbara Whitney – Tammy Black – Amy Good – Amanda Hatherly – Mary Jane Wheeler – Ellen Kennelly – Melissa Cobb – Rachel Behrens – Tina Scharf – Tina Ahern – Jen Vilkinofsky – David Byczek – Michele X – Elspeth Feldman – Leah Stolar – Allan Kristensen – Colleen Peck – Michele Landry – Jozina – Sara Durkacs – Kelly Cameron – Janet Selby – Claire Adams – Tom Fronczak – Jeannette Benham – Gila Lacerte – David Donohue – Blair Seibert – Doron Avizov – Gio and Carolyn Argentati – Jodi Friesner – Mischa Rosen – Michael Worobiec – AvIvA Lael – Alicia Lemus – Val Linnemann – Nick Harper – Bandana Chawla – Molly Levine – The Inscrutable Harry R – Susan Laverty the Panda Vegan – Craig Covic – Adam Scharf – Karen Bury – Heather Morgan – Nigel Davies – Marian Blum – Teresa Kopel – Julian Watkins – Brid O'Connell – Shannon Herschman – Linda Ayotte – Holm Hedegaard – Isa Tousignant – Connie Haneline – Erin Greer – Alicia Davis – Heather O'Connor – Carollynne Jensen – Sheri Orlekoski of Plant Powered for Health – Karen Smith – Scott Mirani – Karen and Joe Crabtree – Kirby Burton – Theresa Carrell – Kevin Macaulay – Elizabeth Rothschild – Ann Jesse – Sheryl Dwyer – Jenny Hazelton – Peter W Evans – Dennis Bird – Darby Kelly – Lori Fanney – Linnea Lundquist – Emily Iaconelli – Levi Wallach – Rosamonde McAtee – Dan Pokorney – Stephen Leinin – Patty DeMartino – Mike and Donna Kartz – Deanne Bishop – Bilberry Elf – Marjorie Lewis – Tricia Adams – Nancy Sheldon – Lindsey Bashore – Gunn Marit Hagen – Tracey Gulledge – Lara Hedin – Meg from Mamasezz – Stacey Stokes – Ben Savage – Michael K – David Hughes -Coni Rodgers – Claire England – Sally Robertson – Parham Ganchi – Amy Dailey – Brian Tourville – Mark Jeffrey Johnson – Josie Dempsey – Caryn Schmitt – Pamela Hayden – Emily Perryman – Allison Corbett – Richard Stone – Lauren Vaught of Edible Musings – Erin Hastey – Sean Owens – Sagar Naik – Erika Piedra – Danielle Roberts – Michael Leuchten – Sarah Johnson – Katharine Floyd – Meryl Fury – for your generous support of the podcast.
Disclosure
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