How To Change

"How to Change - The Science of Getting to Where You Want to Be" by Katy Milkman .

Key Takeaways:

• Fresh starts increase your motivation to change because they give you a real clean state or the impression of one; they relegate your failure to the past and boost your optimism about the future. Although fresh starts can be helpful for kick starting a change, they can also be disruptors of well-functioning routines.
• While fresh starts are great for helping you take the initiatives to begin pursuing a tough goal, they can also prevent you from pursuing it wisely if you dont take into account obstacles, such as present bias. Present bias (aka impulsivity), the tendency to favor instantly gratifying temptations over long-term rewards, might be a detrimental obstacle to change. Temptation bundling can help overcoming present bias by allowing yourself to engage in guilty pleasure only when pursuing a valuable activity that you tend to dread. Unfortunately, not all activities can be bundled with one another, meaning that temptation bias cant always help you tackle present bias when you are pursuing a change; it 's just one tool to consider.
• Gamification is another way to make goal pursuit instantly gratifying as long as you are choosing to use it to pursue goals that you want to achieve. Gamification works well when players "buy in" to the game. It can backfire if players feel the game is being imposed on them.
• Present bias might often cause you to procrastinate on tasks that serve your long-term goals. “Commitment devices” are constrains that reduce your own freedom in the service of a greater goal and can help overcome procrastination. “Commitment devices” can come in many forms, such as hard penalties like “cash commitments” or soft penalties such as public pledges.
• Sometimes you might fail to follow through on your intentions due to laziness, distraction or forgetting, with forgetting being the easiest of these obstacles to overcome. Timely reminders can be very effective; prompting people to form cue-based plans can be equally useful. Cues can be anything that triggers your memory with planning having the benefits of helping breaking goals into bite-size chunks.
• Laziness (aka follow the path of least resistance) can stand in the way of change. You can though turn laziness into an asset that facilitates changes by selecting defaults wisely. Unfortunately, you cannot often rely on onetime solutions (i.e., set it and forget it). The next best option is then to engineer a habit. Habits are like default setting for our behavior. The more you repeat and action in familiar circumstances and receive some reward (e.g., praise, pleasure, or cold hard cash), the more habitual your reactions become. To make the habit to stick, you should allow for flexibility, track your behavior, aim for streaks and whereas possible piggyback new habits on old ones.
• Often failure to act isn't related to lac of knowledge but rather to self-doubt, also called "lack of self-efficacy". Self-efficacy is a person' confidence in their own ability to control their own behavior, motivation and social circumstances. Self-doubt can keep you from making progress on your goals or even prevent you from setting goals in the first place. While giving people unsolicited advice can undermine their confidence; asking them to give advice can help building confidence. Surround yourself with mentors who believe in your potential. Set ambitious goals but allow yourself a limited number of emergency passes when you slip up so to remain confident.
• Your decisions are heavily influenced by the norms in your peer group, so it is important to be in good company when hope to achieve a big goal. The closer you are to someone, and the more their situation resembles your own, the more likely you are to be influenced by their behavior. Watch peers who have managed to achieve whatever goals you hope to achieve and “copy and paste” their methods. If the achievements of your peers though feel out of reach, witnessing about social norms can discourage you from pursuing change. Before using social norms to influence anyone, take moral responsibility seriously.

I leave you with Katy’s very own words at the conclusion of her book:

If you have tried hard to achieve a goal using all the wizardry that you can master but still aren’t seen results, it ‘s good time to consider new ways to reach the same end. Not only the obstacles that you face require tailored solutions; you also need tailor goals that acknowledge and match your strengths and weakness. With a tailored approach that suits you and your circumstances, change is within your grasp”.