Want to Help Yourself Make Positive Changes?

Key Highlights

• Katy Milkman, behavioral science researcher and author of How to Change, has research-backed paths to personal growth
• Actionable lessons for individuals, managers and mentors to help goal-oriented people achieve their goals

“Mind-Boggling Statistic”

Katy Milkman, behavioral science researcher and author of a newly released book titled How to Change, was motivated to write this book by a statistic she read in the New England Journal of Medicine a decade ago.

Milkman calls the statistic “completely mind-boggling”: 40% of premature deaths are due to behaviors that can be changed.

Milkman wants more people to know what and how they can change their behaviors to help them prevent their own premature deaths and to help them reach their goals, both work goals and personal goals.  Here you go:

“Too Much Rigidity is the Enemy of a Good Habit”

Based upon double-blind research studies Milkman and others have conducted, giving yourself some slack, a little flexibility is the way to make a new habit you want to develop stick.

Let’s say you want to develop the habit of working out regularly. We’ve all been told that people who stick with a consistent routine, a consistent and set time to work out form the most regular, long lasting workout habit.  Not so.

One group in a Milkman study was encouraged to go to the gym at a set time; one group was encouraged to work out whenever they could fit it in.

Results?  Members of the set time group didn’t work out if they missed the set time while the other more flexible group developed more lasting workout habits.

The lesson?  A key factor in developing a habit is having some flexibility.

Strategy to Beat Procrastination

Procrastination is a bear. Just ask anyone you know as chances are, everyone you know procrastinates at least some of the time.

People, according to behavioral scientists and economists, say we all value rewards we can get right now rather rewards we’ll achieve in the long run. This is called “present bias.”

Many of us are used to having other people set boundaries on when we have to do something.  Those boundaries can be deadlines or restrictions that have penalties attached to them.  If we don’t do X, Y or Z before the deadline, then we get a penalty.

The penalty could actually be financial.  If you don’t do something when you’re supposed to do it, you have to pay for it.

The strategy here?  Instead of having someone else impose a deadline for you, impose the deadline on yourself.  In other words, choose your own deadline.

And if you don’t do whatever you’re supposed to be doing before the deadline, impose a fine on your self.  Of course, you must commit to paying the penalty if you don’t follow through with your goals.  These are called, according to Milkman, “cash commitments.”

Be Publicly Accountable

Just like using cash commitments to help you stop procrastinating, you can use public accountability as a motivator and as a way to actually enforce a penalty on yourself.

One of the reasons to have a coach, for example, is to have an accountability partner. You tell your coach that you’re going to work out regularly and or that you’re going to regularly and consistently do lead generation…and then you don’t do it?

That, according to Milkman, “…is basically a penalty, right?  Because now you have shame and embarrassment.”  You didn’t follow through on something you told your coach you would.  And your coach, your accountability partner, will hold you to not doing what you told your partner you would.

Change Is NOT One and Done

There is no quick fix that magically makes goals achievable. Lasting change requires lasting attention.

Milkman says, “The barriers to change…” – the barriers to achieving goals – “it’s not like those things just go away after you work on them for a month…those (barriers) are part of the human condition.”

In other works, there are no quick fixes.  Lasting change requires lasting attention.

Thanks to National Public Radio.

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