How to Make Changes Stick

Hello and welcome to the newest edition of my newsletter! This week I’ll be sharing wisdom from Wharton School Professor and the author of How to Change, Katy Milkman. Additionally, I will also have my weekly Newsweek interview series, Better, at 12 pm EDT / 9 am PT/5 pm GMT today. I’m speaking with the co-founders of Likeable Media, Carrie and Dave Kerpen, about how to sell your business! For a calendar reminder, click here.

The previous week I found out that my LinkedIn Learning courses Strategic Thinking and Interpersonal Communication were both in the Top 20 as the #2 and #16 most popular courses around the world for 2021! Both courses are unlocked and free to everyone from September 1st until October 15th, so when you have a moment, check them out! Here is the link to my course on Interpersonal Communication.

The pandemic has forced change upon virtually every single person on earth, but what about the changes that we want to make for ourselves? Katy Milkman, a behavioral scientist, shared why real change in our lives is so difficult to achieve, and what we can do to overcome our own hurdles. I encourage you to listen to our conversation in its entirety, as every minute of this discussion was loaded with insightful perspectives and strategies to use. That conversation is available here. The following are just a couple of highlights from my conversation with Katy:

Use a life event to establish change:

“When we have an actual disruption in our lives - you move to a new home, take a new job, or become a parent, that’s a moment when there's a real transition in your routines and habits. This is an opportune time to change - in part because a lot of baggage falls away. If you were always stopping at Dunkin' Donuts on the way to work for a snack that you'll regret, and now you have a new commute because you're going to a new office, it's easier to change at that moment because you literally have a blank slate to build from. So if we can find moments that combine the two, that seems like the most powerful opportunity for change. A moment of disruption when some of the bad habits or the things that stand in your way might be washed away because you've moved, or you have a new role, or you have a new social network - that can be a really ideal time.”

Don’t use cheat days, have emergency reserves:

“There is some research done by Marissa Sharif, my colleague at Wharton, and also Suzanne Shu of Cornell on an idea they call emergency reserves. Say there's something you ideally would like to do every day. Whether it's eating healthy or going for a run or studying on an app to learn a new language or doing a mindfulness exercise. There's something called the ‘what the hell effect’ in marketing, where if you have a miss or two towards a goal, you often will give up and abandon ship completely. They ran a study where they gave people a goal of doing something seven days a week, try to never miss, or they'd give them a goal of doing something five days a week so you can miss twice, or they give them a goal of doing something seven days a week with two emergency reserves - get out of jail free cards. Meaning, if you had a miss we won't count it, we'll call it even. What they found is that people were vastly more successful and achieved their goal more regularly when they have this seven-day-a-week stretch goal, but they gave themselves a couple of get-out-of-jail-free cards. If it's an emergency and you allow yourself a get-out-of-jail-free card, hopefully, most weeks you'll do it seven days, but when true emergencies arise, you won't say ‘I give up on myself.’”

Creating a temptation bundle:

“When I was a graduate student, at the end of a long day I would come home from class totally worn out and I knew I needed to start focusing and doing my homework. And yet, all I wanted to do was curl up on the couch and binge-watch lowbrow TV. I also knew I really needed to be getting exercise to stay mentally with it, but I could not drag myself to the gym. Between all of this, I had a revelation. I thought, what if I only let myself enjoy that indulgent entertainment after a class when I'm at the gym? What I found is I would come home from class and actually crave a trip to the gym to find out what happened next in my latest thriller, and then when I came home I was energized and ready to do my work because I had gotten that entertainment hit out of the way. I call it a temptation bundle, making something that used to be a chore that I used to know was good for me in the long run but no fun in the short run. It became a pull, and it also prevented me from wasting lots of time when I should have been doing other things.”

Thank you so much for reading my newsletter! To learn more about Katy, check out her website at katymilkman.com. Next week, I’ll discuss how to become your own boss with the author of Fix Your Business, Melinda Emerson. For a calendar reminder, click here.

On a final note, if you want to make sure you never miss an episode of Better, we always upload the interviews to my YouTube page. To be notified when the newest episode is available, make sure to subscribe to my channel and you will receive a notification.

Wishing you health and success - 

Dorie