Book Review: How to Change – The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be

The book, written by the Wharton School’s professor Katy Milkman, is presented as a guide to develop a tailored approach to drive personal change and improvement. The author claims that “by diagnosing the internal obstacles you face and consistently using solutions customized to help you succeed, evidence and experience show that you really can get from where you are to where you want to be.”

The book presents some simple but useful insights. The nine main takeaways I got out of it are outlined below:

1. Getting started – an ideal time to pursuing change is after a fresh start… Fresh starts increase your motivation because they give you either a real clean slate or the impression of one; they relegate your failures more cleanly to the past; and they boost your optimism about the future. They can also disrupt bad habits and lead you to think bigger picture about your life.
2. Impulsivity – present bias (a.k.a. impulsivity) is the tendency to favor instantly gratifying temptations over long-term rewards… Temptation bundling entails allowing yourself to engage in a guilty pleasure (such as binge-watching TV) only when pursuing a virtuous or valuable activity that you tend to dread (such as exercise)… Temptation bundling solves two problems at once. It can help reduce overindulgence in temptations and increase time spent on activities that serve your long-term goals.
3. Procrastination – present bias often causes us to procrastinate on tasks that serve our long-term goals. An effective solution to this problem is to anticipate temptation and create constraints (“commitment devices”) that disrupt this cycle. Whenever you do something that reduces your own freedoms in the service of a greater goal, you are using a commitment device. An example is a “locked” savings account that prevents you from accessing your money until you have reached your savings goal… Making smaller, more frequent commitments is more effective than making larger, less frequent ones, even when they amount to the same commitment (like saving 5 dollars a day as opposed to 1,825 dollars a year)… Not everyone recognizes how much they could benefit from a commitment device. Those who don’t (“naifs”) tend to overestimate their ability to avoid temptation with willpower alone. Those who do (“sophisticates”) are better positioned to make change in their lives.
4. Forgetfulness – sometimes we flake out and fail to follow through on our intentions. Flake out has many causes, including laziness, distraction, and forgetting. Forgetting may be the easiest of these obstacles to overcome… Timely reminders, which prompt you to do something right before you meant to do it, can effectively combat forgetting. Reminders that aren’t as timely have far smaller benefits… Forming cue-based plans is another way to combat forgetting. These plans link a plan of action with a cue and take the form “When ___ happens, I’ll do ___.” Cues can be anything that triggers your memory, from a specific time or location to an object you expect to encounter. An example of a cue-based plan is, “Whenever I get a raise, I’ll increase my monthly retirement savings contribution”… The more distinctive the cue, the more likely it is to trigger recall.
5. Laziness – laziness, or the tendency to follow the path of least resistance, can stand in the way of change… A default is the outcome you will get if you don’t actively choose another option (such as the standard factory settings that come with a new computer). If you select defaults wisely (say, setting your browser’s homepage to your work instead of Facebook), you can turn laziness into an asset that facilitates change (say, wasting less time on social media)… Habits are like default settings for our behavior. They put good behavior in autopilot. The more you repeat an action in familiar circumstances and receive some reward (be it praise, relief, pleasure, or cold hard cash), the more habitual and automatic your reactions become in those situations… Tracking your behavior can facilitate habit building. It helps you avoid forgetting to follow through and ensures that you celebrate your successes and hold yourself accountable for failures.
6. Confidence – self doubt can keep you from making progress on your goals or prevent you from setting goals in the first place… Giving people unsolicited advice can undermine their confidence. But asking them to give advice builds confidence and helps them think through strategies for achieving their goals. Giving advice can also help us act, because it can feel hypocritical not to do the things we advice other people to do… Consider forming advice clubs with friends or colleagues attempting to achieve similar goals or consider becoming a mentor to someone. By giving (solicited) feedback to others, you can boost your confidence and unearth helpful ideas for making progress in your own life… Your expectations shape your reality. So, convey to people that you believe in their potential, and surround yourself with mentors who send those same positive signals to you… Set ambitious goals (say, exercise every day) but allow yourself a limited number of emergency passes when you slip up (say, two per week). That strategy can help you stay confident and on track even when you face occasional, inevitable setback… Adopting a “growth mind-set” – recognizing that abilities, including intelligence, are not fixed and that effort influences a person’s potential – can help you bounce back from setbacks. You can also teach other people to adopt a growth mind-set… Focus on personal experiences that make you feel successful or proud. This kind of self-affirmation makes you more resilient and helps you quash self-doubt.
7. Conformity – when you are facing self-doubt or uncertainty about how to proceed, a powerful way the people around you can help boost your capacity and confidence is by showing you what’s possible… Your decisions are heavily influenced by the norms in your peer group, so it’s important to be in good company when you hope to achieve big goals, and it can be harmful to have peers who are low achievers… Just describing what behavior is typical (assuming it’s a desirable behavior) can be an effective way to help other people change their behaviors for the better… 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… Because you care about gaining peer approval, feeling watched by groups of other people changes your behavior.
8. Changing for good – “when we diagnose someone with diabetes, we don’t put them to insulin for a month, take them off of it, and expect them to be cured. In medicine, doctors recognize that chronic diseases require a lifetime of treatment. Why do we assume that behavior change is different?“
9. Behavior change – Cass Susntein and Richard Thaler argued that because humans make predictably imperfect decisions, managers and policy makers can and should help them avoid common mistakes (behavioral economics). The idea was that by nudging people toward objectively better choices (say, by putting healthy foods at eye level in the cafeteria or simplifying the paperwork necessary to apply for government aid), you could improve their lives a little at no cost without restricting their freedom… That is what this book is about.