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00:01:34.640 | Hello and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading

00:01:43.640 | your life, money and travel all while spending less and saving more.

00:01:47.760 | I'm your host, Chris Hutchins, and not only am I excited to have you on my

00:01:51.960 | journey to find all the hacks, but I am really excited to have you here for

00:01:55.920 | today's interview because I get to talk to Kristen Berman, who is a top

00:02:00.480 | researcher in the field of behavioral economics.

00:02:03.440 | She co-founded Irrational Labs with famed professor Dan Ariely, where they've

00:02:08.240 | worked to bring behavioral science to life inside of hundreds of big and small

00:02:12.160 | companies.

00:02:12.720 | She also co-founded Common Sense Lab at Duke University.

00:02:16.120 | She was a founding team member at Google's Behavioral Science Unit, and she

00:02:20.360 | co-authored a series of workbooks called Hacking Human Nature for Good, a

00:02:24.120 | practical guide to changing behavior.

00:02:26.120 | Finally, she just launched a new podcast called The Science of Change, where she

00:02:30.840 | talks with the leaders at major companies like Peloton and Credit Karma who are

00:02:35.160 | actually changing human behavior today.

00:02:37.320 | In our conversation, we discuss what research shows about why people act so

00:02:42.480 | irrationally, how we can actually start to change our own behaviors, why she

00:02:47.640 | thinks habits are overrated, and hear some of her favorite hacks for increasing

00:02:52.280 | happiness, whether it's during vacation or at your next dinner party.

00:02:55.920 | So I hope you enjoy this conversation with Kristen Berman.

00:02:59.400 | Kristen, thanks for being here.

00:03:05.160 | I'm very excited to be here.

00:03:07.200 | Yeah.

00:03:07.880 | So I have heard you speak a few different times, and I think it's so fascinating

00:03:14.240 | how people are completely irrational in many cases, even though a lot of what

00:03:19.160 | we've talked about on our show is about doing things the rational way, because

00:03:23.160 | it makes sense and you can earn more and save more, but you come with a totally

00:03:27.000 | different angle.

00:03:27.680 | So I'd love you to give some background on yourself and how you got into all of

00:03:32.480 | this.

00:03:32.800 | Wonderful.

00:03:34.200 | Yeah.

00:03:34.480 | So I'm a behavioral scientist, which basically means I study decision-making,

00:03:38.680 | but more than that, study basically the mistakes that people make in their

00:03:42.280 | decisions.

00:03:42.960 | And we tend to make a lot of mistakes, and these are for small decisions, they're

00:03:48.520 | for big decisions.

00:03:49.800 | And the reality is, even if you know about these mistakes, it's very hard to

00:03:54.400 | avoid them.

00:03:55.160 | So I may know that social norms influence my behavior, but if everybody else has

00:04:00.840 | bought this, you know, one purse or this computer, I may still be influenced to

00:04:05.960 | buy it, despite the fact that knowing that I don't want to be influenced by

00:04:09.560 | other people.

00:04:10.280 | So knowing about these biases and these psychologies aren't as helpful as we

00:04:14.800 | think to change our behavior.

00:04:16.800 | And so in behavioral science, the question would be is what is?

00:04:19.520 | And that's basically what we study.

00:04:21.920 | And the punchline tends to be that the environment of decision-making is

00:04:27.280 | basically the goldmine here.

00:04:29.240 | So I may like M&Ms, but if the M&Ms are close to me, I'll eat more of them.

00:04:33.760 | And if the M&Ms are farther from me with a lid on, I'll eat less.

00:04:37.200 | So my attitude, preference, and belief for something, these M&Ms in this example,

00:04:41.440 | matters much less than the environment that they're in.

00:04:44.920 | And when we understand that, it's very fun because you can basically change your

00:04:48.400 | environment.

00:04:48.880 | You can say, "How do I change my environment to change my behavior?"

00:04:51.800 | And with that comes a whole new toolkit of what you can do to improve your life.

00:04:55.480 | Is it as simple as just changing your environment and boom, that's easy?

00:05:00.320 | I now am saving more, eating healthier, and exercising?

00:05:03.560 | You know, nothing is simple.

00:05:07.000 | I think the difference is basically when you're doing it for yourself, you have to

00:05:11.000 | make a one-time decision to change your environment.

00:05:14.280 | So at some level, your motivation has to be high enough to not buy the chips when

00:05:18.200 | you're in the grocery store.

00:05:19.280 | And that is going to be easier than buying the chips and trying not to eat them

00:05:23.000 | every day.

00:05:23.560 | And so it still takes work, but the work is just different.

00:05:26.560 | It comes at one point versus, you know, spread out over daily decision making.

00:05:31.680 | Obviously, it's easier if a company does it for us.

00:05:34.680 | If Facebook would just limit the amount of time that we could spend on it, it'd be

00:05:39.200 | easier than us trying to set alerts and notifications that say, "Your screen time

00:05:44.280 | is four hours today," and then you have to make a decision about tomorrow.

00:05:48.080 | It's better if they do it for us, but it's possible we can do it for ourselves.

00:05:51.400 | And that's the upside here.

00:05:52.920 | Are there some examples of things that people often do wrong and ways that they

00:05:58.080 | could start to improve them to make life more intentional?

00:06:02.000 | Yeah, I mean, just talking about finances is interesting.

00:06:07.040 | I think if people spent a weekend setting up their account structure in a better way

00:06:11.240 | that they would make better financial decisions.

00:06:13.520 | We tend to think that we can spend less, save more, and make this as a daily or

00:06:19.840 | monthly decision.

00:06:20.640 | And a better way to do this is an account structure that automatically saves every

00:06:25.080 | month into an investment account or automatically saves into your goal account

00:06:30.400 | and potentially creating more rules of thumb for yourself by which you're not

00:06:35.360 | using your credit card for small expenses.

00:06:37.680 | Although I know that for points people, that's probably a sin.

00:06:40.520 | But for many people, you should not use your credit card for small expenses.

00:06:43.680 | And so there are different ways to do this, and especially for finances.

00:06:48.560 | But it does take some upfront motivation to do this.

00:06:52.520 | And same with eating, you know, we can design our kitchen in better ways.

00:06:55.960 | I think many times people put the fruits and veggies in the fruit and veggie

00:06:58.720 | drawer, which is, you know, it's hard to see them when they go bad.

00:07:02.800 | And you put this soda on the top shelf, it's very easy to see the soda.

00:07:07.280 | And so at some level, if you design your fridge so that it's impossible to miss

00:07:11.600 | the blueberries that are going bad, more people will eat the blueberries.

00:07:14.600 | And so we want to think very deeply about our environment and especially the daily

00:07:20.200 | environment that we live in to do this.

00:07:22.240 | Yeah, you mentioned some rules of thumb.

00:07:24.560 | I'm curious if there are specific rules of thumb.

00:07:28.320 | Let's start with savings that adopting day to day could change your behavior more

00:07:34.200 | easily than just wanting to change it, which it sounds like is impossible.

00:07:38.440 | Yeah, I actually, well, one thing that annoys me is when people say savings is a

00:07:41.960 | habit, like I'm going to create a savings habit.

00:07:43.760 | It's like savings is not a habit.

00:07:45.440 | You have to go in there into your account.

00:07:48.200 | You have to log in, by the way.

00:07:49.240 | You have to remember your password.

00:07:50.280 | Most people don't remember their password.

00:07:51.520 | Then you have to choose how much you want to save and transfer it over.

00:07:55.120 | And you have to do this on a regular basis.

00:07:57.240 | And so things like that are just not habits.

00:07:59.680 | Habits is when you wake up and you drink water or you brush your teeth or you're

00:08:03.400 | getting coffee. That's more of a habit.

00:08:05.680 | Doing a complex behavior at random intervals during the month is not a habit.

00:08:10.160 | And it's very hard to form at that level.

00:08:12.480 | In fact, one time they just removed reminders and people stopped saving

00:08:15.360 | completely. And so the move for savings is actually just to set up the reoccurring

00:08:19.360 | transfer at the time that you get paid.

00:08:21.000 | And that's critical for most people is to set up at the point you get paid.

00:08:24.640 | However, banks, terrible, they don't do this.

00:08:27.600 | There are companies now trying to do this.

00:08:29.560 | Chime, I think, has it timed with your deposits.

00:08:32.440 | I believe Digit has it timed with your deposits at some level.

00:08:36.040 | And so I think the rule of thumb for savings is about reoccurring transfers

00:08:40.600 | timed with your deposits.

00:08:41.800 | And we tend to measure in behavioral science process versus outcome.

00:08:45.040 | So just doing this is the win.

00:08:47.560 | You get the win if you do this.

00:08:49.000 | The amount you save now is a different decision.

00:08:53.040 | But I'd say most people should be setting up the process to get you to build the

00:08:58.280 | nest egg and worrying less about getting the absolute right number.

00:09:01.880 | In fact, I think one mistake people make is trying to get the absolute right

00:09:04.800 | number and this prevents them from doing anything.

00:09:06.800 | And in behavioral science, basically, when there's complexity, we procrastinate.

00:09:11.240 | And so when you don't save, this is worse than saving the wrong number.

00:09:14.320 | Yeah. And I've always told people that are struggling to start saving that you

00:09:18.920 | could start with a really low number.

00:09:20.800 | And if it works, you could just raise the number.

00:09:22.760 | Totally.

00:09:24.320 | Or maybe in some future world, we could have a product that would just like

00:09:27.880 | automatically raise the number every so often.

00:09:30.520 | And you'd have to choose to stop raising the number because, as I think I've

00:09:35.800 | heard you say many times, people are more likely to opt in than opt out.

00:09:40.240 | Yeah, well, we're more likely to basically take the default.

00:09:44.480 | So if the default is basically not saving, we're more likely to not save.

00:09:48.600 | And if the default is to save, we're more likely to save.

00:09:52.000 | And if it rounds up to a bigger number, if it adds a dollar every week, we're

00:09:56.680 | more likely to do this if it's the default.

00:09:59.200 | But by the way, the other thing, your idea here on getting people to start

00:10:02.200 | small is very nice. There was a nice study by Hal Hirschfeld, who basically

00:10:05.520 | looked at opt-in rates when saving was either a low number, you could imagine

00:10:10.200 | a dollar a week or four dollars a month, or you can imagine ten dollars a week

00:10:13.960 | or forty dollars a month, and then annualize that.

00:10:16.440 | And people opted in when it was in the lower frame.

00:10:19.800 | So like a per day or per week amount at a higher rate than if it was annualized

00:10:24.480 | or monthly. And so basically, that's kind of like a reduced cognitive

00:10:28.200 | overload. We can all afford two dollars or something.

00:10:32.040 | We can all afford three dollars.

00:10:33.760 | And understanding that gets people more likely to say yes to something.

00:10:37.800 | And it's so obvious, right?

00:10:40.160 | But banks and stuff, we don't think this way.

00:10:42.400 | We think about annual or monthly.

00:10:44.760 | Yeah. And how does this change as people move up the savings journey?

00:10:48.960 | Is there a similar set of tools that someone can use who maybe has the

00:10:54.000 | capability of saving more but isn't?

00:10:57.840 | Yeah, I think the same set of tools apply.

00:11:00.280 | You just want to increase the rate that you're saving.

00:11:03.200 | So you want to think about what number is coming out of your paycheck every

00:11:07.440 | month. And is that going into a diversified account set for you?

00:11:12.800 | So I think it's really about amping up the number.

00:11:15.840 | The other thing is to have decision days where you could say you're going to put

00:11:18.880 | something on the calendar and re-evaluate.

00:11:22.000 | So one thing that we find with finance is people worry a lot.

00:11:26.520 | And they think they're not doing the right thing.

00:11:28.320 | And this is kind of sad because in theory, you're just worrying all the time.

00:11:31.800 | I'd wanted more if people just worry on one day.

00:11:34.440 | And then at the end of the day, they make a decision.

00:11:36.600 | So you stress yourself out on a Sunday every three months.

00:11:40.720 | You make some decision about adding more or withdrawing.

00:11:44.000 | And then you forget it for the next three months.

00:11:46.720 | We call these more decision points versus kind of overall worrying that you've

00:11:50.920 | made some mistake.

00:11:52.280 | I like that idea, but I find myself and we just had an episode talking about

00:11:57.240 | FOBO, which is like the fear of a better option and about decision making.

00:12:01.920 | And I think sometimes decision making, especially for someone who really wants to

00:12:06.320 | be optimal, can be a really stressful process that ends up taking way longer than

00:12:11.800 | they want. Are there things you've learned about how people make decisions that

00:12:16.640 | could make that process easier and maybe a little more enjoyable?

00:12:20.360 | Yes, my partner, my husband is an optimizer and I am not.

00:12:24.000 | And so I have deep experience with this.

00:12:26.680 | Sometimes I will set a timer when he's trying to pick something on Amazon.

00:12:30.640 | And so you have 15 minutes to do this.

00:12:33.160 | And so, you know, at some level, I'm sure folks, many have heard about the kind of

00:12:38.720 | explore-exploit problem.

00:12:40.280 | Kind of the classic example here is you're on an airplane and either you get a list

00:12:44.960 | of movies and which movie do you pick?

00:12:47.120 | And an optimizer may go through the full list of movies multiple times.

00:12:51.560 | And by the time they choose a movie, it's too late and they won't be able to finish

00:12:55.200 | the movie. The plane will have ended.

00:12:56.800 | A satisficer may choose too early and not get an optimal movie, but maybe they've

00:13:00.760 | finished the movie by the time that the plane has landed.

00:13:03.640 | And so each basically there are tradeoffs for.

00:13:06.200 | I think with the optimizer, I worry, especially in a financial construct, that

00:13:10.480 | again, not making a decision is worse than making a small wrong decision.

00:13:14.480 | And so it would basically push yourself to make a decision and have some deadline

00:13:18.800 | attached to this. So whether it be, you know, every quarter you make some decision and

00:13:23.440 | you have some accountability with somebody else to do this.

00:13:25.680 | By the way, accountability finances is a thing we just don't talk about that much.

00:13:29.480 | This is a great podcast to have people talk about it.

00:13:31.680 | But probably if you're a listener, the question is like, do you know what your mom has

00:13:35.440 | in savings? Do you know what your best friend has in savings?

00:13:38.720 | Like, probably not. And so at some level, these are tend to be private decisions.

00:13:43.240 | And with private decisions, we can make excuses to procrastinate more.

00:13:47.000 | So one easy hack is just telling somebody what you're doing.

00:13:50.280 | And that itself will likely hold you more accountable to doing it.

00:13:53.800 | A better one would be involving them in the decision and having a bigger conversation

00:13:58.680 | about it. Again, it's to make it something from private sphere to public sphere.

00:14:02.360 | And we tend to actually follow through on our intentions then and act quicker.

00:14:06.240 | And that doesn't need to be public, like post on Facebook what's in your bank account.

00:14:10.960 | Yeah. So that's actually... Obviously, many finance companies have tried to be like,

00:14:15.440 | "We're going to do social and get people to post."

00:14:17.200 | It's like that. Sure, it could work in some cultures. It's probably...

00:14:20.800 | We're far from it, at least in the US context.

00:14:23.120 | It's a lot more about having just real conversations with a person that you trust.

00:14:27.120 | I do tend to find these conversations are easier to start if you're sharing a tip.

00:14:31.120 | So most of the time, people don't like to ask for advice.

00:14:34.240 | So what should I do? How much should I be saving?

00:14:37.520 | I think the conversation can start easy if you're like,

00:14:40.000 | "Hey, I just learned this cool thing about my new bank account or credit card points."

00:14:45.760 | And then you've opened up the conversation for another person to share their tip.

00:14:50.000 | And all of a sudden, you can start talking about finances in a different way.

00:14:52.960 | Yeah. I think we don't talk about money.

00:14:56.320 | Obviously, I enjoy doing it or I wouldn't be here and I've encouraged it.

00:15:01.040 | But I wonder, have you seen any groups online that might in some way be

00:15:06.320 | anonymous or maybe personal but with people that aren't actually your friends?

00:15:10.640 | Is that something that could be helpful

00:15:12.800 | in a space where people aren't comfortable talking to each other?

00:15:15.040 | Yeah. Reddit communities for money are incredible.

00:15:19.440 | The amount of specific advice... Obviously, you want to be skeptical of

00:15:23.360 | a lot of random people giving you advice. But at some level, it's a really good

00:15:27.680 | forum for getting exposed with your finances.

00:15:31.040 | You could ask a question right now about "This is how much I have in my

00:15:34.240 | account. This is how much I have in debt. What do you think I should do?"

00:15:37.440 | And you'll get dozens if not hundreds of people weighing in on your financial situation.

00:15:42.720 | So I think there's some anonymity that helps people ask for advice that's helpful.

00:15:47.520 | And just by the way, again, the nature of asking for advice is going to make it from

00:15:51.200 | private to public sphere by which you've now made your problem something much,

00:15:55.920 | much more salient for you to address sooner than later.

00:15:58.720 | We can always make an excuse to do something next week.

00:16:01.680 | As soon as you talk about it, it's a little bit harder to make that excuse.

00:16:05.200 | And that's not just because you've told someone. But is there something that actually happens

00:16:10.240 | in your mind, in your brain that makes you feel more responsible versus just know that

00:16:15.680 | you've told someone?

00:16:16.480 | Yeah. It's a little bit about the reputation. In general, this is why meetings are so

00:16:21.920 | lovely. It'd be very hard for me to come to a meeting and say, "I'm so sorry. I just didn't

00:16:26.720 | do the PowerPoint. I just totally didn't do it." Because you know that somebody else may

00:16:32.400 | ask you about it, you act in a socially desirable way, which is to respond or do the thing that

00:16:37.920 | they might ask about.

00:16:39.280 | So the very understanding that in the future, you may be held accountable for this, even

00:16:43.840 | if you aren't going to be. But that small percent chance will make us act in a desirable

00:16:49.520 | fashion. So we do have this internal reputation that we're always trying to manage and protect,

00:16:54.400 | at least for ourselves.

00:16:56.320 | And we talked about getting things done and committing to get them done and sharing that.

00:16:59.920 | What about when you have a lot of things? I think one challenge is, I'm an optimizer.

00:17:05.200 | I want to spend five hours on Amazon. I feel like your husband and I would have a very

00:17:09.360 | terrible conversation comparing reviews. You're talking about the movie example. And I'm the

00:17:13.760 | person who... I'm like, "Well, we haven't taken off. So I'm online." I'm like, "What's

00:17:16.880 | the Rotten Tomatoes score of every single movie? Which one's the highest?" I have that

00:17:21.680 | problem.

00:17:21.920 | But also, what about when there's just a lot of things? Are there things you've learned

00:17:26.000 | about behavioral psychology that would help people that are like, "I have a to-do list

00:17:31.920 | of 50 things. And I only have so many hours." And it's not necessarily that each individual

00:17:37.760 | one takes so long. It's just that there's so many, it becomes overwhelming.

00:17:41.760 | Yep. And I think at that level, you're basically looking at the prioritization matrix. And

00:17:49.360 | we tend to do things that feel good. So we tend to do things that are easier or feel

00:17:53.440 | more urgent for us, especially when other people are asking for it. And we tend to procrastinate

00:17:57.760 | the more important tasks that may level up into a bigger outcome later. And so instead

00:18:02.880 | of basically prioritizing tasks, if you're looking at a to-do list by urgent or small...

00:18:08.000 | By the way, this is also something, right? In credit card, folks like to pay off the

00:18:11.840 | smallest debt fastest. And this is not the rational answer. The rational answer should

00:18:15.840 | be to pay off the one with the highest interest rate.

00:18:18.640 | But we look at our to-do list the same way where we're tackling smaller tasks first.

00:18:22.160 | And the correct way to do it would be to prioritize by level of importance or even hardest. And

00:18:27.120 | that's because if you start something in the morning, it's a well-known idea that we are

00:18:32.560 | better in the morning. And so we basically assume you have a couple hours. Actually,

00:18:36.640 | I love adding urgency to this. If you think your brain stops at 11, you have 2 hours.

00:18:41.520 | Or if you start work at night, 2 hours is a really good time. What are you going to do in that time?

00:18:45.360 | And we'll start with the important and hard tasks versus the urgent ones, which is obviously

00:18:51.360 | incredibly difficult to do in our working world, but something we can strive for.

00:18:55.360 | And are there things you've learned talking to people or doing research yourself that

00:19:02.000 | have kind of changed your perspective on this and helped you think about it differently?

00:19:05.600 | I think most people struggle with this, which is like... I think a lot of people internalize

00:19:10.560 | their struggles. And so I think the idea that other people are also struggling with this

00:19:15.360 | is helpful for folks to remember. Other things that I've learned in this... I mean,

00:19:20.080 | we basically fill... It's kind of the suitcase problem where if you have a small suitcase,

00:19:24.800 | you'll fill it. If you have a large suitcase, you'll fill it. And so I think with time,

00:19:29.120 | that's kind of the other big idea is that our calendars go from X time to X time.

00:19:34.320 | And so we're going to fill it with tasks. And so I would more try to think about where's your

00:19:39.040 | suitcase and how much do you get to fill. And so if you have 2 or 3 hours of good work time,

00:19:44.320 | would fill that versus 8 hours and you're spreading out and probably doing the unimportant tasks.

00:19:48.400 | The other thing is the calendar by default is empty, which is not true. I have a ton of

00:19:53.520 | meetings Monday through Wednesday this week, but not a lot on Thursday. It looks like I'm free.

00:19:57.600 | I'm obviously not free. I'm going to catch up on all the work that I miss from taking these

00:20:01.120 | meetings. And my calendar is kind of lying to me in this way and telling me I'm free.

00:20:05.840 | And so the default calendar doesn't help us. Ideally, you can hold and block time for yourself.

00:20:11.760 | We know that sometimes we overschedule it when you do that. But at least having the mental model

00:20:16.560 | of this is helpful. There's a world called pre-commitment, where you think about

00:20:20.000 | what you're going to do. Actually, the more evolved thing of this is called implementation

00:20:25.360 | intentions, where you think about when, where and how you're going to do something.

00:20:29.600 | And you think about that before you do it. The reality is that we're not actually that creative.

00:20:34.240 | And so if I say I'm going to do this task, the task doesn't actually come to life in my mind.

00:20:39.360 | It's just something in the future that's going to happen. As soon as we build it out and say when,

00:20:43.440 | how and where, now it becomes something that I've thought more deeply about.

00:20:47.200 | It's more real. And when we do that, it increases the likelihood that we actually do it. And this

00:20:54.000 | has been shown with flu shots. When you think about when, where and how you're going to get

00:20:56.800 | a flu shot, it's been shown with voting. When you think of when, where and how you're going to vote

00:21:00.560 | and with to-do lists. Wow.

00:21:02.480 | It seems like with every business, you get to a certain size and the cracks start to emerge.

00:21:09.280 | Things that you used to do in a day are taking a week and you have too many manual processes

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00:22:32.720 | There is nothing I love more than learning that something I enjoy is actually so good for you.

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00:24:04.400 | out today at allthehacks.com/peak. P-I-Q-U-E. Okay. Do you need to write down the when, where,

00:24:11.920 | how, or do you just need to think about it? So there was a nice study where there's, if people

00:24:16.560 | do write it down, it makes you more likely. So thinking about it is going to help. Writing it

00:24:20.240 | down is going to help more. So I would kind of build it out in your mind and write it down.

00:24:25.200 | What this also does is basically, at some level, again, we procrastinate things that are complex

00:24:30.480 | and uncertain. And so it's reasonable if we have a task and we don't really know how we're going to

00:24:34.720 | start that we would procrastinate it. And so just thinking for a couple minutes on how you would

00:24:40.480 | start the task is really the win here, where you're making it less complex, less uncertain

00:24:45.200 | to do it. And it'll make you more likely to want to do it because it's going to feel easier for you.

00:24:51.920 | You said tasks that are hard and complex to start. It reminded me of something I've heard

00:24:56.720 | you talk about, which kind of shocked me, which is that if you don't know a lot about something,

00:25:02.560 | let's say I don't know a lot about investing. And so I haven't done it. My assumption, just naively,

00:25:09.280 | which I now know is wrong, is that if I just learn more, that maybe I could start investing

00:25:13.760 | more frequently. And I've heard you talk about this. And I'd love to dig in a little more about

00:25:18.160 | how just teaching something to someone doesn't actually change what their underlying behavior is.

00:25:23.120 | Correct. Yeah, this is another thing where if somebody says financial literacy at a party,

00:25:28.480 | I give them a 30-minute lecture. Basically, the idea here is that in a perfect world,

00:25:32.800 | if I would teach you about what FICO means and how much it impacts your life from buying a home

00:25:38.560 | and whatnot, you would then take actions to improve your FICO score.

00:25:42.480 | That basically, if I give you knowledge about something, how many calories are in something,

00:25:46.720 | that you would then take steps to reduce the amount of calories. And this is just not what

00:25:52.000 | researchers have found. And it's really robust. It's robust in the calorie literature. And it's

00:25:56.160 | even more robust in the financial literacy literature. If I give you information about

00:25:59.840 | budgeting, this does not correlate to behavior change. I'll give you a caveat, though. So if I

00:26:04.960 | give you information about, let's say, a savings account, and then next to you is a savings teller,

00:26:11.360 | and you can open a savings account, the immediate just-in-time nature of that makes it more likely

00:26:16.400 | that you'll do it. But the effect decays every single hour to the point where after I think it

00:26:21.680 | was 24 hours, the effect is 2.1% behavior change. Which means that if I give you information about

00:26:28.080 | savings, a day or 2 later, you're 0.1% likely to actually make that behavior change. And so it's

00:26:34.960 | not zero, but it's very close to zero. And I always say we can try to invent new ways to teach

00:26:40.800 | people about finances. Maybe we haven't tried a lot. But the paper meta-analysis cover around

00:26:46.240 | 200 studies of people attempting to make this connection between teaching and doing.

00:26:51.440 | And so it's a really depressing stat because financial literacy in America is horrific.

00:26:55.600 | If you ask people about compound interest, most people don't understand it. And so

00:26:59.680 | the upside of financial literacy is high if we can nail it. Sadly, it hasn't panned out.

00:27:05.840 | And I'll maybe end on an optimistic note. The upside here is that the punchline is the behavioral

00:27:11.440 | science punchline, which is the environment matters. If you make it easy for me to save,

00:27:15.760 | I'm more likely to save. If you make it more appealing for me to save, I'm more likely to save.

00:27:19.760 | The idea that I know what the interest rate is a couple days before I'm about to make this decision

00:27:24.560 | just has low likelihood of changing my behavior. But if you make the steps go from 10 to 2,

00:27:30.640 | or the options go from 10 complex mutual fund options to 3, I'm more likely to do it.

00:27:35.920 | Yeah. And does this apply in other aspects of life outside of money?

00:27:40.320 | For sure. Yeah. I mean, I think in a personal life, you can imagine trying to tell

00:27:44.880 | your spouse, "Can you please clean up the dishes? Can you please pick up your clothes from the

00:27:51.440 | floor?" You're giving them information in the form of nagging, but you're giving them information

00:27:57.440 | about the problem. And in behavioral science, we say, "Just make it easier. Make it more appealing.

00:28:03.760 | Change the environment of the decision-making." My personal example is I also, but so does my

00:28:10.160 | spouse, tend to throw clothes on the floor. It's just easier to do that. We kind of nag at each

00:28:14.880 | other about like, "Oh, we should pick up our clothes," et cetera. And we developed a system

00:28:18.480 | that basically is like we have a laundry basket of clean clothes. And so at some level, now we've

00:28:23.760 | made it easier for us to clean up our clothes. We don't actually have to change our behavior too

00:28:29.040 | much. And so we've changed the environment of decision-making to get to the outcome of a clean

00:28:33.520 | space. But we haven't actually made ourselves kind of... No amount of saying, "It's important

00:28:38.080 | that I do this," is going to make it be when I'm running out the door in the morning, "Change my

00:28:41.920 | behavior. I need to really change my environment to do that." So I think people make this mistake

00:28:46.000 | with kids. They make this mistake with family members of just telling them an information

00:28:50.800 | versus trying to actually solve the problem. If you want someone to recycle more, make the

00:28:56.160 | recycle can bigger. Make the waste can smaller. If you want someone to compost more, we want to

00:29:00.320 | make composting easier. So you can nag and nag, but it's much more painful than just changing

00:29:05.760 | the environment. Yeah. I want to go back to your laundry situation because I don't know if I quite

00:29:11.520 | followed. So you have a laundry basket of clean clothes. Yeah. And we have a laundry basket of

00:29:16.080 | dirty clothes too, but that was obvious. But sometimes you're just not going to wash everything

00:29:19.280 | as you just throw it. Maybe I have a coat or something and I just throw it on the ground.

00:29:23.600 | And so all my goal now is to aim. I just need to aim into the basket. And now our room looks

00:29:30.080 | much cleaner than having 2 or 3 things on the floor all the time. This is a place to throw

00:29:35.040 | all the clothes that are not ready to be washed because maybe you just wore a sweatshirt for an

00:29:39.520 | hour and you want to hang it up in the closet. But you know that's not going to happen right now

00:29:44.560 | because you know your personality. Right. Yeah. And it's also something where like,

00:29:49.120 | "Yeah, I hang a lot of my clothes up." But the margin of error that we have

00:29:53.040 | is going to be high over time. So yes, I can put away... If you have a dirty dish,

00:29:57.600 | in order for you not to ever have dishes out, you'd have to have a perfect record.

00:30:01.600 | The reality is once in a while, you're going to leave a dish out. Everyone makes some errors.

00:30:05.280 | Everyone is messy once in a while. And so systems should try to solve for those errors instead of

00:30:11.040 | solving for perfection and then getting mad when 1 or 2 errors happen. I think that's particularly

00:30:15.600 | interesting in a household thing where... For folks I live with, I have a communal

00:30:21.840 | living environment where there's apartments and there's a house and there's a communal kitchen.

00:30:26.400 | So there's lots of humans to make errors. So what kinds of systems do you have?

00:30:31.600 | Yeah. We have something called Sink Zero, which is lovely because basically it means

00:30:36.480 | "No dishes in the sink ever." It's a nice rule of thumb. It's basically like saying "No carbs."

00:30:43.360 | Saying "No carbs" is easier than saying "I'm going to once in a while have or try to limit my carbs."

00:30:49.600 | By saying "No dishes in the sink ever," it's a very clear understanding of what to do in

00:30:53.360 | which context. By the way, this is also helpful for spending money. You don't want to say,

00:30:57.680 | "I'm going to spend less on something. I'm going to spend less on restaurants."

00:31:00.960 | The idea would be you make a rule of thumb that says, "I don't go out to eat on the weekday."

00:31:05.120 | Or "I only go out to eat once a weekend." In that case, you know exactly what is correct.

00:31:10.880 | You've either followed the rule or you haven't followed the rule.

00:31:13.600 | When you say, "I'm going to spend less," it's very difficult to know if you've adhered to the rule.

00:31:17.840 | And if you say, "Oh, don't leave your dishes in the sink," that kind of implies that maybe one

00:31:23.200 | time you can leave your dishes in the sink if you're off to the races. We even have a thing

00:31:27.200 | where you should bring it back to your room instead of leaving it in the sink.

00:31:32.160 | We give people the fail state of saying, "We know you're in a hurry. Just bring it to your room."

00:31:35.520 | So that would be one. I think we do a lot of, again, this idea that there's errors that people

00:31:40.640 | make. And so if you see something out, you don't get passive aggressive like, "Oh my gosh, I'm

00:31:46.080 | cleaning up somebody else's stuff." You just clean it up because you've also made an error.

00:31:50.000 | So you have a mentality that we're all in this together. And at one point,

00:31:54.000 | I'll leave something out. So let's help each other. By the way, cooking is very interesting.

00:31:58.960 | Right now, we've hired a chef. It's cheaper than if we all buy food and then we all have to divide

00:32:03.760 | and conquer. There's lots of food waste. And so I think there's lovely ways people should look

00:32:08.080 | into making life much, much easier for themselves. Meal delivery is something most people should do.

00:32:13.120 | It's actually one of the best ways to lose weight as well. Time and time again, studies try to help

00:32:17.280 | people lose weight and it's very difficult. But if you make it easy, like shipping yourself a meal

00:32:21.840 | every day, more people succeed. Yeah. And there are a ton of

00:32:27.440 | startups that have raised money from venture capitalists and offer crazy deals.

00:32:30.960 | So you could probably prearrange your meals from one company for a week or 2 and then switch and

00:32:36.240 | switch and switch and probably take advantage of promo codes. It would probably get you through

00:32:40.880 | at least a quarter of meals, which I may or may not have done in the past. Yes.

00:32:46.000 | So yeah. So on that note about being healthy or losing weight, there's the food side and

00:32:50.560 | the exercise side. Are there lessons that kind of tie from behavioral psychology about

00:32:57.200 | committing to more exercise, something that I think many people struggle with? And it always

00:33:02.800 | feels like you mentioned habits. Habits aren't always the way and something with as high a

00:33:08.560 | commitment level of putting on a pair of shorts and shoes and going out for 45 minutes is maybe

00:33:14.320 | not something you could build a habit around. Are there tricks or lessons that can help here?

00:33:20.160 | Yeah, that's the same thing. Exercise is very difficult to form a habit.

00:33:23.520 | One latest study I saw says it took six months. And as soon as you have a habit, it does become

00:33:29.040 | easier because you need less intention to do it. But when you don't have a habit,

00:33:32.240 | you actually need to form an intention to do a behavior. And so one idea is that you're actually

00:33:37.760 | forming the habit based on the getting ready. So, you know, putting your shoes out, etc. That's the

00:33:43.600 | habit that you're trying to establish versus the habit of exercise that actually has been shown to

00:33:48.960 | drive some higher adherence. The other one is just past behavior predicts future behavior. And so

00:33:55.360 | the best predictor of forming a habit is actually doing it. It's not a cheat sheet. It's just real.

00:34:00.640 | And so, you know, I think at some level, people, if they commit to routines and consistency,

00:34:06.240 | this is fine. And if you miss a day, that's OK, too. And then, you know, I'm a big fangirl of

00:34:11.440 | Peloton. I think Peloton makes it more fun to do workouts. They have these instructors that are

00:34:18.080 | quite compelling. I talked to the product manager at Peloton and he said, "Look, we have these

00:34:23.600 | challenges that start every month. And so there's this idea of fresh start where you can basically

00:34:27.120 | say, 'Today, I'm a different person.'" Peloton actually helps you do that all the time, right?

00:34:31.440 | You can say, "Today, I'm going to join on Dolly Parton Day." We need to give ourselves an excuse

00:34:36.320 | to start something. And so fresh start, doing it on Mondays or the first day of the month can be

00:34:40.320 | one. Or joining a challenge for a short period of time is one. But increasing our motivation in

00:34:46.400 | order to get over the friction is definitely going to help kind of fuel the exercise fire.

00:34:51.360 | And then, you know, I think there's some level of variety and consistency. I think people kind

00:34:56.320 | of stick to the same workout. And I would encourage folks to try something different,

00:35:01.280 | if not just to appreciate the main workout that you do. But we can tire quickly from

00:35:05.440 | doing the same thing every day. Yeah. As soon as I'm done with my broken foot,

00:35:11.200 | I intend to go for the fresh start. So when you think about longer term goals,

00:35:18.240 | things that you want to change over the year, change over the next couple of years, how do

00:35:23.280 | you think you can effectively do that? Are you a fan of New Year's resolutions? Are you a fan of

00:35:28.160 | things like that? Yeah. I think people give New Year's resolutions a lot of... They kind of get

00:35:34.000 | made fun of. And at some level, it's a really nice excuse to think about what you want to

00:35:37.520 | do and who you want to be and create that, I said before, implementation intention for your goals.

00:35:43.040 | I think goals by themselves are pretty useless. We need the plan. We need to connect it to action.

00:35:47.200 | We need to tell somebody. So I think, yeah, the idea of just saying I'm going to do this is not

00:35:52.240 | going to change your behavior. I think what can is creating the plan and redesigning your

00:35:57.360 | environment to support that. One big opportunity for change is when we have change in our life.

00:36:02.400 | So habits, back to habits, habits are very, very difficult because you're trying to do something

00:36:07.360 | new in a world where you're very used to doing the same thing every day. So Wendy Wood has

00:36:12.160 | researched this. It's like 43% of our behaviors every day are habitual. We're just not thinking

00:36:17.200 | about it. This is driving and the coffee and the brushing the teeth. And so at some level,

00:36:22.000 | introducing something new, it's reasonable to say, my gosh, that's going to be difficult because I'm

00:36:25.520 | so used to doing the things I normally do. And so really, there's an interesting opportunity

00:36:30.400 | when you disrupt your environment. So when you change jobs, when you move, when you have a child,

00:36:36.800 | maybe when you're traveling, this is when your environment changes and your habits are disrupted.

00:36:41.280 | The theory here is called habit discontinuity theory, by which you're basically breaking

00:36:45.760 | something. And this is the golden moment to be able to add something new. There's a nice study,

00:36:51.760 | kind of a classic one that was done in the London tube system by which they shut it down for a

00:36:56.880 | couple of days. And people are really habitual creatures when it comes to commute. And so people

00:37:01.760 | then had to find another route to work when their station was shut down. And 5% of people found

00:37:07.360 | more optimal routes. This is interesting because if you're so... Commute is all about optimization

00:37:12.560 | and efficiency. And why didn't these people think of that beforehand? What were they doing walking

00:37:17.440 | a longer way to a different station that was longer for them? It took some disruption for

00:37:22.960 | them to seek out an alternative and then they were able to stick with it. And so when we disrupt our

00:37:27.600 | normal routines is when we can start kind of looking around and saying, "Is there something

00:37:30.880 | optimal to do?" So I think if I could, I'd get everyone to move more. We should be moving

00:37:36.800 | apartments more. We should be moving jobs more. We should be changing our environment much more.

00:37:41.280 | Those are all kind of big disruptions. I heard you mention if you have a kid,

00:37:45.440 | I can imagine if you were like, "Gosh, I really want to start eating healthy. I need to disrupt

00:37:49.920 | my life." Maybe having a child is a big step. Are there ways to kind of manufacture disruption

00:37:56.320 | in your life? Yeah. I mean, I think... So add a new one, get new friends, which is probably not

00:38:02.400 | as hard as a kid. But we are who we surround ourselves with. And so one way to change your

00:38:08.240 | environment is maybe is not... If it's not physically, is to surround yourself with different

00:38:12.640 | people. So I think kind of an easier way to do it, maybe to expose yourself to different people.

00:38:17.520 | This could be joining a running group. This could be going to different lectures by which your

00:38:21.680 | mental, your cognitive environment then is changing and the influences on your environment

00:38:27.280 | are also changing. So that would be a bigger swing. And then the other one, I just had a friend who

00:38:31.760 | hired a kind of a minimalist coach to come over and help them redesign their apartment.

00:38:35.520 | Sometimes it's hard for us to understand our own environment. And so I think, again,

00:38:39.840 | bringing other people in to say like, "Help me redesign my kitchen so that I'm more likely to

00:38:45.520 | eat better." This is changing where the chips go. This is changing where the veggies go in the

00:38:51.200 | fridge. By the way, I think Instapots are lovely. Cooking is very hard. It's not ideal. It takes

00:38:56.480 | work. And so if we can make it fundamentally easier, we should do that. And you may not have

00:39:00.880 | the intuition on changing your environment as much as somebody else does. Sometimes the smallest

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00:40:14.560 | Do you all remember episode 122 when I spoke to Chef David Chang about leveling up your cooking

00:40:22.240 | at home? If not, definitely go back and give it a listen. But one of his top hacks was using the

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00:41:27.920 | I just want to thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show. Your support is what

00:41:34.640 | keeps this show going. To get all of the URLs, codes, deals, and discounts from our partners,

00:41:40.640 | you can go to allthehacks.com/deals. So please consider supporting those who support us.

00:41:47.840 | So one thing I noticed, we changed our daughter's room around this weekend.

00:41:51.600 | Totally changed. Basically moved every piece of furniture and it now feels like a different room.

00:41:56.800 | I'm wondering if that's enough. Could rearranging your living room or your bedroom be enough of a

00:42:02.400 | disruption to really jumpstart a new habit? Or not habit, but a new change?

00:42:08.160 | I think it's worth trying. I think these things are 100% worth trying. The idea that these things

00:42:13.680 | are... It's just reversible too. If you change it, you can always change it back. Yeah, I think

00:42:17.440 | probably changing furniture around. If you're a female, getting a haircut could change how you...

00:42:22.320 | I once had a little pink strip in my hair and people... They actually talk to me more. Baristas

00:42:27.200 | and restaurant folks would engage more. I don't know if it felt more friendly or open, but it

00:42:31.760 | changed my environment by nature of how people related to me. So I think all these small changes

00:42:36.080 | are good. Look, the idea that we've landed on the optimal way to live and be is just silly.

00:42:43.760 | We've accidentally chose many things in our life. We've accidentally opted into the life that we're

00:42:48.560 | living. Many of that has been by choice and by design. But it's hard to imagine that there

00:42:53.760 | wouldn't be small ways that we could change it to improve it. And just by changing it,

00:42:58.720 | actually, we could likely improve it because of the nature of change.

00:43:01.520 | So when you brought up the commuting example, if you had asked me, "Oh, what are ways that

00:43:07.440 | you could have a more optimal day?" I might never have thought of that. Is there a process or even

00:43:12.800 | just a list of things that people could take inventory of that would allow you to discover

00:43:19.200 | ways that you could maybe be more optimal or intentional that wouldn't come to mind if you

00:43:24.800 | just thought about it? That's a great question. So I'll kind of go with the obvious, but it's

00:43:30.000 | going to be a harder one for people to optimize immediately. One thing that makes us most happy

00:43:36.000 | is people. We tend to spend money on things. If you're buying a home, you look at the countertops

00:43:42.640 | and how well the bathrooms are done, not will you like your neighbors? And so why do I live with all

00:43:47.840 | these people? It's because I've optimized my life for happiness. If we think happiness is about

00:43:52.560 | relationships, which most studies show that it is, then you want to design your life to make

00:43:57.120 | relationships easier. And so I think one thing that people could do in general to optimize their

00:44:02.480 | life is to make relationships easier. I'll give a tactical example here is that the weekend's

00:44:07.200 | lovely because it's a coordinated event. So we have two days where we can all socially hang out

00:44:12.800 | and people are actually happier on the weekend. Even unemployed people are happier on the weekend.

00:44:16.640 | So it's not about work. It's just about the idea of coordinating with other people. And so I think

00:44:20.640 | we can use a calendar in a way here to coordinate with other people. Such that you could say every

00:44:25.600 | Saturday, you're going to schedule a brunch at 11am on Dolores Park where people just bring bagels

00:44:31.680 | and your friends know to show up. It's difficult to always coordinate plans with people. And maybe

00:44:36.240 | sometimes some friends won't show up, but maybe sometimes a few will. And so you have a core group

00:44:40.320 | of people who just know 11am brunch on Saturday. This takes away the annoyingness of back and forth

00:44:45.280 | calendaring that prevents us from doing something. And you can imagine doing this for Zoom workouts

00:44:50.640 | at 8am on one day. You could imagine doing it for game nights once a month, the first Friday

00:44:57.120 | of the month or something with your friends. The goal here is just to make things that make us

00:45:01.280 | happier, easier. And if we believe that relationships make us happy, then we want to

00:45:06.480 | make that easier for us to actually do. So hacking the calendar is one way to do it with social

00:45:11.760 | coordination. Are there any other non-obvious things that you think make people generally

00:45:16.480 | happier that we don't think about? Yeah. I actually think complimenting people is...

00:45:21.120 | Chris, you're looking very good today. The smile is great. Your look with the black shirt.

00:45:28.000 | Very professional. So I said this is an example, but it actually turns out that fake compliments,

00:45:33.280 | people also feel very good at as well. And so I think we can basically help people feel

00:45:38.480 | better if we're complimenting them and also we're getting compliments. Very, very easy

00:45:43.600 | to create affinity that way. And that goes in the giving research where if I already give you $20,

00:45:50.000 | you're happier if you spend it on somebody else. And if you spend it on yourself...

00:45:54.240 | No, obviously, it's probably that money goes up to lots of money. You can say we can argue

00:45:58.640 | if I give you a million dollars and you give it away, are you happy? But in small dollar amounts

00:46:04.400 | like this, we can actually be much happier by giving stuff away. And the very easy thing you

00:46:10.240 | can do right now is probably just compliment somebody. A genuine compliment is better.

00:46:14.800 | But even if it's not, it's probably helpful. One thing I know I've talked to you in the past

00:46:20.560 | about the work you do with companies. And I know you have a process for how you

00:46:24.880 | take a company's product and try to break down ways that it could be improved. And one of those

00:46:30.880 | steps is, I believe, a behavioral diagnostic. Is that... Am I close? Yeah. Yeah. Nailed it. Softball

00:46:39.040 | for me here. Can you apply that same methodology? And maybe feel free to talk about that process.

00:46:45.600 | But I'm curious after whether you could apply that to your own day and do a diagnostic of your

00:46:52.880 | average day. Love it. Yeah. So basically, a behavioral diagnosis is a map, this visual

00:46:59.280 | map of every single step and decision that you make in order to get to the behavior that you're

00:47:04.800 | aiming for. So if I want to, say, save money once a month, $10, making this up as a bank,

00:47:15.600 | I would do a behavioral diagnosis that says, "I need to log in. I need to remember my password.

00:47:20.480 | Oh, shoot. I forgot my password. I have to remember my password or go to my email."

00:47:25.280 | And I go through all the steps that somebody has to do and the decisions in order to get to this

00:47:30.960 | key behavior. And when we walk through this with companies, there's so many light bulbs of just

00:47:34.560 | people realizing how much work people have to do. And this is logistical friction, actual steps.

00:47:40.320 | But most of it is cognitive friction of things that people have to decide and think about before

00:47:45.600 | they can actually succeed in the behavior that you're aiming to change. So the first step in

00:47:49.760 | that is actually figuring out the behavior that you want to change, which is definitely a personal

00:47:53.440 | opportunity. And we call it, at Irrational Labs, getting uncomfortably specific. So instead of

00:47:58.800 | saying, "I want to save money," or "I want to eat healthy," it's like, "I want to eat a salad

00:48:02.960 | every day for lunch for a week." Now we've been obnoxiously uncomfortably specific about the

00:48:09.040 | behavior such that the hack or the intervention is just going to be easier than saying, "I want

00:48:13.760 | to eat healthier." And so for ourselves, I think we need to get more specific about the behavior.

00:48:18.320 | It's not going to help us if we say, "I want to eat healthier. I want to be financially better

00:48:22.320 | off." Or, "I want to be happier." We need to get to that behavior. And at that point, then you can

00:48:26.720 | do this diagnostic where you're like, "Let me do a map of every single step that it would take to

00:48:31.120 | get to that." If you're trying to date right now and you want to say, "I want to go on a date

00:48:36.640 | a week," what are all the steps that it would take for you to do that? You'd have to be swiping

00:48:42.000 | maybe every morning. You'd have to be responding to messages in the evening. You'd have to keep

00:48:46.240 | one night open. Many people are very busy and you have one night open. So at some level, walking

00:48:51.600 | through all those steps, you can then see like, "Wow, this is actually harder than I thought. Let

00:48:55.520 | me try to call it the 3B model where we're either going to reduce barriers or increase benefits."

00:49:01.680 | So once we've picked a behavior, it's 3B. So the behavior, the barriers and the benefits,

00:49:06.320 | you pick a behavior, you decrease the barriers and you increase the benefits to doing that.

00:49:11.040 | So we make it easier and we make it highly motivating. Barriers and benefits. And so

00:49:15.520 | the diagnostic then you look at this and you say, "Let me just make it easy. Let me decrease the

00:49:19.760 | barriers to doing something and I'll be more likely to do it or I add some fun benefits."

00:49:24.000 | Yeah. So I think we're fortunate that people like yourselves take all of your skills helping

00:49:31.040 | companies do this, mostly, at least as far as I can tell, for good. Working with companies to

00:49:36.560 | help people save more, working with that kind of thing. There are plenty of companies out there

00:49:41.600 | that I think have learned these same tactics and use them to get you to scroll endlessly on TikTok

00:49:47.040 | or various other habits that are very beneficial to companies, but maybe not beneficial to your

00:49:53.200 | life. Are there tips you have for people who are trying to avoid getting sucked into companies who

00:50:02.400 | have learned all the same tricks, but maybe are applying them to ways that are less optimal for

00:50:06.480 | their lives? Yeah. So first, I think realizing you're walking into a really hard environment.

00:50:12.800 | If you go to a mall, how could you not spend money? People have thought

00:50:16.480 | deeply about how to get you to spend money. They've thought deeply about

00:50:20.720 | getting you to buy something that is aspirationally good for you, but may not

00:50:24.880 | increase your happiness. And so it's a really hard fight that we have. And it's getting harder.

00:50:29.520 | Like Amazon Prime making it... We said one of the ways to get us to do something is to make it

00:50:33.760 | easier. Online now, Amazon Prime is the goldmine of that. And we have now Amazon Go stores where

00:50:40.080 | you just walk out, right? They figured something out about human behavior. And it's going to be

00:50:43.680 | hard for us to fight that. I think at some level, the macro solution is disappointing for people is

00:50:50.080 | where we actually need companies to design better environments. And that's what we try to help

00:50:54.160 | companies do is design better environments to help us succeed because it's so difficult for

00:50:59.280 | ourselves to fight these forces. And maybe the uplifting thing is we can.

00:51:04.960 | So from a focus perspective, there's plenty of apps out there that can help you focus more.

00:51:10.400 | There's RescueTime that gives you data, which data usually isn't enough.

00:51:15.360 | There's a new app that I just used that if you go to anything other than the screen you're on,

00:51:20.560 | a voice will come on and keep talking to you until you go back to your screen.

00:51:25.040 | These are these self-controlled basic devices where you have to have a one-time motivation

00:51:29.840 | to put them on yourself. And it's tough. And so I think that's the upside. In a hot state,

00:51:34.640 | we're not going to stop eating the chips. We're not going to stop Netflix on show one when you

00:51:39.840 | want to binge on show two and three. We can't rely on ourselves to make those decisions in

00:51:43.920 | the heat of the moment. We need to make these implementation intentions before

00:51:48.160 | or put self-control devices up. This is difficult. So typically around 30% of people,

00:51:53.680 | the research is like, "Are you a sophisticated, somebody who understands that in the future,

00:51:57.920 | you will fail? Or are you a naivete, somebody who has more optimism and thinks in the future,

00:52:02.640 | you may succeed despite all the forces?" And sophisticates are a little bit,

00:52:06.720 | are much better at putting on these self-control devices to ourselves.

00:52:10.640 | So asking, when you go up to the counter, nobody's preventing you from asking McDonald's to say,

00:52:15.360 | "Can I have half the fries?" "I want some fries. Can I have half?"

00:52:19.200 | This is something that we could all do. And it's difficult. And so that's one of the reasons why

00:52:24.640 | you just don't ask for the fries in the first place is because you know you're going to eat

00:52:28.080 | them all. But yeah, I would encourage folks to think about the behavior you want to change.

00:52:31.600 | And then the apps or tools that can help you do it in a cold state, not in a hot one.

00:52:37.200 | Yeah. And does just discovering the biases that we have help? I know that it seems like

00:52:44.560 | from some of our conversation that just learning about how your brain works and how you might

00:52:49.280 | think about things doesn't really help. But I know that I've been to a handful of unconscious

00:52:54.480 | bias trainings that now I'm wondering, are those even effective at changing anyone's behavior?

00:53:01.520 | Yeah. So the research does not look promising for unconscious bias trainings. I'm sure that

00:53:07.680 | they're improving, that new companies are coming out and trying to improve them. So I would say,

00:53:13.040 | you know, I may be wrong in the latest company, but most research to date does not look promising

00:53:17.920 | for basically teaching you about your bias, actually changing your behavior. Which is why,

00:53:23.280 | if you're thinking from a hiring standpoint, you want to blind the resumes so that you're

00:53:29.360 | not seeing names and you're not seeing pictures. You don't want to look at the school that people

00:53:34.080 | came from right away, because this may influence you. Actually turning your video off is good in

00:53:38.480 | the first interview, so you're not biased by looks. And so these are the types of things

00:53:42.960 | that will actually help us make better and more equitable decision making. Teaching us

00:53:47.760 | about our biases so that in the future we can become better people is not likely to work.

00:53:52.480 | Okay. So future is not necessarily promising for learning, but I like that you've taught us a ton

00:53:58.000 | of different processes and things we can put into place to kind of plan for what we know we are not

00:54:03.600 | good at. Are there any other parting hacks for life, money, travel, anything that you want to

00:54:09.680 | share that we haven't gotten to hear? Yes. Okay, I have a couple. One is the hedonic

00:54:15.600 | treadmill is real, which means like once you have something, you adapt to it and you want more

00:54:21.040 | of it. So this is especially relevant if you are potentially surrounded by other people who

00:54:28.160 | have the thing. And I think this makes me very nervous because if you go and you buy a four

00:54:33.120 | bedroom house, your next house is not going to be a three bedroom house. You've made a decision

00:54:37.760 | to lock yourself into something that's going to be hard to downgrade. So I would be very,

00:54:42.960 | very cautious of making decisions that try to upgrade your lifestyle too quickly because you're

00:54:49.040 | cognitively going to be locked in and you adapt to things so much that it's not, you know, if I

00:54:53.440 | have nice countertops or not, does not change my happiness levels or my life satisfaction.

00:54:57.680 | And yet if you have lovely countertops in their next house, you have bad ones. This is going to

00:55:02.560 | be difficult for you. I don't wear jewelry, zero, no earrings, no necklace, no rings, nothing.

00:55:07.760 | There's some level of like, if I wanted, if I started wearing a necklace or earrings, I would

00:55:13.120 | just want better ones. I'd be on the treadmill. And so I've decided for jewelry to get off the

00:55:18.080 | treadmill, to not just not participate. And I think that actually is very nice to pick a few

00:55:22.560 | categories in life where you're just not going to be on the treadmill. You're not going to

00:55:26.160 | participate. I think this could be, you know, if you're not a foodie, you know, do you really need

00:55:30.560 | to go out to the very nice restaurants? Some foodies, I get it. You want to, but you can

00:55:35.120 | choose to opt out of some of these categories, the jewelry that, you know, for women, it's clothes

00:55:39.760 | and shoes. It could be makeup. You can say, this is just not something I'm going to compete in or

00:55:43.520 | want to aspire to. And once you do, it's going to again, be harder to get off. And then the other

00:55:49.840 | one for travel is around memory. And a lot of kind of happiness comes, there's kind of a debate in

00:55:56.480 | the literature. Is it, am I happy because of the moment I'm happy or am I happy when I remember

00:56:02.160 | something in the past? And when we think about memory, we want to create a lot of peak experiences.

00:56:08.480 | And so if I were designing a vacation, I probably wouldn't have you go on a vacation for two weeks

00:56:13.120 | somewhere. I'd probably have you go either multiple vacations of three-day weekends,

00:56:18.800 | where you're creating lots of small experiences for yourself that are memorable and exciting.

00:56:23.200 | You have something to look forward to every weekend. You have something to reflect on when

00:56:26.240 | you come back versus kind of a two-week vacation in the middle of the year. Or within that two-week

00:56:30.400 | vacation, have multiple peak points where you're going in different places to create memories.

00:56:35.680 | And that's something we can do in our daily lives as well, where just kind of making sure that

00:56:41.360 | one month doesn't blend to the next and creating more peak experiences and memories for us.

00:56:46.160 | A group of friends and I went to Valencia Street in San Francisco that closed off the streets on

00:56:50.400 | Fridays. And we set up a table and had a fancy dinner in the middle of the street.

00:56:55.760 | Okay, we had tacos, but we all dressed up. We put those lamps and a generator and classical music.

00:57:01.520 | This is weird. We're not going to do it every weekend. But by doing these kind of weird,

00:57:05.760 | crazy things once in a while, we can create kind of meaningful experiences. These are nice things

00:57:10.640 | to talk about. It's a high memory. It's not going to be like every Friday night that we have.

00:57:15.040 | And so we should probably put more work into creating these kind of peak experiences versus

00:57:19.200 | having normal Friday nights. Yeah. Any other favorite

00:57:23.440 | peak experiences that like I want to hear your list?

00:57:26.400 | I do this no small talk card thing. So in general, I think conversation tends to go to the lowest

00:57:31.920 | common denominator, where if you're in a room with people, it doesn't benefit you to go up to

00:57:36.480 | somebody and say, what is your deepest fear? This is awkward. You put yourself at risk. I don't

00:57:41.520 | recommend it. And it's not good for anyone if you're just talking about mundane or the weather

00:57:47.120 | or sports. You're just not going to enjoy yourself that much. So this is a problem. And so how do you

00:57:52.080 | overcome this problem? And this kind of goes back to the weekend question of coordination.

00:57:56.000 | If everybody agrees that you're going to talk about your deepest fear, then it's not weird

00:57:59.280 | for you to go up to somebody and ask them. It'd be weird for you to talk about small talk.

00:58:03.120 | If everybody has agreed that you're going to be talking about more vulnerable

00:58:06.240 | or interesting things that evening. And so one thing to do if you have a group of friends

00:58:10.960 | you're hosting over or in general, kind of a host of something is to mandate that people talk about

00:58:16.320 | interesting things. And I have these no small talk cards that are kind of decision aids in this. So

00:58:21.920 | I just say don't talk about small talk things. People get nervous. And what should I talk about?

00:58:26.320 | And so actually, we did an experiment here. And people really don't like it if you just say don't

00:58:29.680 | talk small talk. It's hard to think of these things. As soon as we give the cards to people,

00:58:35.040 | it becomes much easier and people enjoy it. They make more connections. They want to hang

00:58:39.200 | out with each other for longer. And they're talking about a bigger variety of topics.

00:58:44.160 | And so I would give your party members some decision aids or some help if you go this route.

00:58:50.000 | And by the way, we are happier when we talk about these vulnerable things. We like each other more.

00:58:55.280 | So what are your biggest fears? Any other good topics for someone that wants to put this into

00:59:01.040 | place for friends coming over in the next few days? Yeah. I think we did an experiment where

00:59:06.240 | we talked about what is the best question. And so we had 2 conditions where it was like talk

00:59:11.120 | about the past was a few parties or talk about the future was a few other parties. So 2 conditions.

00:59:17.840 | What do you think was better at predicting vulnerability?

00:59:22.560 | The past. That's what we thought, too. And it turns out there was no difference.

00:59:26.480 | So both conditions beat out the control. The control was just kind of an activity,

00:59:31.920 | a random activity that didn't push conversation. So the upside here is that talking about anything

00:59:36.160 | interesting is going to be helpful. But you can think about getting people to pontificate about

00:59:41.760 | their future self, either their hopes or dreams or their past. When was the last time that you've

00:59:46.160 | been in love? Are you more like your father or your mother? Or one of my favorite is what do

00:59:50.880 | you want to be complimented on more? This actually helps reveal a lot about somebody.

00:59:55.680 | It says, you know what, I'm not complimented on this. And I personally think that it's a strength

00:59:59.440 | of mine that may go unseen. It also gives you an end to compliment them on that. So...

01:00:03.680 | Which we know creates happiness, even if it's even if it's fake.

01:00:08.160 | Yeah. Awesome. This was fantastic. I want to hear a little about what you're working on

01:00:12.880 | and about this podcast that came out yesterday. Wonderful. Yeah. So I'll start there. The podcast

01:00:18.240 | is called The Science of Change. And the idea here is that we interview visionary thought leaders

01:00:24.160 | from companies that are trying to change our behavior. So we talked to Peloton to figure out

01:00:28.080 | how they designed an addicting exercise program and Duolingo to figure out how they get us to

01:00:32.560 | learn a language and Credit Karma to figure out how they get us out of debt. And behavioral science

01:00:37.280 | is really about the environment that we live in. And so we're trying to deep dive with the people

01:00:41.840 | who are actually designing our environment and all the apps and products and services we use.

01:00:46.080 | So I'm very excited about The Science of Change. And it is out with the Peloton episode being our

01:00:52.000 | first. And then Irrational Labs. So folks are interested in behavior change, behavioral science.

01:00:58.160 | Irrational Labs is a behavior change company co-founded by myself and Dan Ariely. We have

01:01:04.320 | boot camps, we have trainings, and we do a lot of consulting with companies to help design

01:01:08.800 | new products and features that change behavior for good. And if you go to our website,

01:01:13.440 | the pro tip is to subscribe to the newsletter. And we send out what I think are fairly interesting

01:01:18.800 | summaries of our latest research and what's going on in the field.

01:01:21.920 | Awesome. Well, you're already in the podcast app listening to this. So definitely check out

01:01:27.120 | The Science of Change. And Kristen, thank you so much for being here.

01:01:30.560 | Great to be here. Thanks, Chris.

01:01:32.400 | Does anyone else just want to get dressed up and host a fancy taco party in the middle of

01:01:37.120 | a street downtown? Or is that just me? That was fantastic. And if you're here for the first time,

01:01:43.040 | I hope you enjoyed. Please go ahead and subscribe to the show so you can get notified of all of our

01:01:47.760 | upcoming episodes. And we always appreciate a rating and review in your podcast app.

01:01:52.240 | Finally, I'm looking at hosting a few live episodes where you can join in,

01:01:57.120 | ask questions for me or guests live on the show. If you want to hear about when that's

01:02:01.600 | happening or just stay in the loop of any great hacks, definitely subscribe to our newsletter

01:02:06.880 | at allthehacks.com/email. Or if you're already subscribed and wondering why you haven't heard

01:02:12.320 | from me yet, I promise I'm working on something I really think you'll enjoy. And once it's going

01:02:17.200 | again, it should be on a much more regular schedule. All right. That's it for this time.

01:02:21.600 | You can always reach me at Chris@allthehacks.com. See you next week.

01:02:25.760 | I want to tell you about another podcast I love that goes deep on all things money.

01:02:38.800 | That means everything from money hacks to wealth building to early retirement.

01:02:42.640 | It's called the Personal Finance Podcast, and it's much more about building generational wealth and

01:02:47.920 | spending your money on the things you value than it is about clipping coupons to save a dollar.

01:02:52.800 | It's hosted by my good friend, Andrew, who truly believes that everyone in this world can build

01:02:57.440 | wealth and his passion and excitement are what make this show so entertaining. I know because

01:03:02.800 | I was a guest on the show in December 2022, but recently I listened to an episode where Andrew

01:03:08.640 | shared 16 money stats that will blow your mind. And it was so crazy to learn things like 35% of

01:03:14.640 | millennials are not participating in their employer's retirement plan. And that's just

01:03:18.880 | one of the many fascinating stats he shared. The Personal Finance Podcast has something for

01:03:24.000 | everyone. It's filled with so many tips and tactics and hacks to help you get better with

01:03:28.320 | your money and grow your wealth. So I highly recommend you check it out. Just search for

01:03:32.880 | the Personal Finance Podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts and

01:03:38.160 | enjoy.