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

by Katy Milkman

forgetting is the silent killer of even our most ardent resolutions.

making hard things seem fun is a much better strategy than making hard things seem important.

the secret to a better life is not to be superhuman, without desires and quirks and vulnerabilities, but instead to be a problem solver, equipped with the latest scientific knowledge.

One answer is that change is hard. But a more useful answer is that you haven’t found the right strategy.

we search for solutions that will deliver the quick knockout victory and tend to ignore the specific nature of our adversary.

to give yourself the best chance at success, it’s critical to size up your opponent and develop a strategy tailored to overcome the particular challenges you face. The surest path to success is not one-size-fits-all. Instead, you must match your approach to your opponent.

you’ll get further faster if you customize your strategy: isolate the weakness preventing progress, and then pounce.

If we hoped to effectively promote behavior change, of course we would need to understand when to begin.

if you want to change your behavior or someone else’s, you’re at a huge advantage if you begin with a blank slate—a fresh start—and no old habits working against you.

rather than perceiving time as a continuum, we tend to think about our lives in “episodes,” creating story arcs from the notable incidents, or chapters, in our lives.

We’re more likely to pursue change on dates that feel like new beginnings because these moments help us overcome a common obstacle to goal initiation: the sense that we’ve failed before and will, thus, fail again.

36 percent of successful attempts took place when people moved homes,

The bigger the landmark, the more likely it is to help us take a step back, regroup, and make a clean break from the past.

When we hope to change, we have an opportunity to try reshaping our environment to help us disrupt old routines and ways of thinking. This could be as simple as finding a new coffee shop to work in or a new gym.

Not everyone benefits from a fresh start. When you’re on a roll, any disruption can be a setback.

while fresh starts are helpful for kick-starting change, they can also be unwelcome disruptors of well-functioning routines. Anyone seeking to maintain good habits should beware.

In my opinion, New Year’s resolutions are great! So are spring resolutions, birthday resolutions, and Monday resolutions. Any time you make a resolution, you’re putting yourself in the game.

Too often, a sense that change is difficult and daunting prevents us from taking the leap to try.

Often, change takes multiple attempts to stick.

we tend to pursue behavior change without thinking of the discomfort we’ll have to endure or attempting to alleviate it.

we tend to be overconfident about how easy it is to be self-disciplined.

We think “future me” will be able to make good choices, but too often “present me” succumbs to temptation.

People have a remarkable ability to ignore their own failures.

evidence suggests that, surprisingly, our intentions are only loosely predictive of our behaviors.

Reminders work far, far better when we can act on them immediately.

even a five-minute delay between a reminder to buckle up and the chance to strap in was enough for drivers to forget what they were meant to do when they entered their vehicles.

The more vivid, catchy, and thus memorable the cue, the more likely it is to do its job and help us recall our plans.

for complex goals, such as learning a foreign language, planning involves not just remembering to follow through, but also breaking your goal down into smaller, more concrete components.

Plans don’t change minds—they only help us remember to do the things we already want to do.

cue-based planning belongs at the top of any list of behavioral science insights that can spur goal achievement.

Laziness can be an asset. And not just when it comes to efficiency. When laziness is appropriately harnessed, it can actually help facilitate change.

If you want to develop good habits, or to replace bad habits with better ones, you’ll be well-served to deliberately and repeatedly drill them, like a firefighter training to do the right thing in a high-pressure environment.

“The worst thing you can do is sit on bad news.”

A survey that had just been released showed that the average mental health metrics of students in leading social science PhD programs looked similar to those of people incarcerated in U.S. prisons!

Almost everyone knew what to do to overcome their problems; they just weren’t doing it.

Research confirms the obvious: when we don’t believe we have the capacity to change, we don’t make as much progress changing.

But what if the problem isn’t ignorance but confidence—and our unsolicited wisdom isn’t making things better but worse?

Our expectations shape our outcomes.

First, our beliefs can change our emotions. If you have positive expectations, that often generates positive feelings, which have a host of physiological benefits such as alleviating stress and reducing blood pressure.

There is also evidence that beliefs can change motivation.

And finally, beliefs can affect our physiology—not just through our emotions, but directly.

By changing our emotions, our attention, our motivation, and our physiology, our beliefs can powerfully shape our experiences.

What we think we’re capable of is crucial when it comes to behavior change.

The feedback and reinforcement we get from the people around us play a key role in shaping our beliefs about our own abilities.

A minor mistake can tank your confidence, making you believe you’ll never succeed. Unfortunately, the more ambitious your goals, the higher the risk of a small but ultimately devastating failure.

By preparing to recover from the occasional failure and focusing on past successes, we can conquer self-doubt, build resilience, and make it easier to change for years to come—not just until we hit the first bump in the road.

No one can make a major breakthrough without experiencing setbacks along the way—the decisive factor is how we respond.

You’re likely to go further faster if you find the person who’s already achieving what you want to achieve and copy and paste their tactics than if you simply let social forces influence you through osmosis.

In endeavors that require sustained effort, finding out that we’re way behind our peers can break our spirit.

Social influence tactics can add far more value when the focus is on concrete, immediately achievable goals, such as voting or spending fewer hours on social media rather than more long-term or abstract goals, like saving more for retirement.