Commitment Devices For Creating Lasting Change | Katy Milkman

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1:06Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are, and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors.

1:56Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast. So we have this expression that comes to us from the Greeks that I talk a lot about, the Stokes were fond of. It's this idea that character is fate. Who we are, what our values are, they determine what we're going to do, who we're going to be. And I think that's true, right? As the other expression goes, like when someone tells you who they are, believe them. And that's why you see people make the same mistakes over and over again. This is why you see people, even if they pretended to change, even if their spouse or whatever things they fixed them, they really haven't.

2:30Right. It's because change is hard and a lot of these things get built into us or we're not really serious about changing. But I do think it's an interesting idea because, well, that's true that, right, character is fate. Does that mean your character is fixed and it can't be improved? I don't think that's true. If it is, like, what's the point of stoicism? This is all predetermined. And what was Marcus Reelus writing and meditations for if he just simply was who he was? Why did he talk? He said, fight to be the person that philosophy tried to make you. He said we had to work at it. If we were just naturally living in accordance with nature, the Stoics wouldn't have to remind us to live in accordance with nature.

3:12So, of course, the Stoics believed we could change. So what Seneca and Lucilius are trying to do, they're both trying to improve each other. Seneca says, we learn as we teach. So the idea is, of course, that we can change. But how? That is the hard part. And so I wanted to talk to Katie Milkman, who wrote a wonderful book called How to Change, which is a book full of strategic methods for identifying and overcoming the things that get between us and that change, what Steven Pressfield would call the resistance. And she knows what she's talking about because she's a behavioral scientist at Wharton, and she's the co-director of the Behavioral Change for Good initiative.

3:46I think we had an awesome conversation. I did not think we were going to spend so much time talking about the Odyssey. But as it happens, that's where we began. Because as she points out, that's one of the first devices for change that we have on record. Like how Odysseus comes up with this way of not doing something he'd be inclined to do and forcing himself to do something he does want to do. So I thought we had a great conversation. We actually talked about some parenting stuff, which I thought was great. But going back to that Odysseus thing, we talked a lot about commitment devices, which I thought were awesome.

4:17And then what are the strategies, the ideas humans have come up with over the long amount of time we have here in recorded history to make progress, to make changes, to improve ourselves, to improve the world around us, which of course I spend a lot of time talking about in Right Thing right now, which you can grab everywhere books are sold. Thank you to everyone who supported it. At the time of this recording, I don't know how it did on the list or what the first week sales are. Maybe I'll know by the time you're listening, but one of my commitment devices is I tune all that out. I try to focus on what I have to be doing, which right now is packing for the book tour.

4:54And then I want to spend as much time not refreshing Amazon and checking the rank, but I want to spend as much time as possible writing the fourth book in the series, which I have to finish. It's really kicking my ass. So thanks to Katie Milkman for coming on the podcast. Her book, How to Change, is wonderful. You can grab that anywhere books are sold, and you can listen to her podcast, Choiceology. And I've had a couple of Wharton professors on the podcast lately. Angela Duckworth was on recently. I would love to have Emily Wilson on, the translator of The Odyssey, who we talk about in this episode.

5:27I have made my appeals many, many times. I love her book on Seneca, but she hasn't been on. So I will settle in quotes. I mean this ironically, because I was very excited to have her for today's guest, the one and only Professor Katie Mopin.

5:49I just talked to your colleague on Saturday, Angela Duckworth. Oh, amazing. That's good timing. Yeah. That's really funny. I'm like, am I talking to her later today? Yes, I am talking to her later today. So I will tell her, I will tell her what a coincidence. Did you get to see her in person? She was traveling this weekend. She was in Austin. So she came to, I have a little bookstore here in Texas and then my studio is next to the bookstore. Awesome. I didn't know where she was. I just knew she was flying somewhere this weekend. So sometimes I keep track of her that closely that I'm like, oh my God, she was in this city.

6:20But sometimes, sometimes I give her more privacy than that. Well, and we talked about a third colleague of yours who I'm a big fan of, which is Emily Wilson, the translator and biographer of Seneca. Awesome. She done both the Iliad and the Odyssey. Is that right? Yeah, she did. I actually don't know her personally. I'm just wowed by the amazing people we have at Penn. But I'm a fan, too, from afar or from closer than you, but still kind of afar. I am as well. It's weird. We have her we have her biography of Seneca in the bookstore. And then we also sell her Iliad and Odyssey ones. It's weird to be selling a book that's like thousands of years old.

7:02You know what I mean? It's amazing. It's so neat. It's really, it's the opposite of weird to me. It's like magic. It's like, that's why we write books. It's because of some fantasy that you'll live forever. Yeah, or just like the themes of this, that the themes of this poem have endured for so long is pretty incredible. And then, of course, it's not just like, oh, there's this old thing. Like there's, I guess we rediscovered Gilgamesh in the 1800s, which would have been cool. And but with the Odyssey, it's not just like that it's thousands of years old. it's that like so many other books are built on top of it you know yes and stories and yeah right every book harry potter like whatever you pick it you know my kid is really into the um rick reardon series that they just made into disney plus but he reads the books that i literally can't think of what they're called right now which is so embarrassing uh but they're all about greek gods who are still alive percy jackson yes yes percy jackson thank you yes which is also you know tons of things still anyway and greeking out is really popular podcast with kiddos i don't know if you have kids but i have an eight-year-old so he's into all of this i i do have kids and that's what i was telling angela which is i am reading him emily wilson's translation of the odyssey right now which he is he is obsessed with how old is your son he's seven turning eight this year oh my god that's amazing that he's really into that that's really cool i'll have to try it now Now that you're giving me license to do that, we haven't gone beyond Rick Reardon, Harry Potter.

8:32Like we haven't done really high quality stuff. Well, those are both good. Yeah, they're great. They're great, but they're not like adult. We got into it because he saw like a comic or a video about it. And then we found a graphic novel about it. And then from there, you just sort of build. It's actually been this like pretty incredible thing. That's amazing. I love that. My son has loved the Greek myth stuff in part because when he was six and, you know, screen time was limited, I have Duolingo on my phone, which means it's like on the iPad he uses. And he decided, well, we said, you know, you could use this to do some Spanish because he's learning that in school.

9:13But he's like, I don't want to learn Spanish. This other flag is cooler. And he randomly selected Greek. And then he got really into it. And over three months, he taught himself. I mean, Duolingo taught him he could read Greek more fluently frankly than english when he was six and he learned like hundreds of words it was amazing it was because his the brains are so plastic and then he sort of started being proud of it because it was like a party trick he could show off all the things he could translate into greek and then then the greek myths and we went to a wedding in greece and he sort of like has this whole vision of greek as a part of his persona so anyway i feel like no that's amazing i never thought to do that.

9:51I'm going to do that because I was just, I have this other thing that I do called Daily Dad. And I was talking about, I was just writing about this before I came down, was I was like, what are the things to spoil your children about? And the three I came up with are books. So anytime they want a book, you should buy it. And then I said, anytime they're interested in trying a new kind of food. So like, oh, Indian food is a thing. Okay. We'll go to an Indian food restaurant like right now, you know? And then anytime they're interested in a place, Like if he watches a video about a place or he learns about something in school, my first thing is like, we're going to go there.

10:25Yeah, let's let's go. And when he wants screen time and I feel like it's been a bit much, one of the things we let him watch is like travel vloggers. Like it's not video watching people play video games. It's like learning about the world and then hopefully planting a seed that he'll be interested in going to those places. And so those are the three I came up with, food, books and travel. I love that. That's a really, really great list. But I think you could add Duolingo language learning probably to the list and it would be safe. But it's free. So that doesn't count, I guess. Well, it's true.

10:59You could upgrade to the paid subscription so he doesn't have to, you know, whatever, watch ads. I don't even know what happens in the in the non-paid one. We were happy to give our money to to the cause. So that's so funny. Well, let's connect what we're talking about with your work, which is one of the things I think you notice when you read the Odyssey or anything, the Stoics, whomever, is like any of our fundamental human issues, like trying to be better at stuff, wanting to make changes in our life. We've effectively made no progress in any of these things. Like you read these ancient works and you get the sense that people were like, hey, I wish I could wake up earlier, but it's so hard, right?

11:38That's one of my favorite passages in meditations is like Mark Cerelius opens one of the books struggling to get out of bed in the morning, like just like somebody else is hitting snooze on their alarm just a few hours ago. There's something perennially human about sort of knowing what we want to do or knowing what we need to do and then just not being able to do it. It's so true. And you're right that it comes up in And even in these ancient works, I actually talk a lot about the Odyssey in my class when I teach at Wharton because we learn about commitment devices, which are these tools we can use to constrain ourselves in order to help us achieve our goals.

12:20And the original story of a commitment device is in this great story of Odysseus knows that he's going to confront the sirens and they're going to sing sweet songs to lure him and his ship closer to the shore. And he'll inevitably face shipwreck. He's been warned that this is going to be the end for him. And he has to come up with a solution. And the solution he comes up with is the original example of a commitment device. He says, OK, I'm going to have you bind my hands to the mast so that I can't control the direction of the ship. Everyone who's rowing is going to plug their ears with wax so they can't be lured by these sweet siren songs.

12:57And by doing this, I'll prevent giving into the temptation to go closer. but I'll also get to have the positive experience of hearing what their voices sound like. And it's this amazing, clever solution. It's talked about in every behavioral science book and every behavioral science class, because we think of it as sort of the original person or the oldest example we can think of of someone basically facing temptation and coming up with this kind of clever workaround to prevent giving in. And that's exactly what my research is about. It's what my book is about. It's what you were just mentioning that you spoke with my colleague and collaborator, Angela Duckworth.

13:31It's what she thinks about all day too. And yeah, we love that it connects back to these ancient texts. Well, to me, one of the lessons of that story is sort of the knowledge is not enough, right? So the knowledge that like he has what most sailors don't have, which is like sort of the puncturing of the myth. Like this seems really attractive. This seems wonderfully wonderful, but it's a trick and you will crash your ship and everyone will die. That should be sufficient to steer away from the sirens, right? But it's not. He knows that it's not. And the commitment device is this thing that's getting between him and the part of himself that can't resist.

14:15Absolutely. And it's such a nice way of putting it. And that is sort of, when you say we haven't made a lot of progress, I actually do think we have because we've basically identified a series of tools that look like that, that sort of once you have this meta knowledge, not just the knowledge that I want to get up in the morning, not just the knowledge that I want to build a workout routine and eat healthy and save money for retirement and be a good parent and spouse and be on time to meetings, right? We all have those kinds of knowledge and we have those goals, but we need an additional level of knowledge about what are the tools that will allow us to achieve those goals because just wanting them and knowing I should do this isn't enough.

14:53Well, maybe saying progress is the wrong word there. So in the one sense, we don't fight enormous wars because somebody's wife runs away with somebody else, right? We fight some crazy wars over some crazy things, but fair enough. But my point is we've evolved in some ways, right, as a society, as a world. And then in other ways, when I say we haven't made progress, you're right. We've invented these devices, but the devices are still addressing the same fundamental human deficiencies or problems. So there's something timeless about this struggle, I guess. Absolutely. Yeah. And I would expect that in, you know, hundreds of years, even when our AI overlords are in charge or whatever, thousands of years in the future, however long it'll take us to get there, humans will still have those struggles.

15:43It feels fundamental to the human condition. And then the question is just, are we learning how to overcome the struggles or win more often? And I think we have made progress on that, although we have a long way to go. It is interesting that we don't talk about these things as inventions, but they are. Like the commitment advice being an invention, right? We think of the wheel as an invention or the sword as an invention. But the idea of a commitment device as an invention, I was just reading this book. It's this fascinating book. I'm forgetting who it's by, but it's about the history of notebooks.

16:17And they're talking about how, which I don't fully understand, the invention of double book accounting being a thing that allows basically all commerce and trading to exist. The to-do list is an invention, right? There's all these kind of minor things that we take for granted, but it's interesting to think they didn't exist at one point and how these were added to solve some of the these perennial human issues, that it's easy to forget things, that we're bad at delaying gratification, that we can't keep multiple things in our head at the same time, that these were cultural creations that just didn't exist.

16:58And their invention allowed people to free up resources and make progress, not make the same mistakes over and over again. No, absolutely. And I will tell you that because I have an eight-year-old who is very interested in inventions and science, I have been asked many times, mom, have you invented anything? What have you invented? So I like to claim that some of the science around this is an invention. I've been busy claiming that in order to get street cred with my child. But I agree with you that sort of outside of my household, most people wouldn't think, you know, figuring out a way to get people to go to the gym more regularly by encouraging them to bundle temptations with workouts, which we call temptation bundling.

17:40Most wouldn't acknowledge that as an invention, but actually at some level it is. And it's particularly useful when you're trying to pursue your goals to think about these things as inventions, because I think it gives you the opportunity to say, without this tool, I can't get done what I need to get done. That's one of the most critical steps in being more effective is acknowledging these tools are going to be critical to your success and you can't just push through and achieve everything. I'm talking about this in the book that I just finished. It comes out in June, which is like I was thinking about Gandhi, who I'm fascinated with.

18:15And it's like nonviolence as a political strategy is an invention, right? He's like, oh, you don't you don't have to assassinate the people that you disagree with. You don't have to destroy or or an insurrection is not the only way to change the policy of a government, right? Like there's other forms of political revolution, peaceful protest, the petition. Very timely, given what's happening on my campus right now here in Philadelphia. I mean, the petition is an invention. The consumer boycott is an invention. These are all things that humans came up with to create change, not the kind of change that you talk about, but still change nevertheless.

18:54And that these kind of social strategies for resolving conflicts or, failure, where we think willpower would be sufficient and it isn't, we come up with these inventions or strategies that allow us more often than not. I mean, Alcoholics Anonymous is an invention, right? Absolutely. We have this book in the bookstore that I think about all the time. It's this book called Asylum by this guy, William Seabrook. And he was a very famous travel writer in the 1920s. And he's an alcoholic, but before alcoholism is a thing. So he's a drunk, which is what they would call them. And there's no place he can go or thing he can do to not be a drunk.

19:36Like willpower was at that time, the only option. So he checks himself into an insane asylum. And this is where he dries out. And he writes this memoir, like a travel memoir about being in this insane asylum as a non-insane person trying to get clean. The book, spoiler it in somewhat tragically, but there's this sadness that I felt after I finished it, because it's like, if he had lived long enough for the invention of Alcoholics Anonymous or 12-step or recovery, the story might've ended differently. And just to think like human beings have invented a lot of things in our struggle to change or to be different or to not make the same mistakes over and over again.

20:22That's so interesting. I often think about the support structures that we have now and how it might change who's successful. If you think about things like, you know, being able to even just have a digital calendar or being able to search for things on Google, you could just imagine that with and without those tools, very different people, certainly, obviously, social media, very different people end up succeeding and achieving their goals. And it's interesting to think about that, those as inventions that have completely reshaped who can achieve what I like to think that personally, if I had been an academic in the 1970s, I'm confident I would have no career because I have a terrible memory.

20:58And there's absolutely no chance that without sort of the search tools that are available now, I would ever be able to do the work that I need to do. But because I came along in an era where we have Google Scholar, and it's straightforward to, you know, go find that thing you've forgotten who wrote it, like, it's completely changed, you know, what are the limits? And I think with ChatGPT, it's changing things again. I'm watching doctoral students who have brilliant ideas, but aren't great writers start to be able to actually accomplish a lot more because they have this new tool that allows them to overcome that limitation.

21:31It's really interesting to think about. Well, I think you would like this book on the notebooks because it's weird to think that the notebook is basically invented in like the 14 and 1500s, right? Because paper becomes accessible, literacy rates get to the degree. And then also the rise of the printing press, people are reading enough books that they're losing track of all the things that they read in their books, plural, right? If you only had the family Bible, you could just write notes in the margin of the family Bible or whatever. But if you've read now hundreds of books and some of those books contradict each other or you yourself want to write your own book, now you're needing to create what they would call a commonplace book where maybe one person would record all their knowledge of life or a whole family would keep a commonplace book for generations.

22:20This idea of like, how do I organize this information that I've uncovered or has struck me so I can come back to it and use it later? Again, that doesn't feel like an invention, But it would unlock so much unless, you know, you're a genius who can just keep all of this in your head at one time. And very few of us are that person. Right. But it is interesting if you look at someone like Ben Franklin, who was so successful. Right. And you sort of see like, wow, even without any tools, this person could thrive. But then today, someone without many of the skills he had can accomplish great feats. And it is really interesting to think about, like, what are the differences and the traits we need in different successive generations to thrive?

23:00based on the tools and inventions that exist. Well, don't you think the audio book and podcasts are one of those two? Because if let's say you're a smart, curious, intellectual person, but you're dyslexic or you have ADD and just focusing is hard or reading is unpleasant for you or or you just were failed by your schooling system. And so reading wasn't like a skill that you really came to naturally. it's kind of crazy to think only in the last few decades and then really with the invention of smartphones, have books been available to those kinds of people? And podcasts being sort of another way to have sort of intellectual conversations.

23:43What would you have listened to before podcasts? Probably nothing. There wasn't that. You could listen to talk radio, but that's very different. No, I love that. It's such a good point.

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26:51I've been a fan of audiobooks For a really long time In part because Growing up I had older grandparents Who were Their health was failing And I had a grandmother Who was completely intellectually with it But bedridden And you know She loved fiction And reading but just her, you know, she wasn't at a point where she could do that. And I imagine wouldn't be wonderful if someone could read to her all day, but of course that's not really feasible. And we sort of found places where we could get tons and tons. This was back cassette tapes, cassette tape, audio books. And we were like, you know, finding all the cassette tape audio books we could get, but it was a huge project to set that up.

27:25It required a lot of effort and energy from family members to realize this was the thing that was going to improve her quality of life. And today, as you say, everybody has it on their phone. We all, you know, you can get audible and it's, I think it's a wonderful change. And, and anyway, it's something I take advantage of too. Whenever I, I commute to work on foot and I'm listening to books and podcasts constantly and loving it. You realize there are people who thought they didn't like books, but really they didn't like reading. They love the ideas and the knowledge. Yeah. And it just wasn't, it wasn't accessible to them.

27:58And I feel like a lot of the strategies you talk about, and then also just in the sort of science of change is like what people thought had to require a lot of willpower or brute strength or brilliance. There's often these sort of end runs or ways of thinking about it differently or ways of creating momentum or reducing friction. And so you thought you were the problem, but really the way you were thinking about it or going about it was the problem. And these shifts can open up whole new ways of doing things. Yeah, I love that summary. I think that's exactly right. That's a really perfect summary of sort of maybe the whole body of research I have done and that so many others in my field have also made hugely important contributions to on the science of behavior change.

28:45It's really about these sets of strategies that allow us to outsmart our foes, our adversaries, whether it's procrastination or forgetfulness or a lack of confidence or bad habits, or even just, you know, a social structure that's pushing us in the wrong direction. And as you say, if we don't realize that it takes more than willpower, then we won't know to look for these solutions. But once we realize these inventions can help us, we can make a lot more progress. Yeah, that was one of the things I talked to Angela about her read on stoicism was that it was sort of all about willpower, that it was a sort of raw strength of this brute force.

29:22And obviously, I think she's also thinking about some of the misreading of her own work, which is like grit is always about pushing forward. But sometimes it takes more grit or more strength, yeah, to go around or to question the whole thing to begin with, to ask, where am I going or why am I trying to go there? And so, yeah, there is this kind of work smarter, not harder element to it, I think. Absolutely. Yeah. No, and I know that drives Angela crazy. And actually, you know, having worked with her for almost a decade, very closely, more closely than with really anyone else in that the last decade, I will tell you that she practices what she preaches, which is she's incredibly hardworking.

30:01But she also re-thinks whether she's taking the right strategy. She quits a lot of things. She pivots a lot because she realizes that, you know, if you're hitting a brick wall, you don't just like push or willpower your way through it. There's a lot of bending and adjusting. And I do feel like if you take this sort of caricature of grit, all you hear is just push and work harder. And it's really not right. Yeah, it's funny because I did this book, The Obstacle is the Way. And I think for some reason, when people hear that, they're going like, you're supposed to go through the obstacle, right? Like, that's what The Obstacle is the Way means, I guess, literally.

30:39But no, the idea is that in struggling with the obstacle and failing, you come up with another way around, right? Or because that path is blocked, you end up going in a very different direction that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise. And that becomes the way, right? So there's something weird about our understanding of obstacles where we think you're supposed to smash the obstacle and that's what the obstacle is telling you. The obstacle is the big flashing stop sign or the red light or the road is out. And then in having to come up with a new way, you discover that that should have been the way all along.

31:22That was a better way to do it. I love that. Yeah. And it absolutely applies to thinking about these strategies for behavior change. And by the way, also to their durability, because one of the things that frustrates me most about talking to people about sort of how are you going to create change or how are you going to achieve a goal is often people will be excited to learn about these scientific tools that are scientifically proven tools that can help them, right? say, I mentioned one earlier, so I'll take that as an example, temptation bundling, which is if there's some chore that you find it unpleasant to do, only allowing yourself to enjoy something you find tempting while you pursue the chore.

31:58So you can only binge watch your favorite TV show, say, while you're on the elliptical at the gym. And that's how you're going to motivate yourself to work out regularly. Now you're going to want to come to the gym to find out what happens to your favorite characters. Time will fly while you're using the elliptical. You won't feel guilty wasting time watching whatever junk it is because you're at the gym. Okay, so that's temptation bundling. But a lot of times people will say, okay, you know, I'm going to try that and I'm going to get into gym routine and I'm gonna have a habit and then I'll be all set.

32:24And then I'll just, you know, I won't need to do this anymore. And I'll, and most of the tools we have that we've proven can be effective for helping people. They're not one and done. They're not sort of like, oh yeah, temptation bundle for a month. And then you can watch your favorite shows anywhere. It doesn't have to just be at the gym and you can, you don't even need them to get to the gym. You'll, you'll just be motivated enough that you'll do it. It's really no, that obstacle that forced you to use temptation bundling, which was you hated the gym. That's now the way forever. You're always going to need to have shows that are set aside for your workouts.

32:57So, and there is this misconception with a lot of things like their startup solutions, and then you can set them aside because you'll have built the habit and everything will be all set. You know, you don't need a workout buddy forever just to get off the ground. And anyway, almost all of the tools that will successfully help people change need to be used durably because that path is the right path forever, not just in startup mode. Right. They're not training wheels. Exactly. Exactly. They're permanent wheels. We always need the supports. They're not training wheels. They're guardrails. And so, yeah, like, like this is supposed to be this box that prevents you from going somewhere you don't want to go or keeps you going where you do want to go.

33:47It's it's not. Oh, yeah, it worked for a little bit. And then and then now I'm good. You didn't you didn't actually resolve the fundamental human conflict or temptation that's still there. Exactly. But people miss that. And it's very funny. It's critical. The irony is like, yeah, we go like, let's say you try to quit something, right? Like the alcoholic goes to 12 steps for a while, it works. And then they go, and now I'm good, I can drink sometimes. And that is the thing that you've been, the insidiousness with which we begin to make exceptions or begin to convince. That's the real siren song to go back to what we were talking about earlier is this idea that you're all better, that you've resolved it, you've gotten over it.

34:32And no, it's an unresolvable human conflict and you have to find a process for dealing with it. That's right. And that's why 2000 years ago, people were grappling with the same problems because, you know, it's in your nature forever. It's been in the nature of humans forever. And so the solutions we find aren't quick fixes or band-aids. It's their permanent solutions we need to rely on forever after to get through the tough times. I heard this expression once, and obviously it's not totally true, but I think it goes to what you're saying, which is like traditions are solutions to problems we've forgotten about.

35:08And so you have these things that society does, right? There's norms in politics, let's say, or systems or like just general age ranges that we do things at. And then somebody comes along, they do ayahuasca, and then they go, well, why are we doing these things this way? This sort of technological change comes and disrupts things. And then we go, oh, we invented the way we used to do things for a reason. There's a reason that, I don't know, journalism developed the idea of objectivity or multiple sourcing. There's a reason there's such things as editors or fact checkers. You know, like we came up with these things to solve problems.

35:52Yeah. The old, the old way caused some serious problem or tragedy. And we said, we've got to stop doing it this way. And then that becomes normal. And then like the person who goes, oh, I can just binge watch this anytime now, or I, I can smoke one cigarette. And it's like, no, you can't, you can't do that. I, I love that. I mean, of course there are lots of things that are norms that are dysfunctional and that we do want to break, but, but you're right. that sort of sorting through which of the norms that exist, not just because this tradition has been here forever and we keep doing it, but because it's really serving a purpose.

36:26It's actually one of the things I find most interesting as a researcher to think about and to think about, you know, look at religion, for example. There are many elements of religion that we can tie back to some of the best tools in behavioral science and say, oh, look, like this has actually been in there for a while. So one of my favorite examples is I've done research on this topic called the fresh start effect. At new beginnings, we feel more motivated to pursue our goals. So January 1 is sort of the best known, most famous, but there are lots of moments that feel like new beginnings. Monday is the start of a new month, the start of celebration of a birthday.

36:59Yeah. Season, if it's brought to our attention, particularly spring seems to feel really like a fresh start and people are at those moments, especially when you highlight them to them, they're more motivated to pursue their goals. Both naturally, you'll see it happen. And when we highlight it, we can get a little uptick in goal pursuit. And when you look at religion, you see fresh starts built into every religion, right? So if you think about things like, and by fresh start, I mean, giving you a sense that that was the old me, this is the new me, and the new me is going to be able to overcome and achieve more.

37:28And we can sort of say, blank slate, start over, my old failures are behind me, and they're not going to trip me up in the future. So, you know, confession. You can think of Yom Kippur where atonement is built in and Rosh Hashanah in the Jewish tradition, Easter and rebirth. Being born again. Exactly. All of these elements and there are rituals like this in non-Western tradition, of course, as well. And it's so interesting to see basically all these religions invented different ways of making us feel like, yeah, you've done something that you're not pleased with, whether it was, you know, something that harmed others or something that just harmed yourself, right?

38:11You weren't exercising enough or whatever it is. what, you know, right. That's not a sin, but it's still, we need that clean slate feeling to be motivated. And then, you know, here we come and whatever it was. And we started studying in the 2010s and, uh, without religion, we see the same patterns arising, but religion was hooking into that and giving people extra fresh start moments so that they could achieve more and be more motivated and behave better towards others. Uh, and I think it's just really fascinating As you say, these traditions, they exist for a reason. Yeah, yeah, of course. There's so many, obviously, broken traditions and conventions that we need to question.

38:48And then at the same time, it's like, oh, hey, maybe we, I don't know, we came up with monogamy or marriage as a way of resolving the conflict that would come from the inequity of, say, rich, powerful people having 20 wives. Or husbands. Yeah, sure, sure, of course. No, no. But I mean, today people talk about incels. You sort of have these disaffected, angry men who are sort of on the fringes of society outside the dating market. And you're like, yeah, what would it look like if like 10 % of the society was that? Or we complain about income inequality if there's other forms of inequality. You go, oh, yeah, like through by trial and error, these societies or these cultural norms came and they were trying to adjust for or anticipate sources of conflict between people and groups or, you know, don't covet your neighbor's ox.

39:44Right. You're like, I could see I could see why a religion might encourage that tradition. Right. Or, you know, you know, turn the other cheek. These are these are things that make sense. You're making me think of this wonderful work. I don't know if you've come across it by Michelle Gelfand, who's at Stanford, and she studies whether or not cultures evolve tight versus loose norms. So tight being, you know, like we follow all the rules, loose being, you know, we walk barefoot in banks, which apparently is a thing in New Zealand, but, you know, not so much in Singapore. So Singapore being an example of a really tight culture, New Zealand being a very loose culture.

40:20And one of the things she's found that gives rise to these different degrees to which we are norm followers is the degree of threat that a society has faced over its evolution. More threat gives rise to tighter norms and better responses to things like war, famine, plague. And actually, by the way, she did some really interesting research in the early days of COVID and showed that there were higher death rates in looser societies than in tighter cultures. But then, of course, you see more creativity and innovation under looser norms. So there's these tradeoffs. But anyway, that's what I'm thinking of as you're describing this.

40:55I really love that work and think that which of these social norms we adopt and how tightly we conform to them is such a fascinating aspect of human nature. Well, I mean, I think we found this in the United States the last eight or so years, which is like we were not aware of just how voluntary most of the norms in our political system were. Right. And so when you have the force of a singular personality or you have a party whose moral compass has collapsed, right, then you have suddenly things that you thought were unquestionable or were or were solved for by traditions. and this can be both parties.

41:38I mean, like most presidents understood before Franklin Roosevelt that you didn't seek a third term. And then somebody comes along and goes, eh, I think I'm going to stay in office. And then afterwards, the norm has to be tightened or made literal because we were made aware of how susceptible that norm was to one person or one group that said, I don't feel like following that. And sometimes you think things are more stable or clear than they are. And I'm sure there's an analogy here to personal behavior too. You think that there's bright lines in your life or you're good at something and then something changes and you go, oh, nope, I'm going to have to come up with a policy or a practice that helps me with this.

42:18Yeah, no, absolutely. Or a strategy that's going to stand in the way of this particular temptation that I've never faced before. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, how many people think that they wouldn't do certain things? The Stoics talk about this. You think you wouldn't do it. And that's really only because you've never actually been in the position to do that. You know, that's right, right. No. And our imaginations are very different than our experiences, which is part of this whole conflict. We, you know, when you look at the temptation, one of the most fundamental things about temptation is our misunderstanding of how strong it will be when we're in a cool state and we're looking towards the future.

42:57We're sure, you know, someone offers me that, that drug or that experience, I will say no, because I realize it's bad for me, but then you can't anticipate how powerful your drive and motive and temptation state will be. And that's one of the most important things science has sort of taught us about the nature of temptation is that we can't anticipate it unless we're in the moment. We're really poor forecasters of how strong our urges will be. Well, don't you think it's also you can't conceive of what the new environment will be and the context in which you're making that decision. So you would be like, if I was a politician, I would never choose my job over the right thing.

43:37Right. And that's because you can't imagine what it's like to make this decision where, okay, so yeah, sure. You're not going to win reelection, but also now your whole staff loses their job too. And your kids have to change schools and all these, you know, like you, you can't conceive of. And, and all the things you really care about, you think maybe, you know, if I give up this one, I can do good in these other ways. Of course. Yeah, no, I think that's right. I think there's so many forecasting errors we make when we're in a cold state or a different, it's, you know, behavioral scientists would call an empathy gap and they're everywhere, whether it has to do with temptation or just almost anything.

44:15We have amazing imaginations, but they're not nearly as good as we would need them to be in order to properly forecast the future. We do it in other directions too, right? We overestimate the impact some things will have on us. This is one of, so Dan Gilbert of Harvard University is sort of most famous for doing these really incredible studies that show we think the impact of some catastrophe or some great outcome on our happiness will be much larger than it is in reality. Because again, of an empathy gap, this time in the opposite direction, we don't understand it's due to focalism. And we focus so much on, you know, how horrible it would be to say, lose your vision or, you know, lose use of a limb.

44:57And those things would be absolutely horrible. But what you don't focus on is that you would still have your friends and you would still be grateful for being alive. And so many other things that make life rich would remain. And actually, while you may be a little bit less happy, it wouldn't be as dramatic as you expect. And the same is true. You know, you expect a lot or if I won the lottery, I'd be elated for the rest of my life. And it's actually an incredibly small and maybe almost zero effect in terms of actual happiness improvement relative to this huge thing you anticipate. So there's this empathy gap in a lot of situations.

45:31It goes in different directions, depending on what we're trying to imagine.

45:43You hear that? That's not just a Toyota truck. That's the sound of no crowds, no alerts, no distractions, and no telling what you'll find next. You know, like a detour. So why would you ever take a tour when you could take a detour? Toyota Trucks.

46:15is that because for better or for worse humans are master adjusters we think it would be terrible you know if x y or z happens and it would be in one sense but in another sense we'd still have to wake up and take our kids to school and have lunch and so so we just like that's that's kind of what humans do, which is we've for thousands of years just adjusted to the circumstances that we're in. In our own histories, you know, we thought our life was over when we got dumped by our high school boyfriend or girlfriend. And then in retrospect, we obviously figured it out. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Yes. We haven't had to deal with that stage with our kids yet, but it's coming.

46:58So part of it is that, so we do have amazing psychologists like to talk about them as psychological immune systems. One of, you know, cognitive dissonance is that it's uncomfortable to hold two competing thoughts in mind. And so we tend to resolve that tension like, oh, you know, it's so miserable to be dumped, but I'm not a loser, like, because no one likes to think of themselves as a loser. So you sort of like one of those has to win out because either you're a loser who's the kind of person who gets dumped or you're not. And so you sort of get there and you're like, oh, I'm not a loser. It was for the best.

47:30It was for the best, right? You resolve the tension by by convincing yourself the outcome that you ended up with was the best outcome. So we do have these amazing psychological immune systems, and I'm sure that's part of it. But the main finding in the literature where it says we misforecast our future happiness in response to extreme events is just that we focus too much on one thing and life is composed of many, many more things. So for instance, when you ask Midwesterners and Californians, this is sort of the classic study in this literature that started people thinking about this, how happy do you think Midwesterners are versus Californians?

48:04Everybody thinks Californians are happier. I'm not sure, by the way, that would replicate today because of high housing prices. But let's say in an earlier economy, when people are just going to think about the weather, everybody thought Californians were happier. But in reality, they're basically the same. Californians are a little bit happier with the weather they have than Midwesterners. But life is not about weather. But when you're asked to make a comparison of two things, you know, life with or without vision, right? Or life with or without winning the lottery, you focus on only what's different and don't remember all the things that are the same.

48:39And all the things that are the same are the things that matter more for your life happiness, it turns out, which is family, job, mission, you know, health, other kinds of, you know, you're alive and you're able to do things that you care about. And so we make that mistake. And that's what leads to the empathy gap in this case. Right. Because they're forgetting people are poor in California. People get divorced in California. People have accidents in California. They're not thinking that life is exactly the same there. It's just maybe sunnier some days. Although as someone who grew up in Sacramento, I try to remind people that California is not all Malibu and the Golden Gate Bridge.

49:20It's a little more complicated. That's true. But even if it were, it would still be wrong to assume that people are always going to be happier in California. Because as you said, there's all these other things that matter so much more than the weather. Well, when we think about people, you're like, if I was a billionaire, I would do X, Y, or Z. I think what we're also missing is what it takes to become the billionaire. So nobody just wakes up and suddenly has a billion dollars, right? Well, some people do actually, if you're born in the right family. Even then, right? You wonder why doesn't the heir to the Walmart fortune do X, Y or Z.

49:53Well, they grew up and heir to the Walmart fortune, right? They didn't have your experiences and then woke up one day with these things. Like the example I always think about is like Tim Cook, the successor to Steve Jobs. People, they wonder why he's not as like charismatic, why he hasn't invented, like why he's not as much of a product visionary, et cetera, as Steve Jobs. And it's like, it's because he worked for Steve Jobs. Like how you don't work Like there's a difference between a person who creates a company from nothing and a person who is able to successfully operate inside a company for so long that eventually they could be anointed the successor of that company.

50:33Like, like if, if he was a take huge risks, burn it all down, bet everything on a, on a, uh, an unlikely thing the way Steve jobs would be, he would have been Steve jobs and not the employee of Steve jobs, you know, like, like, so the context that it requires to get to that point inevitably shapes the decisions and the values and the options available to that person. I love that point. It reminds me of research from the 70s and 80s on the fundamental attribution error where people tend to ascribe too much of behavior to an individual's fixed personality traits and not enough to the situation. right you see somebody cut someone else off on the highway and you're like that person's a jerk but if you were the one cutting them off as you swerve realizing you were about to miss your exit because you're in a community you know you're not driving in an area where you're familiar or you're late for something you wouldn't think i'm such a jerk right you'd think like i'm late hopefully they'll understand uh and so we have these different attributions we make and i think that relates to to what you're describing about the the mistakes we make and trying to figure out like why aren't these two people handling the situation the same way?

51:51It's not actually the same situation because they've come to it from really different paths. And so, and our situation isn't just that static moment. It's the entire journey we took to get there and all of the forces that we had to navigate in order to reach the point. I think about that when I'm jealous or comparing myself to someone or something and I go, you can't just have what you have and what they have. It doesn't work that way. Like what they have and who they are is context dependent on what it took to get there, you know? So, so like, you don't just get to take, take your brain and put it in the president's or put it in, you know, the CEOs or the, the, the rock star, whatever.

52:33I hope you're not jealous of the president. We could spend the next 20 minutes disabusing you of that envy. I think that I love the onion headline the day that Barack Obama was elected. I think it said black man gets America's worst job. So yes, I hope you don't envy the presidency because that seems like a pretty rough gig. But isn't that isn't that the point? There are people who want that gig, right? Like, oh, yeah, somebody who think about it differently than you. Yeah, that's true. But the onion was right. Yeah, no, absolutely. But I really love your point that we can't have all the things and recognizing when we feel that envy, what it would take to have the thing we envy and what we would have to sacrifice can help diffuse a lot of that feeling and allow us to focus on, no, what is it I really want?

53:18Because I have to take the path to get it. We were talking about the Odyssey earlier. I think that was one of the things that struck me the most when I read all the way through Emily Wilson's translation. And I don't know if I just never made it that far or if they'd skipped over when I read it in school. But again, spoiler, at the end, after Odysseus murders like 50 people, you know, like, again, And it's pretty gruesome there at the end where he just murders all the suitors. Like I think in the kids version, you know, he wins the contest and they all go home and admit defeat. But no, he and his son mercilessly slaughter them.

53:50But then like the last chapter of the Odyssey, after 10 years at home, Odysseus starts packing up to go on another trip. Basically, he's been gone this whole time. So his kingdom is in ruins. He has to go make money and whatever. But the point is, oh, yeah, Odysseus is an adventurer. And this whole desire to get home was the fundamental action. It's the journey, not the destination. Yeah. Have you read the Cavafy poem, Ithaca? No. Oh, it's wonderful. Okay, you'll have to read it. But basically, it's fantastic. And the point of the poem is to say, you thought you were on a journey to a destination, but it's actually about the journey itself.

54:29That was the Ithaca, not getting to Ithaca. I thought, Odysseus is this guy. He just wants to get home to be with his wife and kids. And you're like, no, you didn't. That's not who you are. You wouldn't have left to fight in this stupid war if you liked being at home with your wife and kids so much, you know, like it's realizing, I think every generation finds something new in it, but it's like, oh, wait, he's not the hero. He's this flawed, tragic figure who's sort of condemned to always be on these audits. Oh, that's interesting. I mean, I of thinking it's flawed and tragic. I think the the poem Ithaca would say, at least I read it as saying, it's not flawed and tragic.

55:08Life is an adventure. And if you're too hung up on the destination, you're missing the whole point. And by the way, this is very related to sort of the most effective strategies for achieving your goals, which many people are much too fixated on. I just have to get to the goal. I will take the most efficient route because the goal is what it's all about. And what the research shows is actually you do better if you find a way to make the journey enjoyable, because then you'll persist. And achieving a goal is all about persistence. So people make this mistake, they look for efficient paths, but those efficient paths lead to quitting, whereas more winding circuitous route that is enjoyable will lead you to persist and succeed at a higher rate.

55:50But yeah, I don't think of the journey being enjoyed as a tragic flaw. I actually think enjoying the journey and being in it for the journey is part of what makes the whole thing so compelling. And it's like, you know, what we all need to realize more is that each day is a gift and we need to enjoy the journey we're on, not just be fixated on some goal that's in mind. But you're right that it's tragic to the extent that you believed he really thinks what he's up to is getting home. Well, I mean, he's the tragic figure in that the restlessness and the inability to appreciate and enjoy what he has.

56:32So I'm saying he's tragic in that like all epic heroes, he's called to this thing and it takes him away. And then he's called to come home and it takes a long time. And then he's called to the next thing. Meanwhile, what has he missed in all of this period? And what's the collateral damage, right? He leaves Ithaca with like 600 people and he's the only one that comes home. It's hard to go, well, at least he enjoyed the journey. No, that's fair enough. I guess you don't have the counterfactual of whether any of those 600 have made it and if they'd been in some other war zone. But anyway, true, true.

57:10You have to take some metaphorical leaps in order for it to all make sense is not tragic. Well, this is why all the myths are so wonderful is you can see in them what you want to see them and then tell whatever moral lesson you want to tell. And it can change from one day to the next. But I think what you just said about, you know, sort of journey versus outcome or process versus, you know, the payoff to me where that intersects with stoicism fundamentally is like you don't control the outcome. So like like if I enjoy writing books, that is a much better place to go through or way to go through life than needing to be or enjoying being a bestselling author.

57:50Right. Because the latter part is dependent on a whole bunch of things going right. And ultimately other people giving you the thumbs up or the thumbs down. But if if I enjoyed the process of coming up with the idea and the process of writing and I learned in doing it and I got better for doing it, then whether you get the thing at the end or not, you've succeeded. You just have this potentially extra bonus. And so, you know, when people in sports talk about trusting the process, I think that's what they're meaning. It's like you got to you got to learn to love the day to dayness of it separate from whether you get the cheers or the contract or the winning or losing.

58:29Absolutely. And the fact that loving the day to day also translates to increasing the likelihood of winning. Yes. Yes. It's sort of magic. It's incredible. Right. At some level, like, wow, that's talk about a win-win. So and yet people, again, are looking for those shortcuts they're thinking. So an example, we've talked a bit about getting to the gym. So I'll give you an example that I think makes it really clear in that context. A sort of classic example would be I want to get fit. The fastest way to do that is the Stairmaster. So that's efficient. I'm going to get fit. I'll use the Stairmaster.

59:03The alternative being I want to get fit. I'd like to enjoy it. I'm going to do Zumba classes with my friends. And what you see is people think if their goal is to get fit, they should choose option one, go on the Stairmaster. It's the most efficient. Turns out probably you get in shape faster. However, they're wrong because if they choose option one, they will go on the Stairmaster once, find it miserable and never come back. If they choose option two, they'll go to Zumba with a friend, enjoy it, and they'll go, you know, three times a week and they will actually get in shape. And so that's sort of what's interesting about this mistake people make on focusing on the outcome versus the path that I find.

59:40And this is, there's really wonderful research on this by Islet Fischbach at the University of Chicago and Caitlin Woolley at Cornell showing consistently people make the mistake of choosing efficiency over fun. But if they're encouraged to choose fun, they get better outcomes because of persistence. Yeah. There's a, what's that Pascal's wager. There's something about this here too, where it's like, and then let's say, uh, neither of them ultimately give you the outcome that you want for some other reason, you would have been better off picking the one that was at least fun while you did it. That's right.

1:00:13Exactly right. So it's the win-win-win and your friendship would have been better and you would have happy memories of Zumba class and all the things. Yeah. So there are many reasons and they don't even incorporate that in their studies. They're just focusing on what literally leads to the best achievement of your goal, ignoring the fact that there's this other benefit you get of enjoying your day-to-day life. Yeah, I think there's like a cliche. It's like the person who loves walking will walk further, you know? And so you got to figure out what, not just what do you love about the thing, but how do you do it in a way that's enjoyable and sustainable so you can do it over a long period of time?

1:00:51Because when you zoom out, yeah, it's like, you're not just trying to temporarily solve this problem because whatever got you there is still there. So if you're trying to lose weight, chances are just losing weight once, okay, you lost it, but now you're just going to gain it back if you're not enjoying it on an ongoing kind of maintenance level. Exactly. Right. Because life hopefully is very long and we need to achieve these goals over and over and over again, not just one off. Yes. And the irresolvable human temptation or flaw is there. So you have to you have to come up with something that you're going to keep doing and not convince yourself.

1:01:28You're fixed. Yes. Yes. Totally. Because you're never fixed. You'll always be a human. Unfortunately or fortunately, however you decide to look at that. I like to think of the glass as half full. So let's go with fortunately. Yes. Agreed. Well, this is amazing. And I didn't think we were going to end up talking about the Odyssey most of it, but I'm glad we did. I am too. This was really fun. And now I have a new book to read to my son. So I'm excited that you convinced me he's ready for it. So thank you for that. I'll send you these translations. And then the other thing we, there's this concept album about the Odyssey.

1:02:01That's like sort of this rock opera that my son is really into also. So he's like listening to it and, and yeah, he's like, he's consuming it in all the different mediums you could consume it. That's amazing. Well, maybe our kids can hang out someday, but your son sounds like he's going to turn out as a pretty amazing guy. I hope so. Well, this was awesome. I really appreciate it. We'll talk soon. It was really fun. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show.

1:02:33We appreciate it. And I'll see you next episode.

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