Latest / Trumponomics / Episode 19: 7 Economics Tricks To Help Keep Resolutions
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Sweating. The sweat calculation is an interesting one, but like
- 0:05Speaker 1: it would go up when I'm in dance presence, Sweet
- 0:08Speaker 1: sweet sweat, sweat, sweat. This episode is brought to you
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- 0:38Speaker 1: for all investors. Hi, and welcome back to Bloomberg Benchmark,
- 0:47Speaker 1: a podcast about the global economy. It is Thursday, January seven,
- 0:51Speaker 1: and I'm Tory Stillwell and economics reporter with Bloomberg News
- 0:54Speaker 1: in d C. And I am joined by my co
- 0:56Speaker 1: host Ao Today, our editor for Benchmark in Sanford, Cisco. Happy, Happy,
- 1:03Speaker 1: say pretty solid. I was in Atlanta. I got all
- 1:07Speaker 1: fancy for a wedding. Did it up real big? What
- 1:10Speaker 1: about you? I went skiing over Christmas, which was really fun.
- 1:14Speaker 1: We've been getting almost record snow I think in Tahoe.
- 1:17Speaker 1: So yeah, it was amazing. Um when we drove up there,
- 1:22Speaker 1: it was right after a big storm, so it was
- 1:26Speaker 1: some of the best skiing I've done in a long time.
- 1:28Speaker 1: Well with it being New Year's uh, I personally love resolutions. Yes,
- 1:37Speaker 1: I think that they're so much fun, even though I
- 1:40Speaker 1: don't really keep them all the time. They're nice, a
- 1:43Speaker 1: nice way to like center yourself into the new year.
- 1:46Speaker 1: But some people are like really cynical about them and
- 1:49Speaker 1: think they're a total waste of time. I'm usually in
- 1:53Speaker 1: that camp. Um, what's your what's your new New Year's
- 1:56Speaker 1: resolution this year? So? Uh, I like in years past,
- 2:02Speaker 1: I would always the first day just like make a
- 2:04Speaker 1: list of ten resolutions. But last year I took a
- 2:08Speaker 1: different tack that I'm also replicating again this year. And
- 2:12Speaker 1: that's where I like give up a bad habit or
- 2:15Speaker 1: something that I want to tweak a little bit every
- 2:18Speaker 1: single month. So this month is uh, sober January. I
- 2:24Speaker 1: will be giving up alcohol. It has been pretty miserable
- 2:30Speaker 1: so far, the one week that we've enjoyed so far
- 2:36Speaker 1: of January. Yeah, exactly. At least it's not February, which
- 2:40Speaker 1: is giving up Chipotle, which is a pretty sad month.
- 2:43Speaker 1: And also like the shortest month, so give myself a
- 2:47Speaker 1: little bit of a break there. What about you, what
- 2:49Speaker 1: are you doing for? What are your resolutions? Well, um,
- 2:54Speaker 1: this makes me sound like a complete lame San Francisco hippie,
- 2:59Speaker 1: but it is to meditate seven times a week. Um.
- 3:03Speaker 1: I used to meditate a lot more, but I've recently
- 3:06Speaker 1: kind of fallen out of the habit, so I want
- 3:08Speaker 1: to redevelop this habit again. It's like one of those things,
- 3:11Speaker 1: you know, like running or anything else that's good for you.
- 3:14Speaker 1: I know it's good for me in the long run. Um,
- 3:16Speaker 1: and I'm really glad I did it once I did it,
- 3:18Speaker 1: but it's kind of hard for me to get myself
- 3:21Speaker 1: to do it beforehand. Yeah. Well, Twitter actually put out
- 3:26Speaker 1: a list this week of the most tweeted resolutions for
- 3:31Speaker 1: and let's see if any of ours made the list.
- 3:34Speaker 1: They are to get in shape is number one. Number
- 3:38Speaker 1: to eat healthier, three, be a better person, four, be nicer,
- 3:42Speaker 1: which seems kind of similar to number three. Number five,
- 3:46Speaker 1: learned something new, six, drink more water, seven be happy, Hey,
- 3:52Speaker 1: quit smoking, and I drink less alcohol. And to save money. Yeah,
- 3:57Speaker 1: so a little bit of overlap there, But as we
- 4:00Speaker 1: both know and have witnessed in our own lives. Resolutions
- 4:04Speaker 1: are pretty hard to keep, and when we fail, it
- 4:07Speaker 1: can be sometimes be expensive. Let's take that top resolution,
- 4:11Speaker 1: for example, to get in shape. So if we walk
- 4:14Speaker 1: through it. You want to get in shape, so you
- 4:15Speaker 1: get a gym membership, and that's roughly fifty dollars a
- 4:18Speaker 1: month more in some cities less than others. Uh. And
- 4:21Speaker 1: then you decide you also need to get a fresh
- 4:23Speaker 1: pair of kicks, so you spend like a hundred dollars
- 4:26Speaker 1: on a new pair of running shoes. You get new
- 4:28Speaker 1: workout clothes another hundred dollars. Maybe you want a fitbit
- 4:31Speaker 1: like you have, so that's another hundred dollars. Or do
- 4:34Speaker 1: you have an Apple Watch? Now have you upgraded? I
- 4:37Speaker 1: have a fit Bit and um, what's called the Basis
- 4:41Speaker 1: watch that tracks not just your continuous heart rate, but
- 4:44Speaker 1: also how much you're sweating and your surface body temperature sweating.
- 4:50Speaker 1: The sweat calculation is an interesting one. Yeah, it would
- 4:55Speaker 1: go up when I'm in dance presence sweat sweat, sweet sweat. Anyways, Okay,
- 5:02Speaker 1: so we we've we've we've spent all of our stuff
- 5:04Speaker 1: on getting in shape. But then say, we do all that,
- 5:07Speaker 1: and after a week or two, we get bored with
- 5:09Speaker 1: working out, We hate going to the the gym, a treadmill
- 5:12Speaker 1: is awful, and our commitment to the resolution fades and
- 5:15Speaker 1: we don't do it for the rest of the year.
- 5:16Speaker 1: That's like a thousand dollars over the course of a
- 5:19Speaker 1: year that we've wasted. Once you add all those things together,
- 5:22Speaker 1: and when you multiply that by all the thousands, probably
- 5:25Speaker 1: millions of people that this happens to, you've got quite
- 5:29Speaker 1: a big cost of society there. Yeah. Well, you know,
- 5:33Speaker 1: lucky for us, there's now a growing body of research
- 5:36Speaker 1: in economics of all things, that helps you stick to
- 5:38Speaker 1: your resolutions. That's right, and beyond keeping us all from
- 5:42Speaker 1: needlessly blowing lots of money, Let's walk through what economics
- 5:46Speaker 1: has to do with keeping our resolutions and making you
- 5:49Speaker 1: meditate every day hockey. Well, you know, economics traditionally thought
- 5:55Speaker 1: about people as these rational, disciplined asians constantly per suing
- 6:00Speaker 1: their self interest, kind of like robots, and in that universe,
- 6:04Speaker 1: everyone would deliver on their New year's resolutions. Right, But
- 6:08Speaker 1: we all know that these resolutions are incredibly hard to keep,
- 6:11Speaker 1: even if we want to stick to them, even if
- 6:14Speaker 1: we know in our heads that exercising more, or meditating more,
- 6:18Speaker 1: or calling our parents more is good for us in
- 6:20Speaker 1: the long run. So there's this rising part of economics
- 6:24Speaker 1: called behavioral economics that recognizes us for the irrational and
- 6:30Speaker 1: often undisciplined humans that we are. And they are now
- 6:33Speaker 1: all these researchers who study how our behavior deviates from
- 6:38Speaker 1: what would be the rational thing to do, and by
- 6:41Speaker 1: understanding all those quirks, we can come up with ways
- 6:44Speaker 1: to save us from ourselves. Exactly. For today's show, we
- 6:48Speaker 1: are going to distill the best research into seven different tricks,
- 6:52Speaker 1: and we have a great expert to guide us along
- 6:55Speaker 1: the way. Katie Milkman is a professor from the University
- 6:58Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania is Wharton Business School, and she is on
- 7:01Speaker 1: the frontier of this research on self control failures. Hello, Katie, Hi,
- 7:07Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us. It's my pleasure
- 7:09Speaker 1: to be here. Thanks for having me, Katy. I. I
- 7:12Speaker 1: always thought New Year's resolutions were kind of this arbitrary thing,
- 7:16Speaker 1: but apparently there's actual evidence that the start of the
- 7:19Speaker 1: year is a great time to set these goals. Um,
- 7:22Speaker 1: can you tell us about your research into fresh starts. Absolutely.
- 7:27Speaker 1: I've spent some time with a couple of wonderful collaborators,
- 7:30Speaker 1: hanschen Die at Washington University in St. Louis and Jason
- 7:33Speaker 1: Reese's here with me at Wharton, thinking about fresh starts
- 7:36Speaker 1: and studying them. And what we found is that there
- 7:39Speaker 1: are these moments in our lives that feel like new beginnings,
- 7:43Speaker 1: and New Year's is one of them, but there are
- 7:45Speaker 1: lots of others. So the start of a new week,
- 7:47Speaker 1: or the beginning of a new month, or following a
- 7:50Speaker 1: birthday or holiday, a new baby that's right, having a
- 7:56Speaker 1: new baby, um, getting married or getting engaged, starting a
- 7:59Speaker 1: new jobs, starting at a new school would be other
- 8:02Speaker 1: moments that feel like the beginning of new cycles. And
- 8:04Speaker 1: at all of those times, we feel like we have
- 8:06Speaker 1: a clean slate and it's a great opportunity for us
- 8:09Speaker 1: to make changes in our lives. We have extra motivation.
- 8:12Speaker 1: And we've seen this play out in lots of different settings.
- 8:15Speaker 1: But a couple of my favorites are Google searches for
- 8:18Speaker 1: the term diet spike at these fresh chart moments, and
- 8:21Speaker 1: you can you can imagine why. In some cases it
- 8:23Speaker 1: might be that we behave badly before these fresh start
- 8:26Speaker 1: moments in some cases, but we see it also with
- 8:29Speaker 1: gym attendance and with goal setting. People set more goals
- 8:33Speaker 1: and that's in health relevant context and health irrelevant ones
- 8:36Speaker 1: like goals around finance and education at these fresh dart moments. Interesting.
- 8:40Speaker 1: Interesting is it that we set these goals at these
- 8:45Speaker 1: fresh start moments um more frequently or is it that
- 8:49Speaker 1: they're actually effective when we set these goals at these
- 8:52Speaker 1: particular times. It's a fantastic question. So our research is
- 8:56Speaker 1: focused on showing that people are more motivated, and so
- 8:59Speaker 1: we set the goals, but we also go to the
- 9:02Speaker 1: gym and so um, so people are executing more and
- 9:06Speaker 1: they're also planning more. So it seems to be a combination.
- 9:10Speaker 1: And of course, if you don't have a goal, and
- 9:12Speaker 1: if you don't start, you can't be effective. You gotta
- 9:14Speaker 1: start somewhere exactly. So that was our first strategy, to
- 9:19Speaker 1: use these memorable occasions as time to set new goals. UM.
- 9:24Speaker 1: Our second strategy here is what you have called temptation bundling. UM.
- 9:30Speaker 1: Can you talk to our listeners about what this is?
- 9:33Speaker 1: Absolutely this is one of my favorite tricks and I
- 9:36Speaker 1: devised it to trick myself actually, so I realized I
- 9:39Speaker 1: had two problems. Um, at the end of a long day,
- 9:42Speaker 1: I found that I really wasn't motivated enough to get
- 9:44Speaker 1: myself to the gym. It just sounded like a horrible
- 9:47Speaker 1: way to spend time, even though I knew I should
- 9:49Speaker 1: do it. And at the end of a long day,
- 9:51Speaker 1: I also found myself wanting to waste time binge watching
- 9:54Speaker 1: junk TV shows and reading what was your worst guilty
- 9:59Speaker 1: pleasure t V show? Oh? No, well, now I have
- 10:02Speaker 1: to insult someone, some producer. Um, let's see when I
- 10:07Speaker 1: struggle with. Now is scandal? I had a lot of
- 10:10Speaker 1: trouble with loss. Oh I love these shows. Gossip Girls
- 10:17Speaker 1: another one I've struggled with. But I should probably be
- 10:21Speaker 1: writing my next paper, working on on grading students or
- 10:25Speaker 1: helping doctoral students develop, rather than spending time watching these
- 10:28Speaker 1: TV shows at a rapid pace. So I have these
- 10:31Speaker 1: two problems, and I realized that perhaps I could actually
- 10:34Speaker 1: solve them simultaneously. What if I, for instance, only let
- 10:37Speaker 1: myself watch the next episode of my favorite low brow
- 10:40Speaker 1: TV show while I was exercising at the gym, I'd
- 10:43Speaker 1: stop wasting time at home watching those shows, and I'd
- 10:46Speaker 1: start craving trips to the gym to find out what
- 10:48Speaker 1: happened next. So I've done some research on this concept.
- 10:51Speaker 1: I call it temptation bundling. I've done it actually with
- 10:53Speaker 1: audio novels which I personally use. My favorite one ever
- 10:57Speaker 1: is The Hunger Games, which bundles beautifully with exercise. That's
- 11:00Speaker 1: great trilogy, lots of um cliffhangers which keep you coming
- 11:04Speaker 1: back for more craving the next trip to the gym.
- 11:07Speaker 1: And we found that not only is it an effective
- 11:09Speaker 1: means of increasing gym attendants to give people access to
- 11:12Speaker 1: tempting audio novels that they can only listen to when
- 11:15Speaker 1: working out, as opposed to giving them other equally valuable gifts,
- 11:19Speaker 1: but people actually value it. So one amazing thing that
- 11:22Speaker 1: we found is that at the end of our study,
- 11:24Speaker 1: people are actually willing to pay us for temptation bundling devices.
- 11:28Speaker 1: That's what we call them. So people who owned iPods
- 11:33Speaker 1: that were loaded with tempting audio novels would actually pay
- 11:36Speaker 1: us to take away those iPods their own possessions unlock
- 11:40Speaker 1: them at the gym so they could only access the
- 11:42Speaker 1: tempting content while they were exercising. Wow, that's amazing and
- 11:46Speaker 1: that's not what traditional economics would predict, right, for people
- 11:50Speaker 1: to pay someone else to restrict their future options, that's right.
- 11:53Speaker 1: Traditional economic theory would say people shouldn't pay for that
- 11:56Speaker 1: kind of restriction, but we found about sixty percent of
- 11:59Speaker 1: people would pay for this type of restriction. Let's uh,
- 12:02Speaker 1: let's go ahead and talked about our third strategy, which
- 12:07Speaker 1: is is related here is putting money on the line.
- 12:10Speaker 1: And you mentioned commitment devices. Act. I feel like you
- 12:16Speaker 1: told me about your experience with something along these lines
- 12:19Speaker 1: not too long ago, when you were here visiting me
- 12:21Speaker 1: in d C. Yeah, that's right. So about two years ago,
- 12:24Speaker 1: I was using this app that used a GPS tracker
- 12:28Speaker 1: to let you check into a gym or track your
- 12:31Speaker 1: runs outside. And so you you set this goal of
- 12:34Speaker 1: exercising let's say three times a week, and every week
- 12:38Speaker 1: you made your goal, you earned this small amount of money,
- 12:41Speaker 1: and every week you didn't make your goal, they automatically
- 12:44Speaker 1: deducted ten dollars from your bank account. So the fear
- 12:48Speaker 1: of losing this money really kept me going for a while.
- 12:51Speaker 1: It's a fantastic example of a commitment device, and there's
- 12:54Speaker 1: a lot of research showing that these are highly effective.
- 12:56Speaker 1: So any any situation where you're able to put money
- 13:00Speaker 1: on the line that you'll forfeit if you fail to
- 13:02Speaker 1: achieve your goal is called the commitment device. And this
- 13:05Speaker 1: is another situation where traditional economics would say, who would
- 13:08Speaker 1: ever do that? Why would you ever put money on
- 13:10Speaker 1: the line, Why would you want to punish yourself? But
- 13:12Speaker 1: self flagellation turns out to be really motivating, and so
- 13:16Speaker 1: there's some studies that have shown it is effective for
- 13:19Speaker 1: helping people lose weight if they can put money on
- 13:21Speaker 1: the line that they'll forfeit if they fail to lose weight.
- 13:24Speaker 1: In fact, one of my co authors and colleagues here
- 13:26Speaker 1: at Wharton, Kevin Volpe, has led one particularly impactful study
- 13:30Speaker 1: on that. There's also work showing it helps with smoking cessation.
- 13:33Speaker 1: So if you give people the opportunity to create an
- 13:35Speaker 1: account where they can put money that they'll forfeit if
- 13:38Speaker 1: they haven't successfully quit smoking in six months, that significantly
- 13:41Speaker 1: increases smoking cessation rates. So those are a couple of
- 13:44Speaker 1: important settings where it's been studied. And there's a great
- 13:46Speaker 1: website that I like to promote because I think it's
- 13:49Speaker 1: so fun and so effective called um stick dot com
- 13:53Speaker 1: S t I c K K two ks dot com
- 13:57Speaker 1: and you can go there and actually set up commitment
- 13:59Speaker 1: contract acts around any kind of goal that you hope
- 14:02Speaker 1: to achieve. You can put money on the line and
- 14:04Speaker 1: choose a referee who will report back to the site
- 14:06Speaker 1: about whether or not you've actually stuck to your guns
- 14:08Speaker 1: and achieved the goal, and you can do fun things
- 14:11Speaker 1: with the money. For instance, they have anti charities, so
- 14:14Speaker 1: they have charities that are on either side of contentious issues, like,
- 14:18Speaker 1: for instance, um the National Rifle Association versus a gun
- 14:23Speaker 1: control charitable organization. You can pick your poison which of
- 14:27Speaker 1: those would make you angrier to donate to, and then
- 14:30Speaker 1: so you'd allocate your money to whichever of those painful
- 14:35Speaker 1: and punishing. Well, let's take a short break for now
- 14:38Speaker 1: for a word from our sponsor, and when we get
- 14:40Speaker 1: back we'll go through smart strategies for how to keep
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- 15:25Speaker 1: appropriate for all investors. So, Katie, our fourth strategy is
- 15:33Speaker 1: actually planned out the specifics of how you're going to
- 15:36Speaker 1: implement your plan. Can you tell us about this? Yeah? Absolutely.
- 15:41Speaker 1: There's some really fantastic research out there on the importance
- 15:44Speaker 1: of having concrete if then plans to help you follow
- 15:47Speaker 1: throwing your goals. And really the leader in this work
- 15:50Speaker 1: as as someone named Peter Goldwitzer at n y U.
- 15:52Speaker 1: He's done dozens of studies showing how important it is
- 15:55Speaker 1: to have those if then plans. UM. But I've done
- 15:58Speaker 1: some follow up work my self on this, and so
- 16:00Speaker 1: I'll tell you about one of my own studies because
- 16:02Speaker 1: it's near and dear to me and also close to
- 16:05Speaker 1: top of mind UM right now. And that is a
- 16:08Speaker 1: study we did where We show that simply encouraging people
- 16:11Speaker 1: to write down the date and time when they intended
- 16:13Speaker 1: to engage in a healthy behavior. We looked at this
- 16:16Speaker 1: in the context of getting a flu shot was incredibly
- 16:20Speaker 1: effective at increasing follow through rates. And the idea here
- 16:23Speaker 1: is that when you have that kind of an if
- 16:25Speaker 1: then plan, you've thought through exactly the date and time
- 16:28Speaker 1: when you intend to follow through. First, you've made a
- 16:30Speaker 1: commitment to yourself, and and that is something that it's
- 16:33Speaker 1: uncomfortable to break. Lots of research has shown it's uncomfortable.
- 16:36Speaker 1: Not to follow through when we make commitments makes us
- 16:39Speaker 1: feel like flip floppers. Um. Second, you've thought more deeply
- 16:43Speaker 1: about it, so it's embedded more deeply in memory. And
- 16:46Speaker 1: you you've also associated a queue with follow through. So
- 16:49Speaker 1: if you've chosen a date and time, for instance, when
- 16:51Speaker 1: you'll get a flu shot, now, if you look at
- 16:53Speaker 1: your calendar and look at your watch and realize it's
- 16:56Speaker 1: that date and time, you're more likely to remember this
- 16:58Speaker 1: is what I said, I'd i'd follow through and get
- 17:00Speaker 1: my flu shot, for instance. It can also help us
- 17:02Speaker 1: anticipate obstacles along the way. So, for instance, if I
- 17:06Speaker 1: realized I want to get a flu shot on Friday
- 17:07Speaker 1: at noon, I might think, well, I better line up
- 17:10Speaker 1: childcare and come up with a transportation strategy and so
- 17:13Speaker 1: those things won't trip me up when Friday comes around
- 17:16Speaker 1: and I want to get that flu shot. I feel
- 17:18Speaker 1: like I'm really seeing the benefits of this one specifically.
- 17:21Speaker 1: So I'm running the Paris Marathon in April, and this
- 17:24Speaker 1: is my second marathon. I want to do better than
- 17:26Speaker 1: the first one, and I had a training plan for
- 17:28Speaker 1: the first one, but I didn't adhere to it very
- 17:31Speaker 1: well and only ended up running like thirteen miles before
- 17:35Speaker 1: the marathon. So that was kind of a tragedy. But
- 17:40Speaker 1: did you make it? I did somehow. That's impressive. But
- 17:46Speaker 1: this time I obviously want to do a lot better.
- 17:48Speaker 1: So um, I am using the Nike Running app and
- 17:52Speaker 1: it has planned out every single day what I should
- 17:55Speaker 1: be doing up until the day of the marathon. And
- 17:59Speaker 1: it's been really nice because I get like a check
- 18:01Speaker 1: mark every single time it tracks a run. And I know,
- 18:05Speaker 1: like when I was thinking about what I was going
- 18:07Speaker 1: to do when I went home for Christmas and New Years,
- 18:09Speaker 1: for example, I knew it's going to be much harder
- 18:11Speaker 1: because I was going to be on a loser schedule,
- 18:13Speaker 1: but it was great to have those specific distances on
- 18:17Speaker 1: the specific days that I could just plan my whole
- 18:19Speaker 1: day around, even a week or two in advance. Yeah,
- 18:23Speaker 1: that's fantastic, And that sounds like that app is not
- 18:25Speaker 1: only taking advantages of advantage of the benefits of planning,
- 18:28Speaker 1: but also how powerful it can be to set goals
- 18:31Speaker 1: and have concrete, achievable but challenging goals that you set
- 18:35Speaker 1: up for yourself, and and having plans about how to
- 18:38Speaker 1: achieve those as them of critical importance as well. Well.
- 18:42Speaker 1: I think our fifth strategy here is related to what
- 18:46Speaker 1: not to do, which is to set up a backup plan.
- 18:50Speaker 1: Why can't we have a plan? B Katie. That's a
- 18:52Speaker 1: great question, and I wouldn't always say you shouldn't. Sometimes
- 18:55Speaker 1: you actually do want to plan. It's important to have
- 18:57Speaker 1: those in some contexts. But I've done some research with
- 19:01Speaker 1: a wonderful collaborator named g Haitian at the University of
- 19:04Speaker 1: Wisconsin who thought a lot about this when she was
- 19:07Speaker 1: uh finishing her doctoral program and she was thinking about
- 19:10Speaker 1: what she would do if she didn't get an academic
- 19:12Speaker 1: job and realized that if she made a backup plan
- 19:16Speaker 1: for herself. For instance, if she told herself, you know
- 19:18Speaker 1: it's gonna be okay, I'll just go work in industry
- 19:21Speaker 1: and I'll start looking for jobs at companies that might
- 19:24Speaker 1: be exciting, that might actually diminish her motivation to really
- 19:28Speaker 1: tackle all the things she needed to do to succeed
- 19:32Speaker 1: on the academic job market. So having a backup plan
- 19:35Speaker 1: or a fallback strategy in case your plan A fails
- 19:38Speaker 1: or go south. While it may reduce uncertainty and make
- 19:42Speaker 1: you feel better, it also may reduce your motivation to
- 19:45Speaker 1: achieve your primary goals. And we've shown that in a
- 19:48Speaker 1: bunch of our research together. That's right, So just thinking
- 19:52Speaker 1: about failure increases your chances of failure. It's not just
- 19:56Speaker 1: thinking about failure, it's just thinking about an alternative strategy
- 19:59Speaker 1: you would deploy in case of failure and doing that,
- 20:03Speaker 1: giving yourself that backup plan, giving yourself that cushion makes
- 20:07Speaker 1: you less motivated to tackle your primary goal. Amazing um.
- 20:11Speaker 1: Our sixth strategy here is to post your nears resolution
- 20:16Speaker 1: on Twitter like we talked about earlier Tory, or on Facebook.
- 20:20Speaker 1: Katie tell us why this is effective, Absolutely well, it's
- 20:24Speaker 1: it's simply a shaming strategy, right, So that turns out
- 20:28Speaker 1: making your goals public makes you feel a lot worse
- 20:31Speaker 1: about not following through. And there's some great work by
- 20:34Speaker 1: um Holland Beck and collaborators actually from the showing how
- 20:38Speaker 1: important it is to make your goals public and how
- 20:40Speaker 1: that motivates us to work harder. So if you put
- 20:43Speaker 1: it on Twitter, if you put it on Facebook, if
- 20:45Speaker 1: you tell your boss, someone who you really care about
- 20:48Speaker 1: thinking highly of you, and then know that they're going
- 20:51Speaker 1: to check up on you, you're much more likely to
- 20:53Speaker 1: follow through. That really increases motivation. And Katie, if all
- 20:57Speaker 1: these tricks still don't keep you on track and we
- 21:00Speaker 1: end up veering off, let's say around maybe mid March
- 21:04Speaker 1: is all hope lost? All hope is not lost. This
- 21:07Speaker 1: work we've done on the fresh start effects, as you
- 21:09Speaker 1: can find a new fresh start opportunity and start again.
- 21:13Speaker 1: And in fact, you might even think about reminding yourself
- 21:16Speaker 1: or your loved ones of dates that I feel like
- 21:18Speaker 1: fresh arts that they might have forgotten about. So we've
- 21:20Speaker 1: shown that reminding people, for instance, that March is the
- 21:24Speaker 1: first day of spring inspires renewed motivation and and encourages
- 21:29Speaker 1: people to start tackling their roles anew on that date.
- 21:32Speaker 1: So is that our seventh strategy. Seventh strategy is to
- 21:35Speaker 1: go back to the first strategy when in doubt, start again, right,
- 21:40Speaker 1: start all over. Wonder I love it well, I'm setting
- 21:44Speaker 1: my calendar reminders now, Kitty, do you have any last
- 21:47Speaker 1: words of advice for listeners who are about to go
- 21:50Speaker 1: and implement all these tricks. One one piece of advice
- 21:53Speaker 1: is not to be disheartened for sure if you if
- 21:56Speaker 1: you fail. I think that almost all of us el
- 22:00Speaker 1: to achieve our goals, whether they're resolutions, made it New
- 22:03Speaker 1: Year's or some other time of year when we set
- 22:05Speaker 1: ambitious schools. But that's just part of the journey. And
- 22:08Speaker 1: you have to pick yourself up and try again, recognize
- 22:11Speaker 1: that there are new opportunities at every corner, and and
- 22:14Speaker 1: just don't let yourself, don't let yourself get down, keep
- 22:18Speaker 1: trying and keep trying these strategies and you'll get there.
- 22:20Speaker 1: And Katie, we would be totally remiss if we didn't
- 22:23Speaker 1: ask you what your resolutions were for the year. I
- 22:26Speaker 1: knew that was coming. And my husband, if he's listening,
- 22:30Speaker 1: will be very happy to hear that. Um My, my
- 22:33Speaker 1: big resolution is to stop checking email after nine pm
- 22:36Speaker 1: and just relax. Great one. Oh I like that one
- 22:40Speaker 1: a lot. We'll see how I do well. Thank you
- 22:44Speaker 1: so much for joining us, Kat, This has been great
- 22:47Speaker 1: and put all my strategies to work. A sap. Oh
- 22:50Speaker 1: my pleasure. Thanks again for having me. It's been It's
- 22:52Speaker 1: been a lot of fun and thanks to you all
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