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

Milkman, Katy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593332598 ISBN 13: 9780593332597

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

Wall Street Journal bestseller

“A welcome revelation.” --The Financial Times

Award-winning Wharton Professor and Choiceology podcast host Katy Milkman has devoted her career to the study of behavior change. In this ground-breaking book, Milkman reveals a proven path that can take you from where you are to where you want to be, with a foreword from psychologist Angela Duckworth, the best-selling author of Grit.

Change comes most readily when you understand what's standing between you and success and tailor your solution to that roadblock. If you want to work out more but find exercise difficult and boring, downloading a goal-setting app probably won't help. But what if, instead, you transformed your workouts so they became a source of pleasure instead of a chore? Turning an uphill battle into a downhill one is the key to success.

Drawing on Milkman's original research and the work of her world-renowned scientific collaborators, How to Change shares strategic methods for identifying and overcoming common barriers to change, such as impulsivity, procrastination, and forgetfulness. Through case studies and engaging stories, you’ll learn:

  •   Why timing can be everything when it comes to making a change
  •   How to turn temptation and inertia into assets
  •   That giving advice, even if it's about something you're struggling with, can help you achieve more

Whether you're a manager, coach, or teacher aiming to help others change for the better or are struggling to kick-start change yourself, How to Change offers an invaluable, science-based blueprint for achieving your goals, once and for all.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Katy Milkman is a behavioral scientist and Professor at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Over the course of her career, she has worked with or advised dozens of organizations on how to encourage positive change, including Google, the U.S. Department of Defense, the American Red Cross, and Morningstar. Her research is regularly featured by major media outlets such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and NPR. She currently co-directs the Behavior Change for Good Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania and hosts Choiceology, a popular Charles Schwab podcast about behavioral economics.

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Chapter 1: Getting Started

 

When I first visited Google's sprawling corporate headquarters in 2012, I felt like a kid entering Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. The company's campus in Mountain View, California, boasts state-of-the-art everything, with a bit of whimsy on top. As I wound my way between office buildings, I encountered beach volleyball courts, fanciful sculptures, a gift shop stocked with branded tchotchkes, and free world-class restaurants. It was stunning.

 

Google had invited me and a group of other academics to its headquarters to attend a retreat for its senior human resources directors, but I couldn't help wondering what this company-one of the world's most innovative and successful-could possibly need from us. The smiling employees whizzing by on bikes painted in the primary colors of their company's logo certainly didn't look like they had any problems. Google had raked in 38 billion dollars in revenue the year before my visit.

 

But everyone has problems-even Google.

 

The company had convened the retreat to find new ways to help its employees make better decisions both at work and at home, with a particular emphasis on improving their productivity as well as their health and financial security (both of which have been linked to improved work performance). Midway through the event, Prasad Setty, a Wharton alum and Google vice president who had been in human resources for several years, asked me a seemingly innocuous question that would set me on the path to one of my most significant discoveries.

 

Google, he explained, offered its employees a wide range of benefits and programs designed to make their lives and jobs better and to solve such problems as undersaving for retirement, overuse of social media, physical inactivity, unhealthy eating, and smoking. But oddly enough, these programs weren't widely used. Prasad was both puzzled and frustrated that so many programs his team had created (which Google paid dearly for) went largely ignored. Why weren't employees clamoring to take advantage of free skill-building classes? Why weren't they all signing up for the company's 401(k) match and personal trainers?

 

Prasad had considered a few possible explanations, all of them plausible enough. Maybe the programs were being poorly advertised. Or maybe employees were just too busy to take advantage of them. But he also wondered about timing. Did I know, he asked, when Google should encourage employees to take advantage of these resources? Was there some ideal moment on the calendar or in someone's career to encourage behavior change?

 

I paused. Prasad's question was clearly important, and yet, to my knowledge, academics had largely overlooked it. If we hoped to effectively promote behavior change, of course we would need to understand when to begin.

 

Although I didn't have an easy answer for Prasad, I did have a hunch. I told him that before I could offer a reply grounded in solid evidence, I would need to review the academic literature and gather some data of my own. I started itching to get back to my research team in Philadelphia.

 

The Power of a Blank Slate

 

Prasad was hardly the first leader I'd met who was perplexed by the stubborn persistence of unhealthy or unproductive behavior. I've spent countless hours talking with frustrated public health officials about how to reduce smoking, boost physical activity, improve diets, and increase vaccinations, and that's just for starters. I often hear the same exasperated plea: If you can't persuade people to alter their behavior by telling them that change is simple, cheap, and good for them, what magical ingredient will do the trick?

 

This book will offer many answers to that question (the most important being "It depends"), but one is particularly relevant to Prasad's problem. It starts with a remarkable medical success story.

 

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is every bit as terrifying as it sounds. Each year, tens of thousands of babies around the world die suddenly and inexplicably while sleeping. For years, SIDS has been a leading cause of death among infants in the United States between one month and one year of age. I remember being petrified when my pediatrician explained the risk factors during a checkup for my newborn son.

 

For decades, the medical establishment was at a loss over what to do about SIDS. But then, in the early 1990s, researchers made a major breakthrough. They discovered that infants put to sleep on their backs died of SIDS at half the rate of babies put to sleep on their stomachs. Half!

 

This was a discovery worthy of celebration-and fast action. It presented an opportunity to save hundreds of thousands of lives, so naturally, the public health community wasted no time spreading the word. The U.S. government launched an ambitious "Back to Sleep" campaign to educate new parents about the importance of placing babies to sleep on their backs. The National Institutes of Health flooded the airwaves with commercials and filled hospitals and doctors' offices with brochures.

 

Of course, there was no guarantee of success. Many such campaigns fail, which explains my frequent phone calls with frustrated public health officials. Just consider the recent high-profile attempt to reduce obesity by requiring calorie labeling in chain restaurants. It turns out that telling people how many calories are in a Big Mac or a Frappuccino reduces calorie consumption, well . . . essentially not at all. Or consider the efforts by U.S. health authorities, starting in 2010, to persuade Americans to get annual flu shots. The effects have been minimal at best: 43 percent of Americans now get flu shots, up from 39 percent before the policy was implemented. So there was every reason to expect that the Back to Sleep campaign would be the same old story, making only a small dent in a massive problem.

 

Thankfully, the campaign worked wonders. Between 1993 and 2010, the percentage of infants put to sleep on their backs in the United States shot up, more than quadrupling from 17 percent to 73 percent, and deaths from SIDS plummeted. The message hasn't gone out of style. In 2016, decades after the campaign began, my doctor handed me a Back to Sleep pamphlet when I gave birth in Philadelphia.

 

But if Back to Sleep was unquestionably a huge success, why had so many other, similar campaigns floundered? Prasad's question about timing inspired me to formulate a hypothesis.

 

The moment you become a parent is unquestionably one of life's starkest turning points. Just a day before your child's arrival, there was no helpless baby to feed, clothe, protect, and soothe; then boom-all of that changes. Everything about parenthood is new and different, and as a result, you have no old habits to break, no long-standing routines to disrupt. You're truly starting fresh, for better and worse. The message of Back to Sleep arrives at this critical juncture, when you're not yet set in your ways and are motivated to try to do everything right. My hunch was that the timing couldn't be better for changing patterns in people's behavior. No matter what your parents did or their parents before that, when a doctor tells you that it's vital to put your baby to sleep on their back, you're eager to comply and don't have to fight against bad habits.

 

Compare this with a public health campaign that attempts to influence eating, smoking, or vaccination habits for adults. These kinds of initiatives catch us in the middle of our busy lives, with entrenched routines that limit our openness to change. Even though the information can make the difference between life and death, it's no wonder...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593332598
• ISBN 13: 9780593332597
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland