How to change: the science of getting from where you are to where you want to be

by Katy Milkman

In this book, Katy Milkman, engineer turned behavioural scientist, breaks down the behaviours behind habits and why it can be difficult to change. Expect self-help advice, takeaways and some of the science behind behaviour.

There’s plenty of popular science books nowadays, and it can be hard to assess whether they have genuine substance. Many tend to repeat the same mantras or learnings throughout the book in slightly different ways, and can have a tendency to be too long compared to the insights within. Thankfully, this doesn’t seem to be the case too much with this one.

Behavioural change through habits can be deeply ingrained. The book’s main premise is to help you understand why we do the obstacles to ‘good’ habits, and change our strategy about the poor habits.

The structure of change

The chapters are in quite a basic format. Chapters deal with associated aspects of the problems of forming good habits. They are titled: getting started, Impulsivity, procrastination, forgetfulness, laziness, confidence, conformity. A part of me prefers this simplicity, often in this genre we see complexity to try to give the book some kind of USP or draw, when really it’s superficial, rather than being useful.

In terms of the format, it’s nothing new either. Stories to show the importance of each of the chapter topics, findings from behavioural science and a list of takeouts at the end make the book easily digestible. We’ve also seen this format a hundred times before, but perhaps that’s not a bad thing as there isn’t much unnecessary bloat here.

In terms of the actual advice, some stories stood out. Too much rigidity in trying to form a new habit can be self-defeating. The example is given of the findings from one experiment and joining gyms. What would work best, someone sticking to going to the gym at a regular time, or just being asked to go several times a week. They are termed flexible Fernandos and routine Rachel. But as the chapter explores, sometimes routine Rachel can turn into rigid Rachel, and be self-defeating. The participants that had flexibility kept up their habit for longer because they could fit it around some of their other activities. Above I mentioned about superficial USPs or terminology, but thinking about routine Rachel and flexible Fernando actually helped the idea stick in my mind.

Analysing anecdotes

Milkman searches far and wide in her anecdotes to illustrate her points. Mary Poppins is used to explore present bias, where we select the ‘immediate’ need, rather than what will benefit us in the long run. Mary Poppins is a proponent of using fun to overcome motivational challenges, an idea we too can use. Andre Agassi’s story stuck with me, and in some ways represents the book as a whole, as his performance is not meeting expectations until he switches his strategy due to his new coach, Brad Gilbert. Quite simply, often the reason we seem to keep hitting the walls of procrastination, laziness or self-doubt are because we are employing the wrong strategies to beat them.

There is a depth of recommendations here too. My list of takeouts had 33 points, and included gamification, making chores or tasks more fun, making reminders more unusual so that they are remembered more effectively, making checklists or that expectations can actually enact physical changes.

Some of the most useful insights were reminders related along the lines of the latter: that we think people who seem ultra-productive aren’t actually born that way: they’ve just turned the productive things into habits that make them easier to keep doing. As in another review, of Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit, things where they become such a routine habit that we don’t even make a decision over them are the most effective and consistent. Similarly, people often know what they’re doing wrong, but things like self-doubt are the real issue, not ignorance of the issue itself. These aspects and more are considered, and are perhaps the most important things to take away.

Readability

The book scores highly on readability. I read it in two sessions, the language is not complex, and it’s often avoids being unnecessarily long in discussing a point.

Final score

In many ways as you can probably see, the examples, terminology and book aren’t complex. Sometimes with self-help books, this can be an issue, because often they are unlikely to always have insights that you haven’t heard before and just dress the ideas up in complexity which isn’t beneficial to the reader. More likely, you know some of it, want to change and it serves as a reminder to take action or makes you think about the topic in a new way. But this book manages to serve an effective blend of useful insights, readability and short length without the unnecessary bloat these books sometimes have, making for a nice quick read for new year motivation.

A helpful book that is not as ‘revelatory’ as the reviews on the cover suggest, but still a helpful read, and earns bonus marks because it keeps things brief and you can easily read it in a couple of sittings.

7/10