How to Actually Change Your Behavior (No, It's Not Willpower) — Behavioral Scientist Kristen Berman

Kristen Berman is one of the world's foremost experts on getting people to do what they say they want to do. She also routinely has a hard time following her own advice, which is precisely why she got into the field.

Berman was on the founding team for behavioral economics at Google — a practice that now spans 26 teams across the company — and she founded Irrational Labs, a behavioral product design company that helps companies like LinkedIn, Airbnb, and PayPal increase the health, wealth, and happiness of their users.

Her work keeps landing on the same uncomfortable truth: the things that actually run your behavior are your environment and your incentives, and you barely notice either one. She learned the incentive half the hard way, when a project quietly turned her into what she calls a predatory lender.

In this episode, she and Connor get practical: Why buying a dog beats relying on willpower. How a “Ulysses contract” binds your future self. Why she built her life around a 20-person Oakland commune called Radish, where everyone eats dinner together at 7:30.

If you've ever known better and done it anyway, or wanted to know how to design an environment that brings out the best in your team, this one’s for you.

CHAPTERS

Chapters

00:00:00 The chocolate croissant you didn't mean to eat

00:00:55 Why behavioral science lights her up

00:02:16 How choice architecture works

00:05:31 You're always being manipulated by your environment

00:07:08 When good intentions meet bad incentives