Full transcription:
Tracy: In this episode, we introduce you to Kristen Berman. Kristen studies how people actually act in the marketplace, as opposed to how they should or would perform if we were completely rational. In 2013, she co-founded Irrational Labs, a behavioral product design company with famed author Dan Ariley. She also co-founded Common Cents Lab, a Duke University initiative dedicated to improving the financial well-being of low to middle-class Americans. And on today's show, she talks to Results May Vary about experiments and strategies she's used in her own life, and how to use behavioral economics to experiment on your own.
Chris: Great, well, why don't we start with a little bit about you where we're excited to talk to you today, and would you mind telling us the Kristen story and how you arrived at where you are, and maybe a little of what you're known for?
Kristen: Yeah, the Kristen story. So currently, I think about human behavior. 'll start with what I currently do, and then we'll get to how that happened. I work with one of the best behavioral economists out there today, Dan Ariely, who's at Duke, and we think about how to get people to do things that are hard for them that they want to do in the long run and in the long term for that are hard in the short term. So things like eating better where you really know that you should be healthy, and yet you have a muffin that's in front of you. And things like saving money, where you know that your retirement definitely will come and yet, spending on things in our world is just so easy, sometimes fun. So I think about these general problems, and do it from a way of applying technology. So basically saying, we have these problems in our world and one way you could change behavior is to write academic papers and hope that people read them and other ways you could think about policy, and the points of leverage that I start with is how would you get a company or develop a product or service that could basically change the environment such that people then change their behavior. The reason I started with that is and that's kind of the current hypothesis on the biggest point of leverage to change behavior is, I came from the product world. So I was a Product Manager at Intuit, right after school and basically spent the time doing the customer research and thinking about new features, and all that stuff you do as a Product Manager and realize that most people are just shooting from the hip that you as a Product Manager, designer, or any one kind of in charge of coming up with the vision or the product features. It's really a lot of trial and error. It's a lot of trusting your intuition and there was no great way to make decisions. And that was the first time I heard Danny Ariely speak and I was like, oh, my gosh, there is science behind this stuff. We can rely on something in order to make decisions. And we don't have to continue to rely on our intuition which was amazing, right? It's basically saying there the science of human behavior is being studied. And there's a lot of people studying it in the world. And as a designer and Product Manager, it now feels like our responsibility, right to read and invade, in the insights that are coming from academia around what people do, because as the whole hypothesis around behavioral economics is that the environment basically influences our decisions. In an ideal world, in an economic world, you'd say people are rational and make cost-benefit type decisions. They weigh the pros and cons of everything and they're very clearly defined preferences based on very logical things. And the behavioral economics and psychology social science world say that's usually not true. And instead, we have very ill-defined preferences and we're influenced by our environment. And so if you believe that, then the people who are creating forms and designs and all of these things that are creating our environment are some of the most powerful people out there. It's their responsibility almost to understand how the brain works and how we behave and why we do the things we do.
Chris: Great, great. Yeah. So just jumping right in, then I'm sure people listening to our show will want us to go right to it and just say, when someone on the street or a friend or a dinner party conversation turns to Kristen, how do I change my behavior? What do you respond with? And they just say, like, I'm just really struggling, whether it's food or finance, how do you respond to the, I'm sure, a common generic question is, how could you help me change my behavior?
Kristen: I wish there was just like, one answer, I can be like, well, if you close your eyes and jump up and down three times, this is how it will happen.
Chris: That's what Tracy and I say most of the time.
Tracy: I try that every day, still it doesn't work.
Chris: So I've been trying four times, and I think I'm getting a better response.
Kristen: It's five, it's on the fifth. I’m really context-dependent. So basically, there's no one right answer for all problems. So for instance, if you were to say, Tracy, you want to eat better tomorrow, and you want to make sure that you do that, what is the best strategy for you, we would go into your kitchen and try to design things that would make it harder for you to take junk food and easier for you to make healthy food but the reality is, how your kitchen is different than somebody else's kitchen. So there may be different interventions for you that would work that may not work for other people because of the way that the kitchen is designed. And so you think about the answer to that question. It's really asking people to think about how they mess with, hack their environment that they're living in, and in order to encourage the behavior that they want. So it's really not about thinking about educating yourself about all the great ways to eat healthily or save money. The answer really comes in understanding the environment and how it makes it really easy for you to mess up and your goals and how you can hack the environment to make it much easier for you to succeed.
Tracy: I think that that's a really powerful point in our thinking about how you apply design to your life is that you can then move from that step and design it for yourself and so often people want an answer that is universal for everybody or they want the silver bullet all clients want a silver bullet all people want a silver bullet and design thinking is powerful in the fact that then you have some process or steps to take that can allow you to know if you're making good decisions or not as you're hacking your environment.
Chris: Yeah, I was gonna ask Kristen, if you would, could you share a story of someone you know, who has successfully applied some of these skills and maybe through an individual example? The theory we're all in, I'm just wondering if you could share an individual example.
Kristen: The current person that I'm seeing did this to me. He basically flipped the paradigm. We've talked about the benefits of LASIK for a while and I wasn't doing anything about making an appointment or actually following through on my desire to get LASIK. So I was putting off the procrastination bug that had gotten me and so what he did was an email, without me knowing, emailing all of my friends. Not all of them but let's say 15 was about 15, that that actually participated and said, help Kristen get LASIK, donate some money and if she doesn't get it within and there were different time periods, so it was within two months, three months and six months, that she can't actually get your money. So people put in $15 to $100 and if I didn't get it within, two months, then I would lose a portion of the money if I didn't get it within three months, I would lose a portion of the money. And not only that, he had them send pictures of them shaming me as in what they would do, trying to get me to envision what they would do and how they would look at me if I actually failed to meet this goal and what this is, is basically a commitment contract, right? So it basically says it's really difficult for me. I wake up in the morning and prioritize making a LASIK appointment instead. Now I have a reason to do it today. Before it was like there was never a good day to make a LASIK appointment and all of a sudden, now's a good day to make a LASIK appointment and I actually got it within three weeks. Because it's very simple to get it all you have to do is call and make the appointment to go get screened. But procrastination was what was difficult? I think I think these types of things where you can get somebody else involved in your goals, is extremely helpful. And what he did was get other more people involved.
Chris: Right.
Kristen: And make it not only use social pressure but accountability and commitment contracts, to kind of push me into doing something that I otherwise would have put off and still wanting to do.
Tracy: Yeah, I wondered if it was like the loss aversion, the financial loss of the money that was saved up for you? Or if it was more the shame? Or was it the powerful combination of the two? What do you think, was so successful as it pertains to you?
Kristen: I think for me, the idea of involving other people made it maybe accountability really high that I didn't want to not follow through and look bad in front of my friends. Right, but the reality is, you've just applied a lot of these principles, and we don't really know which one actually works. So I can post rationalize that I think it was something but that's a lot, a lot of why we like love controlled experiments. It's because when we actually know what worked and some of this stuff, so if that was a controlled experiment, and we said, let's go. There would be three different ways that we would try to convince Kristen to get LASIK, then we'd figure out if it was social norms or loss aversion, or how many people are the types of people that were included? But we're pretty bad at the post rationalization of why we think we did something. So yeah, I'm not sure.
Tracy: Well, and it seems like in our conversations before this, that you like to experiment in your life, very often and I wondered if you wanted to talk about some of the other life experiments that you're doing right now?
Tracy: Sure. I think a nice place to start is a party that I used to throw and then we can kind of get into how that's evolved. But I used to, and I haven't done it for a while but used to gather folks and basically give them rules and if people didn't want to come to my parties and follow the rules, then they didn't have to come. And let me give you an example of some of the rules. The majority is what people could talk about, and then when they could show up and when they left. So what they could talk about basically what happens in normal house party gatherings is that you talk about, you have a long conversation or small talk. It's around the weather, it's sports, it's your commute, it's your last vacation. And now the question is, do people really want to talk about small talk? And likely the answer is no, but it is the easiest thing to talk about and if you were just to go up to somebody and ask them, what's your deepest fear? This actually puts you in a very vulnerable position. And so because you don't know if they want to actually talk about this, and that's not the norm. And so what we do is we go to the lowest common denominator, and we talk about small talk things that nobody actually really wants to talk about. And yet we all do. So one way to overcome that is to have social coordination and say, actually, for this, nobody can talk about small talk. It all has to be questions that are not big talk, but more interesting. So things around what's your feeling on the political campaign? What is your deepest fear? What are you thinking about right now? When's the last time that you cried? Things that you just don't have press play moments for. And what we mean by press play moment is something that you're very used to talking about. And so you don't really have to think about it. And that means you're not being vulnerable. And you're not, you may not be getting to know the other person. And so having these rules of the party basically prevents the tragedy of the commons from the conversation. It's not like I could just go into the party and say, I'm going to talk about this without the social coordination of other people. And so what's needed in those situations is somebody else to come in and kind of make a paternalistic rule about how people will behave at the party. I think this is a nice lesson for life of basically saying, it's sometimes you may want to do something but you need an external push in order to make it socially acceptable to do and to avoid the tragedy of the commons. So we have these questions I think I can publish if people want to throw their own parties, guide on how to do this. But it's a nice hack and that kind of goes into this idea of what we're currently thinking about, which is I'm gonna move into an 11 person house next weekend, which is basically this idea of avoiding the status quo of life. But that basically, sometimes you need to push in order to get out of what's actually the easiest thing. And with the 11 person house, we're trying to figure out how to do life design in a way that has to avoid complacency. So we're actually calling it Mutually Assured Non-Complacency, where we can help each other kind of reach our goals just by virtue of sharing goals with other people, just by virtue of being within proximity. And this is another way of having kind of social coordination around an ideal life design, right? Instead of saying, we're going to talk about small talk, or we're going to go into the conversation, but into the party, and just whatever happens happens. We're saying, actually, no, we're going to take a proactive stance on the future and at least the next couple of years on how we live, versus kind of letting whatever happens.
Tracy: And you'd mentioned too, that you're doing this with the person that you're currently dating. Can you talk about one of the reasons why you chose to move into a house with 11 people instead of just the two of you?
Kristen: Yeah. I think the ideal progression as you get older is to meet somebody, date them for a little bit and then move in together. And what that creates, actually, is more and more isolation, and dependency on just the one person. So imagine that if we believe that proximity helps determine some of our relationships, our relationships, and who we interact with, then as soon as you move in with somebody, and you actually lose a lot of the other relationships in your life. And that's unfortunate because one of the biggest drivers of happiness is connection with other people. And what research is finding is that our society is increasingly dependent on our spouse as the one person that we're, um, that we could divulge. And I think they say like, that you could confide in. And in the past, it was that you could actually people had many more people that they could confide in, whether it be neighbors, or actually a lot of it was neighbors and, and by moving to a, by moving to have only one person, that means we're reducing the amount of connection in our life. So it's weird that we have this like an ideal version of life that says, go move and isolate yourself. And you're going to kind of cut off the one thing that is a big driver of happiness, which is the connection with other people. So we wanted to design a situation that would thrive and connect with other people instead of cutting it off.
Chris: It sounds awesome. I love what you guys are trying there. A lot of people probably Tracy and I included at times are trying to work on multiple things, either proactively or they're trying to change something that they don't like. You advise people on the amount of change. I don't know, what do you think about changing fatigue?
Kristen: Good question. A few ways to answer that. One is within savings goals. So if you think about saving, trying to think about your financial future, it's actually found more effective to have just one goal. So people, instead of saying I want to get a house, I want to reduce my debt, I want to have an emergency savings fund, it's more effective to focus on one thing, versus having multiple goals. The other big way that I think I've seen people create massive change in their lives is by changing their environment. As we said, if we think about some of the drivers of change, your environment really contributes to a lot of your decisions. So if you move, right, this is huge, all of a sudden, now you're going to a different grocery store, your gym is closer, maybe you're surrounded by new people. And these are ways that you can kind of hack your habits. So right now we're doing a lot of things on autopilot. And so as soon as you change your environment like a move we all of a sudden start to have to develop new habits and that's a really nice point of intervention. And so it may not feel like it probably you'll feel if you're moving like you're changing a lot of things. But it's a much easier point in life to do that very much more difficult. If you're trying to change a lot of things and you have the same environment, the same friends, the same people around you know, this is kind of why I'm in a really have you stopped hanging out with your old friends. Because they're contributing to your behavior, if you want to change something like an addiction like this, you really have to change your environment in a pretty strong way.
Chris: What do you guys get a really common request to do? Also, fill out your top categories? Or are there others?
Kristen: Yeah, I think people are working on a lot of things. But health and finances are our big ones and then just general happiness. So how do you have more time in life? How do you feel more productive? Time, time management, productivity is another big one.
Tracy: Yeah, I was curious to hear your opinion on that. Because I do feel like it's so much in the public consciousness. And I wonder, I feel like sometimes feeling productive isn't actually productive. And, like, I see all these articles on 15 things to do to be more productive. What are some of the things that you've seen, actually work? Well, and what's your point of view on what productivity means as it applies to happiness?
Kristen: Yes. So I think this is right, people feel like there is a nice study that says we're happier on the weekends, even people who are unemployed.
Tracy: Really?
Kristen: And it's the feeling it's kind of releasing ourselves. And they theorized in this study that it was, that you feel like you should be doing more on the weekdays. And on the weekends, you don't feel as guilty for not doing as much as you don't have this high bar that you're trying to achieve. And you're everything you're doing is a bonus. So it's completely reframing work, right by saying, if you do anything on the weekend, that's productive. Good job, pat on the back versus on the weekdays, you're just not you can never do enough in order to make yourself happy.
Tracy: I totally relate to that.
Kristen: I think that's a little bit of what we try to do, right. We're just, we're we're optimists on our time. And so we tried to pack a lot of things into a small suitcase. And they just don't fit during the day. So, kind of having this to do list. And one way to say is, you could just realize that you'll never get your to do list done. And that's okay. But what we usually think about is think of ourselves as a failure because we didn't get our to do list done. And so I think being more realistic about the time that it takes to do things is helpful. And one way to do that is by calendaring. So, Danny really kind of took this idea of basically hacking your time management through the calendar. And that's because if you were to say this is going to take me 30 minutes, this is going to take me an hour, now you have some planning around what this thing on your to do list actually means in a tangible way. And it also gives you feedback loops, right. So it's all if you're putting stuff on the calendar for a half-hour, and you're learning that it's taking longer. Now the next time you have a better understanding of how long it takes you and you can you can plan. So I think the biggest hack for time management, generally is is to use the calendar to plan your exercise times to plan the times that you have with your significant other to plan your grocery shopping, all these things that sometimes Dan has a nice thing that he says is like if the calendar really should, the default is that it's empty right now. And in reality, it's full, you have all these things to do, it's completely full. And yet for whatever reason, it starts empty. So it makes it feel like we have all this time in the world. But in reality, we actually are over committed. And so putting more things on the calendar helps us realize our commitments, and in a way that could help with getting stuff done.
Chris: Somehow, we've concluded that sitting at a desk many, many hours a week is socially normal. And that not exercising that much is pretty much socially normal and eating sweets is pretty much socially normal. And I'd love to. I've got a few questions on this path. One is, we tend to put a lot of pressure on the individual to buck these social norms that are the common path and so you've really got to be a standout individual to be the one that says, No, I'm actually going to do this differently, like your point about moving in with 11 people. But where do these social norms come from? Because ultimately, you start to scratch your head saying, what the app whose design is this? How do we all end up with this common set of social beliefs that are so debilitating for so many people, if you make it to 65 anymore, without a significant chronic health disease based on lifestyle, that a lot of people have blamed the individuals for I'm looking at it as more of a social societal norm that these people just kind of went with the normal flow? And this is what happened. So I'm curious to get your point of view on social norms?
Kristen: So you're you're right on and so they're kind of stuck. Because in a 2008 study they basically showed that 40% of the reasons why we die. And in America, I think it is study focused in America, we're human caused human related or our decision making. So things like smoking related deaths, drinking related deaths, lung cancer, from smoking, obesity, diabetes, all these things are things that we could decide not not to do and increase our lifespan and 100 years ago, it was just 10%. So you're correct, the world is getting much more difficult to live in a way that is, helps us be happier and healthier, and well off, but but a lot of it is just that it's much, much easier to go with the flow, right, and then take the donut and spend time on Facebook and not exercise. And so there's a few, we could say that it's just a kind of social norm and social norms are really difficult to change, which is true, but I would say easier, and more uplifting way to look at is we should really make it much easier to do the things that are good for us. So if you had more treadmills and offices wouldn't this increase the social norm but make it easier for people to work out during the day. And a lot of gyms, we visited gyms and companies, and they don't even have towels for people to take what is that that means you actually have to remember to bring your towel from home, you're gonna then have to take a wet towel back and dry it like like the idea of somebody doing this on a regular basis. It's just so far fetched. So how we design our environment, we just generally make it easier for people to do the stuff that's good for them where it will get to them that much better starting point than we have now.
Chris: Yeah, I think it gets back to your point about the responsibility and the privilege of those that have roles that are in experience architecture whether it's a product or, or a service or a thing. But it seems to me that those in those roles aren't doing a very good job of holding up their end of the deal.
Tracy: Yeah, I don't even say that most people who are in those roles don't understand the impact. And there's a lot of unintended consequences that come from it. Like I think about the food industry and the food deserts, it's like that happens because food companies are trying to get more people to eat their products. And so they're marketing to the individuals who they want. And suddenly, you've, you've got an entire generation of people who've lost the skill of cooking for themselves. And they rely on these quick fixes. And then next thing, there's no need for a grocery store, because Burger King would make more money there.
Kristen: So you're right one that the people who are designing our system, we aren't doing a great job. And that's not necessarily their fault. It's our incentives that are not helping incentivize people to look out to help consumers look out for their long term future selves, right? So that the individuals in these companies or the leaders of some of these companies actually just don't care about people, it's that our incentive system is not has not caught up to, to give to having consumers basically build products that help them in the long run versus increase active use in the short term. And there are things that product teams can do to change that to change their incentive system. So for instance, if you go to a product team, you usually every Monday morning, we'll look at some stats that don't have to be Monday, but on a regular basis, you look at stats about your users. And most teams are looking at active use time spent in product time returning to product and then time spent in product. And what we really should be measuring is what results product teams that are designing for success, success looks like getting you to spend more time on their product and getting you to come back. That means everyone's bullets are going to be firing to get that to happen. A better metric would be measuring the behavior that you want to change. It doesn't matter if they come back to your product or not. Right doesn't matter how much time they spend in it. It matters basically if your vision is to get people to be happier, healthier, wealthier, any of these good reasons that companies usually start. If you want to be there's revenue generating as well. But we want to measure the behavior that actually people want versus the how and I think we're creating an incentive system that each company could change, right? So I think there are some massive social coordination efforts that need to be made. But there's also a high opportunity within companies to change the incentive system.
Tracy: Yeah, it makes me think about working with food and beverage companies that talk about share of stomach and share of throat. And those terms always just really threw me off and just thought that everyone's competing for this layer of my stomach, because that means that another product can't be there. It's, it's fascinating.
Chris: And so I'm curious if what are you most excited about that you guys are working on just has you seeing some amazing deployment of this theory and a new paradigm for people to think?
Kristen: We're going into cafeterias, fitness centers, and clinics with Aetna, and I am helping them design a checklist that employers can use in order to make small changes in their design of their workplaces? Such that people will eat a little bit healthier, get the flu shots, go to the gym when they want to. And this is very uplifting, and employers are realizing that we're spending a lot of time in the workplace most of our days spent in the workplace and taking some responsibility for ensuring that the workplace is conducive to people's long term health goals. So things around moving how would you put that where you would put the salad bar? Where do you put the trays? How big are your plates, in order to kind of increase the likelihood that we'll eat a little bit less each day and uplifted about this?
Chris: Yeah, that's great. The creative mind behind the CDC campaign for anti smoking where they're showing people in their hospital bed saying I used to smoke and not living with this disease. They're pretty, they're pretty raw. But he mentioned the insight that they came across, I thought was helpful is that most people feel like they would be fine dying early, knowing they had a good time. Like I smoked at a good time. I know, I'm gonna go early. But what did make them uncomfortable wasn't knowing that I might actually live with the disease that's really uncomfortable. And 30 years, so that was kind of the insight behind that campaign, which I thought was, was interesting.
Kristen: I got to do a program where you put people and have them hang out with old people for a couple days and basically, what you what you realize is that there are some old older folks, I was at art, I was at a place where there was 180 year old playing volleyball, right, and he's just really good. And then there's something that's actually right, can't walk and, they're 60. And they struggle to do basic things. And it is an extremely empowering kind of thing to see where you understand that there are consequences to decisions you make earlier in your life. And there's nice feature self research, where you look at yourself as an older person, and all of a sudden you start making decisions that are in line with how you would behave. So you save more money, you choose to eat better if you're if you see this future self.
Tracy: Yeah, I love the idea of being able to build empathy for your future self in a really relevant way. Because I feel like we're so disconnected from that. That person, we can't, we can't really theorize them.
Chris: Let's get to the core of it all and talk about procrastination a little while as I think many many people have something that they'd love to do that they just don't want to get around. You gave a great example, about your own LASIK surgery. I'm curious, can you unpack procrastination for us and maybe share some insights around it that people might not normally think of?
Kristen: Sure. How about a night where Dan and I did a nice study with his students that kind of explained one way we can overcome procrastination but how we're all afflicted by it. He basically had one group. You're a student, you have an essay to write, in fact, you have multiple essays to write in this semester and he gave them the choice of either setting their own deadlines, or he would set the deadline for them. You say basically, one in one world, you could say that your deadlines or you could turn it in at any point, you have three papers to write, you could turn them all in at the very end. Or you could spread it out through the semester. Obviously, if you turn them all on the very end, this is probably the smartest rational thing to do. Because you then don't really you can't predict your time. You don't know exactly when you're going to be free when you're going to be busy. And so why would you pre commit yourself to turning them in early? However, we also know that if you leave all them to the end what would happen? You probably procrastinate all of them and they may be lower quality. So what he let people pick their own deadlines, or he gave them their actual deadlines, and what he found was that when he gave them deadlines, people got higher grades.
Tracy: Wow.
Kristen: And so I think some of this is basically realizing and procrastinating that many times makes sense in our head to put things off because there is good reason to not do it right now. And yet, it's very easy to do and may not be the best. So having an external deadline was shown to basically help people follow through on commitments in a way that the people that didn't you imagine they should have been able to predict their schedules, and it's not like Dan knew their schedules any better than they did. So I think we should realize that everyone has procrastination and, and by relying on our willpower to overcome it, it's very difficult. Even the kids in the Walter Mischel Marshmallow Study, it wasn't that they were extraordinary and their willpower and they avoided depletion, they did tactics that you look at the videos, the things that they did were like sit on their hands, they're actually employing tactics that help them resist eating the marshmallow.
Chris: Yeah. And that explains a lot around why accountability is working in that it seems like that's where tools like Facebook can be very helpful to publicly announce a goal or to create that extrinsic social pressure to force the damn style deadline?
Kristen: So what are you guys working on anything? Are you procrastinating on anything that we can announce to people we would check in with you?
Tracy: Nice social pressure, I'm writing a book right now. And I keep procrastinating.
Kristen: How would you apply a deadline? Chris, Is there a way you could help her with the deadline?
Chris: Well, I think that was something as massive as a book. It's a huge undertaking. So how do we break it down into a smaller part? And I would say, Tracy, will you share 10 pages that you wrote with me in a week?
Kristen: Yeah, now we're talking.
Tracy: I can do that. Because I already have 10 pages.
Chris: Total trickster.
Kristen: And one thing is to really either have the goal and the accountability is nice. But are there barriers that are preventing you, from writing those 10 pages, and maybe in any? If you think about rewarding yourself for progress versus outcomes isn't something where you can just say this week, I'm going to get my space set up. So that I have a space to write in next week, I'm going to write the title and the outline and then I'm going to, and then the following week, I'm going to do the 10 pages. So what are the barriers that would be preventing progress? And can you reward yourself for the process versus an outcome?
Tracy: Yeah, it's interesting, because I feel like the barriers are all mental, which I'm more than aware of, and have been and should do better, right. But once I start writing, it's fine. It's just getting to do it. Because I'm afraid that nothing will come even though I have 20 years of professional writing experience telling me that that never happened.
Kristen: So that's interesting, too, because then it's could you write about something that doesn't matter. So you can trust? Like, how would you bet because right now, I think sometimes what we end up doing is thinking that we have to choose one thing, and if we get it wrong, then everything's you know, then there's no other option? So some dating advice, instead of just trying to find your soulmate. You go out with like five people who you know, are wildly different from you. And you take the pressure off of trying to find this one true soulmate. Yeah. Because when you're then trying to find the one true soulmate, you may not be your most relaxed self, you text too early, versus going out with five people you understand that like, there's a lot of fish in the sea abundance is a wonderful thing.
Tracy: I love that. Another thing that I've done that has been surprising and worked well is I noticed that when I type something, I'm in the mode of writer and I want it to be well crafted. But it was keeping the thoughts I had in my head from getting onto the pages quickly. So I started dictating and interviewing my characters and dictating on my computer so that I could capture our conversation, which makes me sound really crazy, but it did a great job of that and then that wasn't necessarily the writing but I had the information They needed then to move to the writing step.
Kristen: Very nice. So you're removing barriers even there?
Tracy: Yeah, I feel like I should pay you money for this.
Chris: My mind's like Tracy's where I have to get into, we talked Tracy, not a great chat about this right after the new year is you could do lots of things in would accomplish so much more, if I didn't have the requirement of needing to be in a certain state to do those things, right. So if I'm going to sit down and write, write out a presentation that I think is going to just be like a white paper of something really revolutionary, then I need to exercise first have a cup of coffee, like getting this perfect mindset to settle down to the mode where I can actually do that, instead of just knowing that it's not always going to be the perfect scenario, just sit down and start doing some of it.
Kristen: Yeah. If you could do a focus on what's going well, so list, a couple of things around optimized it that went well during the day so that you remember to optimize those versus focusing on what the things went bad, because we tend to basically have a kind of a negative orientation on things that aren't going well, I'm forgetting the fact that actually, you may be 80% to your optimized state. And that's right. And 100%, better than most people I do.
Chris: Yeah, the role of confidence. And all this is key. And I'd be curious about how the behavioral economic world thinks about confidence, momentum. So just achieving really small things and having that build up to the new things.
Kristen: Sorry, we're doing a test on this. We're going to give people questions and then have to make sure that the answers that they get are yes, and 100%. And try to build up their confidence with these kinds of fake questions, and then see if we can get them to allocate more of their savings if they're more confident about their financial situation.
Chris: Like, wait a second. Why is my savings account going up? That's great.
Kristen: So, I have to go.
Chris: It's been great talking to you.
Tracy: Thanks so much for your time and your wisdom.
Chris: Of course, of course. Good luck in the house. We can't wait to hear this.
Tracy: Yeah, for sure.
Kristen: Yeah, I'm very nice talking to you. And I'll send pictures of our group living situation we don't have a name yet. So that's the only problem.
Tracy: So you need a name?
Kristen: I think we'll have to get inspired by something. So we're not acting like a pregnant woman who names their kids beforehand. We're going to birth the child.
Tracy: I love it. Cool.
Chris: Sounds good. All right, thanks for your time.
Tracy: I'll see you soon. Bye.