Sticking to the straight and narrow

Book review of How to Change: The Science of Getting From Where You Are to Where You Want To Be

If you have lived around Delhi University, or any other top-notch campus in your youth, you would be familiar with the scene—thousands of students studying long hours to crack the civil service exam. It’s a bleak life—one monotonous day after another of studying in the library during the daytime, followed by more hours of solitary cramming in the hostel room at night. If you fail to crack the exam this year, then another dreary year of the same routine awaits. Many students are simply unable to put up with this monk-like existence and go off-track. Reading Wharton professor Katy Milkman’s book, I felt that these failed crammers, among many others, will find her suggestions useful.

As anyone trying to usher in positive change will tell you, doing so is hard work. Whether you are trying to study regularly, exercise more, or stick to a healthier diet, making a start is difficult enough. Sustaining these initiatives is even harder. What do you do then? How do you avoid the all-too-common human propensity to do what is easy and fun, rather than what is difficult but necessary?

Professor Milkman begins by recounting Andre Agassi’s story. When  Agassi began his career in 1986, he wowed pundits with his natural ability. A great future awaits, they prophesied. By 1994, however, none of that greatness was evident. Rather, his career seemed to be in a freefall. 

Agassi then turned to Brad Gilbert for help. Gilbert was not as gifted as Agassi. But he had been ranked among the world’s top 20 players for many years, rising as high as number four in 1990.

Gilbert told his pupil to stop trying to hit outright winners all the time because that entailed too much risk. Instead, he asked him to play a steadier brand of tennis and stay in the game for longer. More importantly, he advised Agassi to identify his opponent’s weaknesses and capitalise on them. 

For instance, if the opponent’s backhand is weak, bring that more into play and force him to commit errors. Agassi flourished under Gilbert’s tutelage.  

How to Change: The Science of Getting From Where You Are to Where You Want To Be

Author: Katy Milkman

Publisher: Penguin Random House

Pages: 272; Price: Rs 699

Professor Milkman takes a leaf out of Gilbert’s book. She believes a one-size-fits-all approach does not work when trying to usher in positive change. Instead, each person needs to identify her specific Achilles’ heel. It could be laziness, a tendency to procrastinate, lack of confidence in one’s abilities, or a tendency to succumb to temptation. One should then devise strategies tailor-made to overcome it.

The author says it is useless to try and eradicate human impulses. Instead, one needs to work on circumventing them, outsmarting them, or even making them work for us. Most of us overestimate our will power and our ability to stick to the straight and narrow path. While doing something difficult may be rewarding in the long run, we live in the here and now. And in this time and space we are prone to succumb to the temptations that surround us.

She advocates an approach called “temptation bundling”. During her days as a PhD student, Professor Milkman would often miss gym. And instead of studying, she would curl up on a couch and read a novel. On her fiance’s prompting, she engineered a solution: She allowed herself to read her favourite page turners only while working out at the gym (don’t ask how she did it; listening to an audio book might be more practical). This little trick, she says, helped her immensely.

Committing oneself to unpleasant consequences can also work as a motivational tool. A real-life example from history is of Victor Hugo removing all his clothes, barring a shawl, from his apartment so he would not go out to socialise until he had completed the first draft of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. In The Odyssey, Odysseus binds himself to the mast of his ship so as not to succumb to the temptation of the Sirens’ song.

The author refers to these little stratagems as “commitment devices”. One such device is to pledge to donate a considerable sum if you do not accomplish a goal that appears far out of reach (like skydiving) by a specific date. Locked accounts, which don’t allow depositors to withdraw from them for a considerable period, and systematic investment plans of mutual funds are commitment devices in the financial realm that are known to work wonders for people who find it difficult to save for long-term goals.

The book has many more such strategies to help people evolve for the better. And the author is not talking through her hat. She has tested them all in real-life experiments.    

This is undoubtedly an immensely valuable book. The only catch is that it won’t kindle the fire in your belly. The hunger for betterment must come from within. This book can then show you the way.