I’ve now re-read Katy Milkman’s How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. For all the pop-ish productivity books, I’d say this is one of the better ones. If you don’t intend to read it, I think this Goodreads review sums up the main points pretty, if too, succinctly.
Compared to other books that have variations on titles like, “How to Change: The Science of <>”, Milkman tends to be more thoughtful and conditional in her advice. Lots of underscoring that contexts and situations vary, lots of emphasis that one-size-fits-all solutions often don’t exist. You see in Point 3: Milkman says that gamification matters, but spends just about as much time highlighting the limitations and unanticipated downsides of not getting a “magic circle” fixed (e.g. buying into the game). So…lots of good stuff.
So here’s where I’m at right now: there are lots of great habit / productivity books out there. And the advice is almost always reasonable, doable, and rooted in empirical findings. But…they almost never work for me. I’ve been thinking about why. And here’s a hokey theory: what if productivity people are with one hand giving you advice that, in a social vacuum, is good, but with the other are flooding the zone with proverbial shit?
I thought of this as I read Gerd Gigerenzer’s How to Stay Smart in a Smart World. That book’s, ok. You don’t want to go into it hoping to glean cutting edge information about artificial intelligence. Rather, Gigerenzer shifts focus onto people living in a world with an often confusing and contradictory set of facts: artificial intelligence is extremely powerful and amazing, and artificial intelligence is super over-hyped. It’s also cut with a set of cranky older gentleman arguments about big tech which I enjoy.
Anyways. Gigerenzer at one point talks about the various nudge / behavioral economics / “How to Change” social manipulation/influence techniques that tech companies study and deploy to keep you online. One example is Snapchat, an instant messaging service, using little fire pictures to signify streaks of days that you communicate with particular friends. I don’t use snapchat, but I googled this, and apparently it looks something like this.
Hey! That looks a lot like Milkman’s Point #8! Milkman also discussed using things like “Memory Palaces” or acronyms to remember things (Please Excuse my Dear Aunt Sally, e.g.). This being compliance season, I have about 46 decks of training slides to prove to the University of Minnesota that I am an ethical and professional employee. Which means that I’ll soon be exposed to roughly 120-140 easy to remember simple acronyms to remember the key points: Remember TRG (trust, routine, grow), 123 (One mention, report TO a THIRD party), etc. Acronyms really stop working when you’re exposed to lots of them, right? Even when it’s important information, like, what to do as a professional with responsibilities at work. And if you look around the materials produced by big companies / institutions / etc., they sure look a lot like “How to Change” lessons.
And that got me thinking more: what exactly are the day jobs of the “How to Change” “How to be Productive” “The Science of Microbehavior” set? Well, Milkman’s a fellow professor! She teaches in the prestigious business school at the University of Pennsylvania. Here is a sample of the courses she teaches.
Impressive! And the thing to realize about UPenn: it’s an Ivy League school that really advertises the high octane professional career people tend to connect to after graduation.
As far as I can tell, a large chunk of the “How to Change” set are in very similar teaching arrangements. Which seems to suggest that lots of future business / managerial / advertising / finance / etc. folks are steeped in “How to Change” empirical social sciences. Which would make sense why Snapchat has a streak fire emoji. And if you look around, you’ll see that lots of the “How to Change” type tactics / nudge tactics / etc. are everywhere.
Which…kind of feels like flooding the zone with shit, to quote Steve Bannon:
“The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon reportedly said in 2018. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”
This idea isn’t new, but Bannon articulated it about as well as anyone can. The press ideally should sift fact from fiction and give the public the information it needs to make enlightened political choices. If you short-circuit that process by saturating the ecosystem with misinformation and overwhelm the media’s ability to mediate, then you can disrupt the democratic process.
Bare knuckled! Bannon’s key insight: a political candidate can fundamentally change the nature of their relationship to the media if they constantly produce nonsense, bloviation, and bullshit. Or: Romney erred by only producing a small number of gaffs (big bird, takers, binders of women) and responding by trying to correct. He should instead have produced even more gaffes! Or, to riff on Stalin: One gaffe is a trajedy. Millions of gaffes are a statistic.
It kind of feels like “How to Change” tactics are supported through teaching hundreds upon hundreds of MBA students the empirics of how to change person behavior. These MBA students then enter influential positions of wide reaching companies. They then use at least some of their behavioral economics / behavior change insights in ways that eventually get translated into unremarkable Joe’s like me getting inundated with games, acronyms, streaks, etc. Which…makes these tactics feel kind of gross and business-y (for lack of a better word) and difficult to differentiate from the broader tech/business/pr/hr/advertising world that relies heavily these days on behavioral economics. Which, kind of undermines the ability to apply these lessons to my daily life (not biting my nails is just another streak, PEMDAS sits alongside the 120 compliance acronyms I’m now supposed to remember).
Which is to say: I wonder if behavioral economists / “How to Change” folks have flooded the zone with their proverbial shit, which, now that it’s been broadly implemented and scaled, changes the nature of an unremarkable person like me to these tactics, perhaps ultimately undermining the effectiveness of these tactics. Just a thought.