Can you hack your memory?

Harvard Public Policy Professor Todd Rogers shares tools to help you remember better

Happy fall, everyone. If this issue of Milkman Delivers looks a little different to you, that’s because… well… it is! Over the summer, I joined the Substack newsletter universe and refreshed the Milkman Delivers logo (do you like it?). With well over 10,000 subscribers, the time felt right for a change. I hope you’ll enjoy the new look and feel. But in case you’re wondering, I have no plans to change the type of content I share (or to charge you a dime!).

Today, I’m bringing you a Q&A with Harvard Professor Todd Rogers whose incredible new book WRITING FOR BUSY READERS hit the shelves in early September. Todd is a renaissance man — a renowned academic, successful entrepreneur, and winner of the prestigious Rising Star award from Politics magazine for his efforts to bring behavioral science to Washington. Our Q&A focuses on the power of forgetting and what can be done to remember better. But Todd’s book will help you write better (and more memorable) prose, and that’s a skill we could all use (particularly the author of this newsletter!).

This Month’s Recommended Listens and Reads

• The Power of Accidents: We’re back with a new season of Choiceology, and in this recent episode I interviewed University of Chicago economist and bestselling author Steve Levitt about the usefulness of what he calls “accidental experiments,” which can teach us volumes.

• For a Better Workout, Trick Your Brain: This New York Times essay is packed with great tips on how to compel yourself to exercise, and it highlights the proven benefits of a strategy I’ve studied called “temptation bundling.”

• How Habits Get Formed: I discussed some of my favorite research on the science of habits and how they’re formed on the popular Life Examined podcast.

• Recent Advances in the Social Sciences: I had the pleasure of presenting my research to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology earlier this month (following Harvard economist Raj Chetty and NYU political scientist Josh Tucker). Watch our session if you’re interested in what we had to say.

• A bundle of fabulous new books by behavioral scientists have come out in the last few months. Be sure to get your hands on these terrific new titles:

Join Me at Noon on 9/29 to Discuss the Future of Behavioral Economics & Public Policy

It’s been a tremendous pleasure to serve on the National Academy of Sciences’ Board on Behavioral, Cognitive and Sensory Sciences for the last several years. We recently commissioned a report from leading behavioral scientists on the state of behavioral economics. At a live event on 9/29, UC Berkeley economist Stefano DellaVigna will share key takeaways from this new report, and I will moderate a discussion of the future of our field after Stefano’s presentation.

Please join us on Friday, September 29th from 12:00-12:45 PM ET for what's sure to be a fascinating conversation.

Q&A: Can you hack your memory?

In this Q&A from Choiceology, Harvard Public Policy Professor Todd Rogers discusses research on the under-appreciated problem of forgetting and a tool we can use to remember better.

Me: Could you talk about the evidence that remembering can be a real and important barrier to achievement? Because I think sometimes people can dismiss forgetting as a trivial issue.

Todd: Sure. I first started wrestling with this when we realized that almost everybody in a poll says they intend to vote. And then you look at the voter file afterwards, and only about half of them actually vote. Now, that drop off or “flake out” may be because they never intended to vote, and they were just saying what we wanted to hear. But I think a lot of people just genuinely forgot.

What’s interesting is that people are more likely to flake out on virtuous things. So, going to the gym, eating healthy, voting, putting in extra time at work, or whatever we think we should do versus something like, “I’m going to eat dessert tonight.” Something like 30 to 70% of the things we say we’ll do, we flake out on.

Me: And we think a lot of that has to do with forgetting. Obviously, some of it has to do with goals being hard to achieve, but these are things people really do intend to do.

When it comes to some limitations, people understand that they have problems and they set up systems to try to solve them. Is forgetting one of those issues? Do you think people mostly solve the problem for themselves when they anticipate they might forget, or you think that there's room for people to do better?

Todd: Everybody thinks it's obvious that reminders can be useful, but they also don't realize how much they need reminders. We did a study where we offered people the chance to pay us for a reminder in the future to do something that would earn them a lot more money if they followed through. This was a way of really showing that people massively underestimate their forgetting, and because of that, they're not willing to pay to remind themselves, which is sort of a metaphor for not being willing to take steps, like planning prompts and scheduling, to make sure they end up following through on the thing they intended to do.

Me: Right. And we found people undervalued those reminders. If they had just paid us a small fee for a reminder, they would've made a lot more in total.

Let’s talk about ways to fix the forgetting problem. Could you describe what a reminder through association is and how they can be helpful?

Todd: So, this builds on the voting story. You and I were talking about how I think a big reason people don't follow through on their intentions to vote is that they don't remember early enough in the day. And I was saying we should run a study where we remind people that it's election day with some unusual thing, like one of those blow-up windy inflatable guys, as opposed to just people holding signs. People are always holding signs; you don't notice them anymore. And then for half the people we’d say, "when you see the blow-up inflatable windy guy, remember that means you need to remember to vote."

We ended up doing our study at a coffee shop in Harvard Square where we passed out hundreds of coupons on a Tuesday that could only be used that Thursday and told half of the people, “There’s going to be a toy alien sitting on front of the cash register on Thursday. When you see that alien, remember to use this coupon.” The alien was there on Thursday for everybody, but for half of them, it was just a weird thing in front of the cash register and for half it was an association to remember the coupon. And more people who had the alien cue did use their coupons. It’s really a challenge of how you capture people’s attention in the environment that you’re trying to enact the behavior.

Me: So, when people know about this research, how do they help themselves?

Todd: One way is by concretely thinking through planning, scheduling things, and setting up your environment so you’re more likely to remember. Something like, “I need to mail an envelope to my grandmother, so I put it in my shoe because I can't leave the house without putting my shoe on.” Basically, structuring the environment so you remember even if you’re confident you would anyway. You can take steps to protect yourself from yourself.

The other side is to create the conditions for other people to be more likely to follow through on their virtuous intentions. That can be prompting people to make a concrete plan (which can sometimes feel patronizing, so you have to be artful and delicate about it). So, you can, as a third party, create an environment to help people. You often see weird reminders in airports associated with your parking spot.

Me: I love that, Todd. When the airport parking lot labels each floor with an animal instead of a number, they’re trying to help you remember your floor by creating a more memorable association. Thank you for taking the time to talk.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

To learn more about Todd’s research on hacking your memory, listen to the episode of Choiceology where we dig into the topic. Todd’s latest research focuses on writing effectively so people will remember and act on your message, and you can find out about it in his new book WRITING FOR BUSY READERS.

That’s all for this month’s newsletter. See you in October!

Katy Milkman, PhD

Professor at Wharton, Host of Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, and Bestselling Author of How to Change

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