 She'd take these down. Hey, dear, do you still have your Christmas lights up? I learned it from watching you. Fine, honey. So how was your New Year's Day? Did you make any resolutions? Hi, I'm Eileen, and this is the Lazy Millennial New Year's Edition. Today, we're going to talk about how you, too, can keep your resolutions and improve your life with the power of behavioral economics. But it's way more fun than it sounds, seriously. 2017, am I right? This year has been a roller coaster for me and a lot of other people. So I feel like it's time to make a change. But she completely rebranded herself. Rather than focusing on the usual resolution, things like working out and traveling, I want to focus on actually improving myself this year. Rebranded, but New Year's resolutions are impossible to keep. So how do I make this work? The key to keeping resolutions is incentives. And most of the time, bad incentives are why we can't stick to them. And that is what behavioral economics looks like. Turns out, instead of being totally rational and making decisions based on facts and logic, we're actually really emotional and prone to all kinds of cognitive biases. And that makes it really hard to break bad habits and make good ones. So before I start my own personal rebranding project, I'm going to have to do a lot of mental work. Here's a problem I have. Writers need to have a niche to be successful and my topics are too random right now. So I'm going to have to find my focus. First, I got to recognize that trade-offs are a thing. I know I don't have time to do everything, so I'm going to have to give up doing some things so I have more time to do the things I really want to do. But how do I know what I'm really going to be great at? For that, I'm going to have to overcome my cognitive biases. And man, there are a ton of those. Like, we're all prone to confirmation bias, which makes us ignore criticism and only listen to the people who say stuff we like to hear. Then there's this thing called anchoring bias, which is when we make snap judgments instead of getting all the facts. And we can also be overconfident in our choices even when we don't know what we're doing. It's just really hard to get good at making decisions. All of this is overwhelming, but it's okay, chill. Even just knowing we're not awesome at being totally rational is the first step towards avoiding these big errors. Stay open to different points of view. Before I start my next big project, I want to look at all the angles and really be honest about my strengths and my weaknesses. So I'm going to go get advice from friends and mentors and try to be open to critical feedback. Then after all that, I'm going to have to change my incentives to stick to the plan. And that's hard. People respond to incentives and if those change, people will totally change their behavior. For example, if you're someone who hits the snooze button a million times in the morning, you can force yourself to get up by moving the alarm clock across the room. Like if you're having trouble sticking to a diet, you could rearrange your kitchen to put the healthy foods within reach when you feel like snacking and moving the junk food to a high shelf out of reach or even into a locked safe. They exist. There's even a company that makes shock bracelets to help you stop smoking or spend so much time on Facebook. I'm not kidding. But you know, positive incentives work too. Right now, it's way too easy for me to get off track when I'm writing. That's because I don't have a good incentive to stay focused. So when I settle on my next big topic, I'm going to reward myself with cookies and episodes of Rick and Morty. I'm Pickle Rick! Depending on how many good pages I get through every day. And I'll take away my rewards for every page I write that's off topic. And I'll get my mom and good friends to help keep me honest. Nobody's perfect. Change is hard. But incentives make all the difference. We really can keep our resolutions this year. Hey everyone. If you want to find out more about how you can be all you can be, check out the Foundation for Economic Education's essential guide to effecting change, which is free and linked in the description box below. Thanks for watching and I will see you again next month unless you don't want to. In which case you can go away.