This is a special episode of TED Talks Daily featuring behavioral scientist Wendy De La Rosa.

It's from The Way We Work, an original video series from TED.

In each episode, leaders and thinkers offer practical wisdom and insight into how you can adapt and thrive at work when the rules are always changing.

You can find season one of the way we work on TED.com.

We all know that saving is important and it's something that we should be doing.

And yet overall, we're doing less and less of it.

We know what we need to do.

The question is how do we do it?

And that's where I'm here to teach you.

Your savings behavior isn't a question of how smart you are or how much willpower you have.

The amount we save depends on the environmental cues around us.

Let me give you an example.

We ran a study in which in one group we showed people their income on a

monthly basis. In another group, we showed people their income on a weekly basis. And what we found

was that people who saw their income on a weekly basis were able to budget better throughout

the month. Now, it's important to know that we didn't change how much money people were receiving.

We just changed the environment in which they understood their income.

And environmental cues like this have an impact.

So I'm not going to share tricks with you that you already know.

I'm not going to tell you how to open up a savings account or how to start saving for your retirement.

What I am going to share with you is how to bridge this gap from your intentions

to save and your actions. Are you ready? Here's number one. Harness the power of pre-commitment.

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