Welcome to Untangle, the podcast from News, the brain sensing headband that helped you meditate and sleep and meditation studio, the five-star app.

I'm Patricia Carpice.

Today's guest is Katie Milkman, Wharton University professor and author of National bestseller, How to Change the Science of

Getting from where you are to Where You Want to Be.

The book was named one of the top eight books for Healthy Living in 2021 by the New York Times.

Katie has devoted her career to the study of behavior change, and that is a good thing,

since she shares that 40% of premature deaths

are actually due to behaviors and habits we can change. Today, she talks about the importance

of understanding the barriers that stand between you and the change you're trying to make

so that you can find the right solution to each particular roadblock.

Turning an uphill battle into a downhill one is one of the keys to success, but there are plenty.

She goes through the most common barriers, which are short-term rewards or instant gratification,

procrastination, forgetfulness, and to hear others, stay tuned. Now, here's Katie.

Katie, it's great to have you on Untangle today. Thanks so much for being here.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited. So in your book, you say that you've spent most of your

career focused on habit change. And I am really

curious what inspired this focus for you. Yeah. Thanks for asking that question. It took a little while

for me to get extremely focused on this topic. I was definitely a wanderer for a bit as a researcher, and the science I was

doing as an assistant professor was really all over the place from looking at race and gender

bias and organizations to trying to understand what kinds of articles go viral on the New York

Times website to what movies do we rent and hold.

So I wasn't focused. And then I wandered over to a lecture at the medical school at the

...