Hello, and welcome back to practicing human, the podcast where every day we're getting a little better at life.

I'm your host, Cory Muscara, and in today's episode we're going to talk about temptation bundling.

More to come on that in a moment. First, let's settle in together with the sound of the bells.

Okay, so we all have things that we want to do, and then we have things that we need to do.

And a lot of our attention in life, especially when it comes to our personal growth, getting things done,

accomplishing the various demands of our life, creating things.

It's this tension between what we want to be doing and what we need to be doing to maybe be making some sort of progress.

I need to be responding to emails, but I want to be watching Netflix.

I need to be working on my book, but I want to be outside in the sun because it's a beautiful day.

I need to be cleaning the house, but I want to be reading a book.

Needs and wants. So how do we work with this?

Well, there's something called temptation bundling, which is a term coined by the behavioral scientist, Catherine Milkman.

And what this refers to is linking an action you want to do with an action you need to do.

Temptation bundling is linking an action you want to do with an action you need to do.

And so if we take the examples that I offered above, which were conveniently created to be paired here,

you want to be watching Netflix, but you need to be doing emails.

So you have Netflix playing in the corner of your screen while you're also taking care of emails on the side.

And so you might go back and forth.

You need to be working on your book, but you also want to go outside.

And so you set yourself up outside to be working on your book so that the two are combined.

You want to be reading a book, but you also need to clean.

So you download the audio book that you want to read, listen to, and you do that while you're vacuuming.

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