This is the 10% Happier Podcast.

I'm Dan Harris.

Hello everybody.

There are all sorts of ways to struggle with getting things done.

Maybe you're a procrastinator.

Maybe you're somebody whose energy flags in the middle of a project.

Maybe you're too stubborn and don't know when to quit.

Or maybe like me, you're somebody who sets too many goals and gets burned out and makes everybody around you miserable.

Whatever your situation, we all, I think, struggle with motivation.

The good news is that there's a whole crew of scientists who study best practices for getting things done.

My guest is one of the most eminent players in the field.

Her name is Islet Fishbok PhD.

She is the Jeffrey Breckenridge Keller Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

She's also the author of Get It Done, surprising lessons from the science of motivation.

I heard her name uttered so many times by our previous guests that I thought, let's go book her.

And I'm glad we did because we had a great conversation in which we talked about the crucial first step of setting goals,

how to pick the right goals for you, whether it's more effective to have goals that are positive,

in other words, where you're aiming to achieve something specific or negative, where you're aiming to stop doing something,

whether to do lists, work, whether incentives work, best practices for monitoring your progress,

the importance of celebrating milestones, the importance of negative feedback,

why the 10,000 steps per day goal makes motivational sense.

She calls that strategy, put a number on it, even though the whole 10,000 steps thing has been proven to be scientifically arbitrary,

...