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How to Change
A book on choosing a strategy for change that fits what's stopping you
Why it’s worth your time
Katy Milkman's How to Change argues that change comes more easily when you name the specific thing blocking you and choose a tactic aimed at it. If you've tried the generic advice and still haven't moved, it's a good place to look next.
How to stick with a change by naming what's in the way
The book · About 5 hours of reading · Buy or borrow
How to get it
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- Start with the chapter on your obstacle.
Each chapter takes one obstacle to change. Skim the contents and read the one that sounds most like you first.
- Write down what's in the way of one change.
Pick one change at work you keep not making. Write one line on what stops it: you forget, you put it off, it's dull, you doubt you can do it, or nobody around you does it. Choose one tactic aimed at that obstacle and try it for two weeks.
Good moments for this: when a change keeps not happeningafter a good intention fadeswhen you're helping someone else change
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Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
If you're trying to change something for a team, Milkman's framing suggests asking which obstacle is in their way rather than assuming it's the one in yours. A process people skip because it's tedious tends to need a different fix from one they skip because they forget it exists.
What might make this harder
Before picking one of Milkman's tactics, notice the next two times the change doesn't happen and write down what you did instead. Forgetting and avoiding tend to look quite different once they're on paper.
Questions people ask
What does Katy Milkman's How to Change argue?
That change comes more readily when you identify the obstacle standing in your way and tailor your strategy to it, rather than using one generic method. Milkman, a Wharton professor and host of the Choiceology podcast, draws on her own research and her collaborators' to cover obstacles including impulsivity, procrastination, forgetfulness, laziness, low confidence and conformity, with further chapters on the timing of change and on habits.
What is a commitment device?
A limit you put on yourself in advance to make following through more likely, such as a penalty for missing your own deadline or a promise to a friend. In How to Change it's the suggested remedy for procrastination.
Who is How to Change for?
Anyone stuck on a change they want to make, and, by the book's own description, managers, coaches and teachers trying to help others change. One reviewer, Mervi Kalmus, thought it suits people whose work depends mostly on motivating themselves.
What it says, and how it holds up
Milkman's argument is that the way you go about a change should depend on what's actually stopping you. If a task is dull, a reminder may not help much; if you keep forgetting, making the task more fun may not either. So the book takes obstacles one at a time and pairs each with tactics from behavioral science, many from her own work and her collaborators'. Angela Duckworth wrote the foreword.
The tactics are small and concrete. Mervi Kalmus, reviewing it for the Journal of Applied Christian Leadership, describes pairing a tedious task with something you enjoy (temptation bundling, a term Milkman and her colleagues coined in a 2014 study where gym-goers could hear tempting audiobooks only at the gym), adding a game to a monotonous one, commitment devices for procrastination, and for forgetting and laziness, detailed reminders, plans tied to a cue (when this happens, I'll do that), better defaults, and linking a new habit to an old one. At work these translate easily: the weekly report written only in the café you like, the hard email booked for right after a standing meeting. One of the book's less obvious claims, on Milkman's own page, is that giving advice, even about something you're struggling with yourself, can help you follow through.
Kalmus found it practical but thought the volume of advice could feel overwhelming, and suggested choosing one or two areas instead of trying everything; she also found the chapters on confidence and conformity less concrete than the rest. Later in 2021, Milkman and colleagues published a megastudy in Nature testing 54 four-week exercise programs on more than 61,000 gym members. Nearly half raised gym visits while they ran. Only 8 percent of the programs left a significant, measurable change once the four weeks were over. That's a fair frame for reading the book: a tactic that works this month may need renewing next month.
When the change is one your employer wants and not one you chose, a new process or a new tool the whole team is supposed to adopt, these tactics can start to feel like ways to make yourself comply. That's a good moment to ask why the change matters to the company and whether you agree. Knowing the reason tends to make it easier to commit, or to push back in good faith before you spend effort on it.
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Picked by Truest and described in our own words. The original belongs to its creator. Last updated October 9, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.