Library Lectures | Willpower is Overrated: The Science of Making Choices and Changing Behaviors

Ever wonder why motivation may not keep us going when the going gets tough, or why building a new habit can feel like a chore?

In this intro session, we’ll dive into some cool findings from behavioral science, and explore how our brains weigh effort against rewards when making everyday decisions. While you may not walk out as a completely new person, we'll see how tweaking our environment can make behavior change feel a whole lot easier and even more automatic.

About Lecturer

Jo is an applied behavioral researcher. Over these past few years, he's partnered with various organizations to put behavioral science into work in all sorts of settings, such as helping people build exercise habits, supporting domestic violence survivors, and encouraging vaccine uptake. Recently, he founded Behavioural Switch Journey (BSJ) to democratize the use of behavior change tools, so that more of us can think more critically and build a more fulfilling life. His latest works focus on helping organizations run better by getting their teams to adopt more desirable cultural norms. Most of us experience pain (not pleasure) when we find out that we make intellectual mistakes. However, as a researcher, he (still) learns how to see these mistakes as joyful, teachable moments to not let ideas get into our identity, and to change our mind because it meant we were learning.