Will Temptation Bundling Help With Our Health?

On the way home from work today, I listened to an episode of Freakonomics Radio entitled, "Could Solving This Problem Solve All Others?" It follows two researchers -- Katherine Milkman and Angela Duckworth -- focused on perfecting the science of behavior change. The podcast is fascinating, exploring their bid for an $100 million MacArthur Grant to take their research to the next level, paired with other researchers with different angles on behavioral change data.

That podcast reminded me to look further into a fun concept, temptation bundling, coined by Katherine Milkman. The concept describes pairing something you need to do (going to the gym, for instance) with something you would love to do (binging on an audiobook or Netflix series). She describes it a little better in this 5 minute video:

Professor Katherine Milkman describes her research on a new idea she calls "temptation bundling" at Wharton's "Iron Prof" competition.

The idea seems pretty straight forward, if you're disciplined.