Best of Habit Formation: Katy Milkman

Ted Seides (0:06)

I'm Ted Seides, and this is Capital Allocators.

For the second year, our summer series will share some of the best episodes of the past, curated from our favorites and yours. You can pull down many of the great ones on our Spotify playlists. This series pushes them to your regular listening feed. Our 2026 summer series focuses on improving the investment process. Over the next six weeks, we'll share 10 gems from interdisciplinary skill sets that will help you level up your investing across decision-making, interviewing, storytelling, negotiations, and habit formation.

This week's summer series concludes with a twofer on habits. There may be no better way to improve the investment process than to understand what it takes to improve ourselves. And we've got two of the best, James Clear and Katy Milkman, experts and authors of the wildly best-selling books, Atomic Habits and How to Change.

SPEAKER_2 (1:10)

Before we get to the interview, we're excited to introduce the next chapter of Capital Allocators University, an online on-demand curriculum with an annual in-person gathering for investment professionals committed to continuous learning.

One of the great ironies of investing is that the skills that matter most over a long career are often the ones least formally taught. Things like decision-making, communication, leadership, time management, interviewing, and building relationships.

That's why we've evolved Capital Allocators University into an online on-demand experience, making those lessons accessible to investment professionals everywhere. The best careers don't compound through knowledge alone. They compound through knowledge and relationships.

If you'd like to explore the curriculum or someone on your team comes to mind, visit the link in our show notes or the university page on our website. Thanks so much for spreading the word about the next chapter of Capital Allocators University.

Ted Seides (2:04)

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Please enjoy my conversations with James Clear and Katy Milkman, both from 2021 We hope you've enjoyed this summer exploration and improving the investment process with some of the best conversations over the past nine years.

Katy, thanks so much for joining me.

Katy Milkman (5:26)

Thanks so much for having me.

Ted Seides (5:28)

I'd love to just start with how someone goes about on a path to academic research and studying change.

Katy Milkman (5:36)

Well, my road was very winding, so I'm not sure I'm the example of how one goes about this, but I went about it as an engineer, actually. As an undergraduate, I studied Operations Research and Financial Engineering, and then I decided to get a PhD in Computer Science and Business.