"Bundle the Want With the Should" — Katy Milkman on Temptation Bundling and Manufacturing Motivation Without Willpower

"Bundle the Want With the Should"

Katy Milkman, behavioral scientist and professor at the Wharton School, offered a breakthrough answer to the problem of fading motivation: temptation bundling. Her idea is simple. Take something you should do but find tedious, and bundle it with something you want to do but feel a little guilty about. Instead of disciplining yourself with willpower, you let the pleasure pull the chore along.

In her book How to Change, Milkman describes an experiment bundling exercise at the gym with page-turner audiobooks. When people made a rule that they could only listen to the gripping audiobook while at the gym, they started going to the gym eager to hear what happened next. If you can't keep your motivation up, it isn't because your willpower is weak. It's because you're trying to grind through something tedious while it stays tedious. This article unpacks the mechanism that manufactures motivation without relying on willpower.

Why Merely 'Bundling' Generates Motivation

Temptation bundling works because of how the brain is wired. Our brains tend to overvalue a small pleasure in front of us right now (a fun story, a favorite drink) over a large reward in the distant future (health, skill, a promotion). Behavioral economists call this 'present bias.'

Tedious actions are hard for the brain to feel motivated by, because their rewards lie only in the far future. Tie that action to a pleasure available right now, and the brain naturally starts moving in pursuit of the immediate enjoyment. You may feel no drive to exercise itself, but with the instant reward of 'I get to hear the next part of the story,' your feet move. And by pairing the chore with the pleasure, the guilt drains out of the pleasure while the chore gains an immediate reward — two problems solved at once. That's how motivation is generated while spending almost no willpower.

B.J. Fogg: 'Behavior Sticks Through Emotion'

Stanford behavioral scientist B.J. Fogg argues in his habit research that what makes a behavior stick is not the number of repetitions but the positive emotion that accompanies it. We tend to assume that repeating something enough times turns it into a habit, but Fogg disagrees. An action paired with an unpleasant feeling won't take hold no matter how often you repeat it — in fact, you'll come to avoid it.

This insight dovetails perfectly with temptation bundling. Bundle a pleasure onto a tedious action, and that action becomes one accompanied by positive emotion. When exercise becomes 'fun-story time' and dishwashing becomes 'favorite-music time,' the brain files the action as a reward and naturally wants to repeat it. Fogg's theory confirms that temptation bundling isn't a cheap trick but a scientifically sound way to root a habit.

Soichiro Honda: 'You Excel at What You Love'

Soichiro Honda, founder of Honda Motor, prized enjoying one's work above all. He left behind words to the effect that 'you can never become first-rate by grinding through something you don't even like.' For Honda, even the brutal trial and error of engine development was bearable — sustainable — precisely because it was tied to his innate love of tinkering with machines.

This is the very spirit of temptation bundling. Rather than enduring effort as mere effort, Honda found pleasure within the effort, or bound the effort to pleasure, and as a result could keep at it longer than anyone. 'Enjoyment' is not a mere reward; it's the engine that lets you continue. People who bundle a task with a pleasure and carry it lightly travel further, in the end, than those who try to endure it as an ordeal.

How a Small Discovery Turned a Dull Commute Into Pleasure

A personal aside. There was a time when my morning commute was simply dull, a vaguely heavy stretch of the day. At the same time, something I'd long wanted to relearn but never got around to was nagging at the back of my mind. Each, on its own, felt like too much effort — that familiar state everyone knows of 'I know I should, but I can't get myself to move.'

One day, almost idly, I bundled the two. I just decided that I'd listen to the learning audio only on the commuter train. Strangely, the commute that had felt so dull gradually became something I half looked forward to — 'time when I get to hear the next part.' I have no memory of summoning any willpower. A boring stretch of time and a bit of learning I wanted to enjoy had simply been stuck together.

What sank in then was that what I'd lacked wasn't 'motivation' but a 'combination.' As long as the chore and the pleasure sat apart, neither would move. But bundle them once, and the pleasure quietly pulls the chore along. Ever since, whenever there's something I want to keep doing, I first ask, 'What can I bundle this with?'

Four Steps to Design Temptation Bundling

Temptation bundling can be built by design, not by feel. Use these four steps.

First, list your chores and your pleasures. Write out the things you want to keep doing but find hard to start, and the enjoyable things you can't help spending time on. Comparing the two reveals candidates to bundle.

Second, pair compatible items. Choose combinations you can do at the same time: exercise and podcasts, cleaning and favorite music, tedious paperwork and a favorite drink. The ideal pair is one your body and location can do together.

Third, restrict the pleasure to that moment only. This is the heart of Milkman's experiment. By ruling that 'this pleasure is only for when I do that chore,' the chore becomes the sole gateway to the pleasure.

Fourth, fix a trigger for the bundle. Anchor the bundled action to an existing habit: 'when I board the train,' 'when I start clearing up after dinner.' With a set trigger, you no longer have to summon motivation each time.

From 'Try Harder' to 'Bundle Smarter'

The greatest shift temptation bundling teaches us is moving from a 'try harder' mindset to a 'bundle smarter' one. When motivation fades, we tend to blame ourselves for weak willpower. But most of the time the problem isn't a weak will; it's a design problem — leaving the tedious thing tedious.

Willpower, research suggests, is a finite resource that depletes with use. Wringing it out every time to face a chore won't last. Temptation bundling, by contrast, is designed once, and after that the pleasure keeps pulling the behavior along. If you want to change yourself, first stop blaming yourself and ask instead, 'What could I bundle this with?' Motivation is not something to wring out, but something to design and generate.

Bundle Just One Thing Today

What Katy Milkman's words offer is hope: motivation is not a matter of character or grit, but of combination. Without leaning on willpower, simply bundling a chore with a pleasure sets behavior in motion naturally.

Starting is simple. Bring to mind one thing you want to keep doing but can't. Then pick one pleasure you can't help spending time on, and bundle the two sometime today. 'This pleasure is only for that chore' — this single rule will quietly begin to change your behavior from tomorrow.

A life of exhausting yourself by wringing out willpower, or a life of moving forward lightly on the power of pleasure? What Milkman, Fogg, and Honda show is that only those who choose the latter can keep going, effortlessly, for the long haul. Today, bundle just one thing. That small combination will keep generating your motivation automatically.