In this nearly seventeen-minute TEDx talk, Dr. Zoë Chance begins with a surprising confession: despite building a career studying influence and behavior, she once became addicted to her pedometer. She explains that she is sharing this story for the first time in full detail to illuminate a broader framework for understanding what makes behaviors sticky, compelling, and potentially addictive.

Zoë describes how, in 2012, she bought a Striiv pedometer—marketed as a “personal trainer in your pocket,” but which she jokingly calls “Satan in your pocket.” What began as a health tool spiraled into compulsion. Instead of striving for the recommended 10,000 steps, she pushed herself to 24,000 per day, pacing at work, looping endlessly around her home, and even damaging her marriage by being mentally and physically absent. She spent more time with her pedometer and its online community than with her family. The device’s embedded game world, MyLand, hooked her further with virtual rewards and progress tracking. Her breaking point came during a midnight pop-up challenge prompting her to climb stairs for triple points—an impulse that turned into two hours of nonstop stair climbing, causing a neck injury.

The injury forced her to stop, recognize her addiction, and go cold turkey. But when she gifted the device to her sister, her sister quickly developed the same nighttime walking compulsions, underscoring that the issue was not personality—it was design.

Zoë closes by challenging the audience to use the six-needs framework to design personal habits or public behaviors that spread more easily. Behaviors that meet at least three needs meaningfully have the potential to become self-sustaining—and even addictive. She encourages listeners to use this awareness ethically, to “spread awesomeness around the globe.”

In this concise lesson, Dr. Zoe Chance shares a powerful story from Gloria Steinem that demonstrates why the question “What would it take?” can unlock extraordinary solutions. She explains that Steinem traveled to Africa to learn more about sex trafficking of young girls. Instead of arriving with predetermined answers, Steinem chose to ask questions and listen. In one Zambian village where three girls had been sold in the previous year, she met with village elders and asked them directly: What would it take for those girls not to have left the village?

The elders named a surprising solution: an electric fence. They told her that elephants were trampling their corn crops, leaving the community with no food. The families who sold the girls had done so because they were starving. Steinem returned to the United States, raised a few thousand dollars, and sent it back so the village could build the fence. When she visited three years later, she found a thriving community with abundant crops, celebrations underway, and no girls having left in the same tragic way since.

Dr. Chance breaks down why this question is so effective. First, it empowers the other party by recognizing them as the true experts on their own situation. Second, it shifts people out of judgment and defensiveness and into problem-solving mode. Third, it creates implicit commitment. When the elders articulated the need for an electric fence, they also committed themselves to the outcome—protecting the girls—because the solution originated with them. The example underscores how influence rooted in curiosity, respect, and partnership can lead to more effective and sustainable change.

In this three-minute teaching segment, Dr. Zoe Chance explains that human beings are highly reactive, and that this reactivity makes us especially responsive to small changes in our environment. To illustrate the point, she dramatically simplifies the core idea of behavioral economics: people gravitate toward what is easy and enjoyable, and avoid what is hard or unpleasant. While this may sound obvious, she notes that most people underestimate how powerful the force of difficulty is compared with desire.

Zoe demonstrates that many of the most disruptive companies did not dominate their industries by offering drastically better products or lower prices. Instead, they focused on removing friction. Amazon makes brick-and-mortar shopping feel cumbersome while making online shopping effortless through one-click purchasing, seamless returns, instant digital reading, and the reduced “pain of paying” facilitated by Prime’s single yearly shipping fee. Uber applies the same principle by eliminating transaction friction: riders do not need cash or even a wallet, and the cost becomes less salient. The service feels as simple as calling a friend for a ride, resulting in massive disruption to the taxi industry and even influencing car ownership trends.