back to indexThe Science of Setting & Achieving Goals | Huberman Lab Podcast #55
link |
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,
link |
where we discuss science and science-based tools
link |
for everyday life.
link |
I'm Andrew Huberman,
link |
and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology
link |
at Stanford School of Medicine.
link |
Today, we're talking all about goals
link |
and the science of goal setting and achieving your goals.
link |
There's a tremendous amount of information on the internet
link |
and in books and so forth about how to set goals
link |
and assess your progress towards goals
link |
and update your goals and so forth.
link |
In fact, there are so many programs out there
link |
that include so many different acronyms
link |
that it can be a little bit overwhelming.
link |
Today's conversation about goals
link |
is going to be quite a bit different.
link |
Indeed, we are going to talk about setting goals.
link |
We are also going to talk about
link |
how to assess progress towards goals,
link |
and we are going to talk about goal execution.
link |
However, we're going to do all of this
link |
in the context of neuroscience,
link |
because it turns out that there are not hundreds
link |
or dozens or even several neural circuits in your brain
link |
that control goal setting and movement toward your goals.
link |
And while it includes many different brain areas,
link |
that one circuit is the same circuit
link |
that's responsible for pursuing all goals.
link |
And it relates to some very basic neurochemical mechanisms
link |
that are understood.
link |
So while there's a wealth of information out there
link |
about goals and goal setting and goal achievement
link |
and so forth, there's comparatively little information
link |
that's been available to the public
link |
about the neuroscience of goal setting and goal achievement.
link |
So that's what we're going to focus on today.
link |
I promise that we're going to get into the neuroscience.
link |
We're going to touch on a little bit of the psychology
link |
and how the neuroscience relates to what's known
link |
in the psychology literature.
link |
And we are going to establish several,
link |
in fact, four specific protocols
link |
that you can use for goal setting, goal assessment,
link |
and goal execution in an ongoing basis,
link |
regardless of what your personal goals happen to be.
link |
Before we dive into our conversation about goals
link |
and goal setting and goal achievement,
link |
I'd like to highlight some recent scientific findings
link |
that I think are going to be interesting and actionable
link |
for many of you out there.
link |
In earlier podcasts, we talked about neuroplasticity,
link |
which is the brain's ability to change
link |
in response to experience.
link |
In fact, neuroplasticity underlies all forms of learning,
link |
whether or not it's language learning or learning music
link |
or math or a physical skill,
link |
all forms of learning involve the reorganization
link |
of connections in the nervous system,
link |
the brain and spinal cord and body.
link |
One of the key principles of neuroplasticity
link |
is this notion of making errors
link |
as a good thing toward neuroplasticity.
link |
It's a little bit counterintuitive,
link |
but what the scientific literature tells us
link |
is that whenever we're trying to learn something new,
link |
if we make an error, we know it feels frustrating,
link |
but that state of frustration
link |
actually cues up particular brain areas
link |
to be more alert so that on subsequent attempts
link |
to learn that thing, we have a heightened level of focus
link |
and a higher probability of learning the new skill,
link |
regardless of what that skill is.
link |
And I've talked about this before in various episodes
link |
as encouraging people to embrace errors or pursue errors,
link |
not as their own end goal, but errors as an entry point
link |
for making the brain more plastic.
link |
And if you think about it, it really makes sense.
link |
Why would the brain change at all
link |
if it's performing everything perfectly?
link |
When you make errors, well, in the immediate seconds
link |
and minutes after those errors,
link |
you are in a better position to learn.
link |
A common question I get, however,
link |
is what should be the rate of errors,
link |
which is really just a way of saying
link |
how hard should the given task be
link |
that you're trying to learn or perform?
link |
And it turns out there's an answer.
link |
There's a recent paper that was published
link |
in a great journal, Nature Communications.
link |
This is a paper, a last author, Jonathan Cohen,
link |
and the paper is entitled the 85% Rule for Optimal Learning.
link |
This paper we will make available by a link
link |
in the show note captions.
link |
But basically what this paper shows
link |
is that when trying to learn something new,
link |
you want to make the difficulty
link |
of what you're trying to learn
link |
such that you're getting things right about 85% of the time,
link |
that you're making errors about 15% of the time.
link |
And the reason I like this paper
link |
is it really points specifically
link |
to some protocols that we can implement
link |
because people always say, okay, you want to set a high goal.
link |
You want to try and achieve something that's really lofty,
link |
but you don't want to make the goal so lofty
link |
that you don't make any progress at all.
link |
Other people say you really want to start
link |
with really small goals
link |
and make things very, very incremental,
link |
only set out to do things that you know you can accomplish
link |
and that will feed back on your self-esteem
link |
and all these positive feedback loops.
link |
And then, you know, layer by layer, layer by layer,
link |
you'll eventually get where you want to go.
link |
Well, it turns out that neither is true.
link |
You need to set the level of difficulty
link |
such that you're making errors about 15% of the time.
link |
And I want to emphasize about 15% of the time
link |
because there's no way to configure protocols
link |
for sport or language or math or anything else
link |
where you're going to have exactly 15% of errors.
link |
So anyway, this paper, the 85% rule for optimal learning,
link |
again, we will supply the link,
link |
but it really points to the idea
link |
of making things pretty hard,
link |
but not so hard that you're failing every attempt
link |
or even half of the attempts.
link |
Failing about 15% of the time seems optimal for learning.
link |
Hopefully, that information will be useful
link |
to any of you that are trying to learn something.
link |
Hopefully, it will also be useful to those of you
link |
that are teaching kids or other adults.
link |
If you're teaching,
link |
keep in mind that you want to keep the students reaching
link |
for higher and higher levels of proficiency
link |
in whatever that is that you're teaching
link |
and that 15% of the time they should be failing.
link |
If it gets to 20%, that's probably okay.
link |
If they start failing about half the time,
link |
then probably what they're trying to learn
link |
is too difficult for them at that point.
link |
Now, of course, this is going to be controlled
link |
by all sorts of external factors,
link |
like whether or not they slept well the night before,
link |
whether or not you slept well the night before
link |
and you're being clear in your instructions
link |
to them, et cetera.
link |
But I think the 15% rule, as we may call it,
link |
is a good metric to aim for
link |
and it can serve both students and teachers.
link |
In other words, it can serve both those teaching
link |
and those that are learning.
link |
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast
link |
is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
link |
It is, however, part of my desire and effort
link |
to bring zero cost to consumer information about science
link |
and science-related tools to the general public.
link |
In keeping with that theme,
link |
I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.
link |
Our first sponsor is Element.
link |
Element is an electrolyte drink mixed
link |
with everything you need and nothing you don't.
link |
That means lots of salt,
link |
some other electrolytes, and no sugar.
link |
As I've mentioned before on this podcast
link |
and in various interviews, I'm a big fan of salt.
link |
I sort of discovered this a few years ago
link |
when Science Magazine,
link |
one of the preeminent magazines out there
link |
that publishes research on science,
link |
but also news articles about science,
link |
talked about the myth of salt research.
link |
It turns out that, contrary to what I had believed,
link |
which was that salt is going to cause hypertension
link |
or that salt is really bad for us,
link |
there's an innate need for salt in our system.
link |
And indeed, if you dive into the textbooks on salt balance,
link |
we have entire biological systems or kidneys
link |
and fluid management, et cetera,
link |
that are involved in making sure that we get enough salt.
link |
In fact, neurons, nerve cells, function
link |
because salt, sodium, actually enters those cells quickly
link |
and that's what causes them to fire action potentials,
link |
the common syllable or language of neurons, if you will.
link |
When we are low in sodium, our neurons don't work as well.
link |
And a few years later,
link |
I had the experience of feeling kind of shaky
link |
and I thought I had blood sugar issues.
link |
I went and got my blood sugar checked and it was fine.
link |
And a physician made the recommendation
link |
that I actually upped my salt intake.
link |
My intake wasn't particularly low, I didn't think,
link |
but I quickly found was that if I consumed enough salt,
link |
usually I would do this in the form
link |
of putting a little pinch of salt into some water,
link |
adding a little lemon juice or something like that,
link |
or salting my food a little bit more,
link |
that I lost any kind of shakiness in my hands,
link |
that my mental functioning was better,
link |
my sports performance was better, et cetera.
link |
So it was really interesting to see that shift
link |
simply by increasing my salt intake,
link |
something that's really counterintuitive
link |
to a lot of what's out there.
link |
Salt isn't just important for the function of neurons,
link |
it's important for blood volume
link |
and working alongside the other electrolytes,
link |
magnesium and potassium,
link |
it ensures that cells in our body function properly.
link |
And I think we're starting to see a shift out there now
link |
in the perception of what salt
link |
and the other electrolytes do,
link |
really seeing magnesium,
link |
which is one of the electrolytes, potassium,
link |
and especially salt as not necessarily something to avoid,
link |
but in fact, something to embrace
link |
provided that they're used properly.
link |
Element is formulated to help anyone
link |
reach their electrolyte needs,
link |
and is particularly well-suited to people
link |
following a keto, low carb, or paleo diet.
link |
For people following a low carb diet
link |
or doing intermittent fasting,
link |
what many people don't know
link |
is that carbohydrate holds water,
link |
it actually brings water into the system,
link |
and you don't want your system to be low on water,
link |
that's one form of dehydration.
link |
Salt holds water as well,
link |
meaning it keeps the water in your system,
link |
which is beneficial for brain and body function.
link |
Element contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio
link |
of 1000 milligrams, that's one gram of sodium,
link |
200 milligrams of potassium, and 60 milligrams of magnesium,
link |
and they use the very best forms of salt, potassium,
link |
and magnesium that are out there.
link |
So the way I use Element is I usually will mix up one packet
link |
into about 16 to 30 ounces of water in the morning
link |
and drink that first thing in the morning when I wake up,
link |
or around breakfast time, doesn't really matter,
link |
I kind of sip on it through the morning,
link |
or if I'm real thirsty, I'll drink it all at once.
link |
And then I always make sure to drink a volume of water
link |
with an Element packet in it somewhere around my exercise,
link |
sometimes it's during the exercise,
link |
if I'm running, I'll wait until afterwards,
link |
I'll hydrate with it before and after
link |
if it's a really hot day.
link |
If you'd like to try Element, you can go to Drink Element,
link |
that's lmnt.com slash Huberman
link |
to claim a free Element sample pack,
link |
you only cover the cost of shipping,
link |
otherwise it's completely free.
link |
Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman
link |
to claim a free sample pack.
link |
Today's episode is also brought to us by Athletic Greens.
link |
Athletic Greens is an all-in-one
link |
vitamin mineral probiotic drink.
link |
I've been taking Athletic Greens since 2012,
link |
so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast.
link |
The reason I started taking Athletic Greens
link |
and the reason I still take Athletic Greens
link |
is that it covers all of my foundational
link |
vitamin mineral probiotic needs.
link |
We of course need vitamins, we of course need minerals,
link |
and we do need a healthy gut microbiome,
link |
and probiotics support a healthy gut microbiome.
link |
There's now a wealth of quality scientific published data
link |
showing that the microbiota, meaning the little microbes
link |
that live in our gut are good for us,
link |
and our gut when it functions properly
link |
communicates with our brain,
link |
and our brain communicates with our gut
link |
through the so-called gut brain axis,
link |
and that gut brain axis is vital for things
link |
like immune system, endocrine system, meaning hormones,
link |
and for mood and overall brain function.
link |
With Athletic Greens, I get my vitamins, my minerals,
link |
and the probiotics I need to support
link |
a healthy gut microbiome and gut brain axis
link |
without having to worry about taking
link |
a bunch of other things.
link |
In fact, when people ask me what's the one supplement
link |
I should take that's going to make me feel better,
link |
I always say Athletic Greens,
link |
because indeed it makes me feel better,
link |
and it happens to taste terrific.
link |
I drink it twice a day typically.
link |
I'll have one in the morning, I mix it with water
link |
and a little bit of lemon or lime juice,
link |
and I'll typically have it again in the afternoon
link |
or late afternoon, again mixed with water,
link |
some lemon or lime juice.
link |
If you'd like to try Athletic Greens,
link |
you can go to athleticgreens.com slash Huberman
link |
to claim a special offer.
link |
They'll give you five free travel packs
link |
that make it really easy to mix up Athletic Greens
link |
while you're in the car or traveling by plane, et cetera.
link |
Plus, they'll give you a year's supply of vitamin D3K2.
link |
Many of us are deficient in vitamin D3,
link |
and even for those of us that are getting
link |
sufficient sunshine, many of us still need
link |
to supplement with vitamin D3.
link |
Vitamin D3 is involved in metabolism,
link |
immune system, brain function, hormones, et cetera.
link |
It has so many important functions,
link |
and K2 has been shown to be important
link |
for a variety of things,
link |
not the least of which is cardiovascular health.
link |
So again, if you go to athleticgreens.com slash Huberman,
link |
you can claim a special offer.
link |
They'll give you five free travel packs
link |
plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2.
link |
Again, that's athleticgreens.com slash Huberman
link |
to claim the special offer.
link |
Today's episode is also brought to us by Roka.
link |
Roka makes eyeglasses and sunglasses
link |
that are of the absolute highest quality.
link |
I spent a lifetime working on the science
link |
of the visual system, and I can tell you
link |
that your visual system, everywhere from your eyes
link |
to your brain, includes a ton of different mechanisms
link |
so that as you move through different environments,
link |
you can see things clearly, and even if it's bright out
link |
or there's shadows or it's really dim outside
link |
or it's getting dark, that your visual system can try
link |
and manage to resolve what's out there in the world
link |
so you can see things clearly.
link |
Many people need corrective lenses, they need eyeglasses.
link |
Other people, they need sunglasses as well,
link |
or just simply need sunglasses,
link |
because if it's too bright, it's very hard to see things.
link |
One problem with a lot of eyeglasses and sunglasses
link |
out there, however, is they don't take into account
link |
the nuanced biology of the visual system.
link |
You may have experienced this.
link |
If you ever put on a pair of sunglasses
link |
that aren't so great, you move from a really bright area
link |
into a dimly lit area, and you have
link |
to take the eyeglasses off.
link |
Your eyes just don't seem to adjust.
link |
With Roka eyeglasses and sunglasses,
link |
everything they've done to design those glasses and lenses
link |
is with the science of the visual system in mind,
link |
so you can move seamlessly from one environment to the next,
link |
and you always see things with crystal clarity.
link |
Their sunglasses and eyeglasses are really terrific
link |
because they can be used for anything.
link |
They have a terrific aesthetic,
link |
so you can wear them to work, to dinner, et cetera.
link |
They look great, and they're also designed
link |
for athletic performance.
link |
You can use them while running or while cycling.
link |
If you get sweaty, they won't slip off your face.
link |
They're extremely lightweight.
link |
In fact, I often forget that they're even on my face.
link |
I wear readers at night, and sometimes when I drive,
link |
and I wear sunglasses when it's really bright outside
link |
and I need sunglasses.
link |
If you want to try Roka eyeglasses or sunglasses,
link |
you can go to roka.com, that's R-O-K-A.com,
link |
and enter the code Huberman to save 20% off
link |
Again, that's Roka, R-O-K-A.com,
link |
and enter the code Huberman at checkout.
link |
Let's talk about the science, and in particular,
link |
the biology and neuroscience of setting and achieving goals.
link |
Setting and achieving goals
link |
is not a uniquely human endeavor.
link |
Other animals set and attempt to achieve goals.
link |
A honeybee attempts to collect honey
link |
and bring it back to the hive.
link |
A herbivore will go out and forage for plants,
link |
and will also have a need to reproduce
link |
at some point in its life.
link |
So we'll need to find a mate and maybe even raise the young,
link |
depending on what species that is.
link |
Predators will have to hunt and kill and eat their food,
link |
and they have to avoid getting injured in that process.
link |
They also have to raise young, et cetera.
link |
So humans are among the other animals,
link |
or we could say the animals are among us,
link |
in the need to set goals
link |
and to make efforts to achieve those goals.
link |
Now, why do I emphasize this commonality of process?
link |
The reason I emphasize this commonality of process
link |
is that it turns out that there is one basic system
link |
by which all animals, including humans,
link |
set and attempt to achieve goals.
link |
Now, humans are unique in our ability
link |
to orient our mind toward immediate goals,
link |
moderately termed goals,
link |
meaning things that might exist on the scale of a week
link |
or a month or even a year,
link |
and very long-term goals, like a lifetime goal,
link |
or a goal that lasts a decade
link |
or it takes a decade to achieve.
link |
That's what makes us unique.
link |
And of course, we don't have access to the mindset
link |
or the thinking or the emotions of other animals,
link |
but what we do know is that common neural circuits,
link |
meaning brain areas that are present in animal species
link |
are responsible for orienting our thinking
link |
and our action toward particular goals.
link |
Another thing that's really unique about the human brain
link |
is that we are able to have multiple goals
link |
interacting at once.
link |
So for instance, we probably all have fitness goals,
link |
goals in relationships of different kinds,
link |
friendships and romantic partnerships,
link |
as well as maybe scholastic goals.
link |
Maybe you're in school,
link |
you're pursuing some kind of learning
link |
outside of the school environment,
link |
and or you have business goals or financial goals.
link |
We are able to have multiple goals at once.
link |
And other animals do this,
link |
but humans are unique in the ability
link |
to juggle a lot of goals.
link |
And actually one of the major challenges in pursuing goals
link |
is that goal pursuit often interacts.
link |
Meaning if you can spend 100% of your time
link |
chasing one particular goal,
link |
that might be very effective for that goal,
link |
but then we tend to fall back on some of our other goals.
link |
You can imagine how this plays out.
link |
If you're working very, very hard,
link |
you're solely focused on business,
link |
often your health will suffer.
link |
If you're solely focused on your health,
link |
often other things will suffer.
link |
And so we have to juggle both our goal setting
link |
and our goal pursuits.
link |
And today we're going to talk about
link |
a number of different ways to work with
link |
what could very well be called these interleaving goals
link |
by focusing on a common practice
link |
or common set of mechanisms
link |
that are present in all aspects of goal seeking.
link |
What is that process?
link |
Well, it turns out it's a neural circuit.
link |
A neural circuit is simply a collection of brain areas
link |
that when active in a particular sequence,
link |
give rise to a particular behavior or perception.
link |
So for instance, when you feel happy,
link |
it's not because you have a brain area
link |
that's the happy brain area that is electrically active,
link |
rather it's going to involve numerous brain areas
link |
being active in concert and to different degrees,
link |
in the same way that the keys on a piano together
link |
played in the appropriate sequence
link |
represent a particular song.
link |
You would never say that one key on the piano
link |
represents that song, but that key is necessary.
link |
Similarly in the brain,
link |
we can say that a brain area might be necessary,
link |
but not sufficient to give us a particular experience
link |
or generate a particular behavior.
link |
So when we think about goal seeking
link |
and the pursuit of goals of any kind in the brain,
link |
it doesn't matter what the goal is,
link |
it involves a common set of neural circuits.
link |
And the neural circuit that I'd like to orient us
link |
toward today, and we will return to it a few times,
link |
involves learning a couple of names,
link |
but you don't have to worry so much about memorizing these,
link |
just more important is to understand the logic
link |
of how it's put together.
link |
And I will explain that and make it very clear.
link |
If you want to learn the names, that's great.
link |
One of the brain areas is the so-called amygdala.
link |
The amygdala is most often associated with fear.
link |
So you might say, wow, how is that involved
link |
in goal-directed behavior?
link |
Well, a lot of our goal-directed behavior
link |
is to avoid punishments,
link |
including things like embarrassment or financial ruin
link |
or things of that sort.
link |
And so the amygdala and some sense of anxiety or fear
link |
is actually built in to the circuits
link |
that generate goal seeking
link |
and our motivation to pursue goals.
link |
The other areas are the so-called ventral striatum.
link |
The striatum is part of what's called the basal ganglia.
link |
The basal ganglia is a neural circuit
link |
that can very simply be described as a neural circuit
link |
that helps us generate go,
link |
meaning the initiation of action and no go,
link |
the prevention of action type scenarios.
link |
Let me make that even simpler.
link |
The ventral striatum is part of this thing
link |
called the basal ganglia.
link |
The basal ganglia has sort of two circuits within it.
link |
One circuit is involved in getting us to do things.
link |
Like I'm going to get up tomorrow
link |
and I'm going to run five miles first thing in the morning.
link |
I don't know if I'm actually going to do that,
link |
but I'm just using that as an example.
link |
Another circuit within the basal ganglia
link |
is a no-go circuit.
link |
It's the one that says,
link |
no, I'm not going to go for the second cookie
link |
or the third cookie.
link |
I'm not going to eat that.
link |
And then the go circuit would be the one
link |
that's responsible for instead eating something else.
link |
Okay, so we have go and no-go circuits
link |
within the basal ganglia.
link |
So we've got amygdala.
link |
So think of as kind of fear and anxiety and avoidance.
link |
We've got the basal ganglia,
link |
which are for initiating action and preventing action.
link |
And then there is the so-called cortex.
link |
The cortex is the outer shell of the brain
link |
and there are two sub regions of the cortex
link |
that are involved in goal-directed behavior.
link |
One is the lateral prefrontal cortex.
link |
Prefrontal cortex is involved
link |
in so-called executive function, things like planning,
link |
thinking about things under different timescales.
link |
So not just what we want in the immediate term,
link |
but what we might want tomorrow or the next day
link |
and how our actions currently
link |
are going to relate to the future.
link |
And the so-called orbitofrontal cortex.
link |
Orbitofrontal cortex has a large number of functions,
link |
but one of the key functions of the orbitofrontal cortex,
link |
it's involved in meshing some emotionality
link |
with our current state of progress
link |
and comparing that emotionality to where it might be
link |
when we are closer to a goal, okay?
link |
So there are basically four areas, one involved in anxiety,
link |
one involved in emotion, one involved in planning
link |
and another involved in this go, no-go action.
link |
So that's a bunch of detail,
link |
but if I wanted to make it really simple for everyone,
link |
I would say there are four areas.
link |
One is an area associated with anxiety and fear,
link |
it's the amygdala.
link |
The second is involved in action and inaction.
link |
Remember go and no-go, so that's the basal ganglia.
link |
The other one is involved in planning and thinking
link |
across different timescales.
link |
So that's lateral prefrontal cortex.
link |
And then the fourth one is involved in emotionality,
link |
where we sit emotionally at present
link |
compared to where we think we will be emotionally
link |
when we reach some particular goal,
link |
and that's the orbitofrontal cortex, okay?
link |
Again, you don't need to know all those names.
link |
You don't need to know all the details.
link |
Just understand that those different elements are involved
link |
in the decision-making processes
link |
that lead us toward particular goals
link |
and have us update our goal seeking, et cetera.
link |
One key thing is it doesn't matter what the goal is,
link |
the same circuits are involved.
link |
So whether or not you're trying to build a company
link |
that's a billion dollar company that's going to go public,
link |
or you're thinking about planning a crafts day at home
link |
with the kids or for yourself,
link |
or you're thinking about what movie to go see,
link |
goals, goal seeking and assessing progress towards goals
link |
all involve the exact same neural circuits.
link |
It's really remarkable.
link |
It's also very convenient for our discussion today.
link |
What's going on in these circuits can basically be boiled
link |
down to two particular things.
link |
The first is value information,
link |
trying to understand whether or not
link |
something is really worth pursuing or not, okay?
link |
So placing a value on a particular goal.
link |
The other component of this neural circuit
link |
is associated with action,
link |
which actions to take and which actions not to take
link |
given the value of a particular goal
link |
in a given moment's time.
link |
I want to say that again.
link |
The other component of the circuit is involved in action,
link |
whether or not you should act or should not act
link |
based on your assessment of the value of a goal
link |
at a particular moment in time.
link |
And you're going to hear me say
link |
over and over again in this episode,
link |
the value information about a goal is so key.
link |
There is basically one neurotransmitter
link |
or rather neuromodulator system
link |
that governs our goal setting, goal assessment
link |
And that is the neuromodulator dopamine.
link |
Dopamine is the common currency
link |
by which we assess our progress
link |
toward particular things of particular value.
link |
In fact, dopamine is the way that we assess value
link |
And so as we take a moment and we shift our attention
link |
to the psychology of goal setting,
link |
the things that you've probably heard a bit more about,
link |
about what sorts of goals are good
link |
and how to set goals and how to categorize goals,
link |
I want you to think about how dopamine
link |
could possibly be involved in these different processes.
link |
And the reason I want you to do this
link |
is that all of the psychology of goal setting
link |
and goal pursuit is wonderful
link |
because it places things into different categories.
link |
It allows us to parse our thinking
link |
and organize our thinking, but what's not often seen,
link |
in fact, I'm not aware of any literature out there,
link |
scientific or literature in the popular press
link |
or in popular books,
link |
is an understanding of how the underlying neurobiology
link |
can be layered on top of the psychology of goal setting
link |
to allow us to set and pursue our goals more effectively.
link |
And that's what we're going to do today.
link |
We are eventually going to arrive
link |
at a set of four practices
link |
that when performed on a regular basis
link |
will allow you to assess what is the value
link |
of this next particular action step?
link |
How worthwhile is it to do behavior A versus behavior B
link |
in order to achieve a particular goal?
link |
If any of this is vague now,
link |
I'm going to make it all very clear for you.
link |
You're going to come away
link |
with some very specific lists of takeaways
link |
that you can put down on paper if you like,
link |
and that you can use to set goals, assess goals,
link |
and execute goals more effectively
link |
using the neuroscience of the circuits I just described
link |
and an understanding of the neuromodulator dopamine.
link |
Let's take a look at the psychology
link |
of goal setting and goal pursuit.
link |
This is an enormous literature,
link |
meaning there are tens of thousands,
link |
if not hundreds of thousands of scientific papers
link |
about the topic of goal setting and goal pursuit.
link |
There's also a lot of information on the internet
link |
about goal pursuit.
link |
And in looking over this information,
link |
one comes to appreciate pretty quickly
link |
that acronyms are a big thing.
link |
Acronyms seem to dominate the area of goal setting,
link |
especially as it relates to things in the business sector,
link |
but also in the relationship sector.
link |
Now, acronyms are wonderful.
link |
They allow us to organize our thinking into lists
link |
and conceptually, they can be very useful.
link |
But as I moved through this literature,
link |
I started to see some redundant themes.
link |
And so what I've attempted to do
link |
is distill out the redundant themes
link |
that regardless of the person teaching
link |
or the scientific laboratory
link |
that happened to come up with these acronyms,
link |
that they boil down to some common features.
link |
So let's talk about that literature.
link |
And I think we'll come away with an understanding
link |
of some basic elements that are common to all goals.
link |
Now, the modern science or the modern psychological science
link |
of trying to understand goal setting and pursuit
link |
actually dates back to the 1930s.
link |
And we have to be sure that members of our species
link |
were focused on goal setting and goal pursuit
link |
long before the scientific literature emerged.
link |
It just stands to reason that since the human brain
link |
hasn't evolved that much,
link |
we don't think in the last 10,000 years
link |
that people would be thinking about these things.
link |
They just didn't get them down into papers
link |
that we could evaluate on PubMed and so forth.
link |
But now we can, so we can look at those papers.
link |
And what you find is that acronyms abound
link |
in the psychology literature
link |
about goal setting and goal pursuit.
link |
So for instance, you'll hear about
link |
the work of Locke and Small, for instance,
link |
these are the last names of various researchers,
link |
the so-called ABC method,
link |
that a goal should be achievable,
link |
it should be believable, and that the person be committed.
link |
It's sort of obvious once you hear it, but the ABC method.
link |
Then people came along and expanded on that.
link |
They talk about the so-called SMART method,
link |
SMART being another acronym, that it be specific,
link |
that the goal be measurable, that the goal be attainable,
link |
that the goal be realistic, and that it be time-bound,
link |
meaning that you set a certain period of time
link |
in which a given goal should be performed.
link |
And then people come along and modify these.
link |
This is the way that psychology research is done.
link |
I'm not laughing at it.
link |
I'm just chuckling because it seems like the acronyms
link |
get longer and longer and longer.
link |
They developed the SMART-er approach,
link |
adding an ER to the acronym SMART, S-M-A-R-T-E-R.
link |
They added ethical and rewarding,
link |
which fortunately are good things, I believe,
link |
ethical and rewarding.
link |
What does all this mean?
link |
Well, what it means is that any kind of goal pursuit,
link |
any kind of goal setting really has to involve
link |
a number of different states and neural circuits
link |
in the brain and body.
link |
At least that's how I view this literature.
link |
Why would I do that?
link |
Well, let's think about the very modern version
link |
of the kind of acronyms that I talked about a moment ago,
link |
dating back to the 1930s and extending into the 1990s.
link |
You can find beautiful talks online from people
link |
who have worked with some of the biggest companies
link |
and greatest high performers out there
link |
to achieve incredible things.
link |
And they will talk about generating
link |
a sort of objective mindset for goal setting.
link |
They'll talk about goals needing to be significant.
link |
That has to be a big goal, that it has to be concrete.
link |
So you have to be able to describe what the goal is.
link |
It has to be action oriented.
link |
It has to be inspirational, has to be time bound.
link |
You have to have reasonable, realistic, verifiable measures.
link |
You have to constantly up the ante.
link |
If it's starting to sound repetitive,
link |
it's because it is repetitive.
link |
There are basically only three or four elements
link |
to goal setting and goal pursuit.
link |
Basically an individual or set of individuals
link |
has to identify a specific thing
link |
that they're going to attain.
link |
In some communities, they talk about knowing
link |
what right looks like, meaning being able
link |
to define a very specific goal.
link |
You can't just say, I want to be a champion athlete.
link |
You have to say what sport
link |
and you have to understand what the path to that is.
link |
So any big goal, of course,
link |
is broken up into a series of smaller goals,
link |
but the whole thing starts
link |
with thinking about the end in mind.
link |
And in a few minutes, we will talk about
link |
whether or not visualization of the end in mind
link |
is actually beneficial or detrimental to achieving goals.
link |
There's actually great neuroscience
link |
and psychology data on that now.
link |
So I mentioned all these acronyms,
link |
not as an attempt to disparage them.
link |
I think they're wonderful.
link |
And I mentioned all that psychology literature,
link |
not in an attempt to disparage it,
link |
but rather to just say that goal setting is the first step.
link |
Assessment of whether or not one is making progress
link |
towards those goals is a second but necessary step.
link |
And then there's the business of goal execution.
link |
And that brings us back to the neural circuit components.
link |
Remember, this neural circuit involving
link |
those four things earlier,
link |
the amygdala striatum over frontal cortex
link |
and the prefrontal cortex,
link |
they work together to divide the whole process,
link |
as I mentioned before, into two general categories.
link |
The first is assessing value,
link |
knowing whether or not where one is at one given moment
link |
relates to some external thing.
link |
Are things going well or are things going poorly?
link |
And knowing how to gauge that accurately.
link |
And then action steps, goes and no goes,
link |
do more of this, do less of that,
link |
do this, don't do that, et cetera.
link |
So now we are going to shift back to the neuroscience
link |
and we're going to talk about the practical applications
link |
of the information I just described,
link |
because I've given you a lot of kind of academic information.
link |
And as we do this, I'd like you to keep in mind,
link |
what are some things that you've either accomplished
link |
or that you'd like to accomplish going forward?
link |
Because as we do this,
link |
we can build toward a set of protocols that at the end,
link |
you'll be able to very quickly plug in your particular goals
link |
and a route to those particular goals
link |
that's grounded in the science
link |
and I think are going to be very effective
link |
in allowing you to reach those goals more quickly
link |
and with indeed less effort.
link |
In fact, let's start with a tool now,
link |
because as we move through all this information,
link |
I want to make sure that people are coming away
link |
with some practical things that they can implement
link |
and indeed some things that you can even do
link |
during the course of listening to or watching this podcast.
link |
The first thing to do is to understand the difference
link |
between peripersonal space and extra personal space.
link |
Peripersonal space is all the space literally
link |
that's within inside your body, the surface of your skin
link |
and in your immediate environment.
link |
Peripersonal space is a key concept in neuroscience
link |
because you have particular neural circuits
link |
and particular chemicals that are geared toward
link |
what are called consummatory behaviors,
link |
meaning using things and consuming things
link |
and enjoying things that are in your immediate
link |
peripersonal space.
link |
Let me give you an example of this for myself
link |
just to make it concrete.
link |
You can imagine similar examples for yourself right now.
link |
Within my current peripersonal space is my interoception,
link |
my understanding or perception of my internal body.
link |
So how quickly I'm breathing, my heart rate,
link |
the feelings on the surface of my skin, et cetera.
link |
But also within the confines of my peripersonal space
link |
is this coffee mug that if you're listening to this,
link |
you can't see this, but I'm lifting up a coffee mug,
link |
I'm going to take a sip of coffee.
link |
That's a consummatory behavior.
link |
I have the coffee.
link |
I don't have to do much or motivate much to get it.
link |
I have other things here, pens and computer, et cetera.
link |
Okay, so things in your peripersonal space
link |
and consuming those things is generally governed
link |
by a set of neurochemicals that center around
link |
the neuromodulator serotonin.
link |
And there are a few others as well,
link |
things like oxytocin, but mainly serotonin.
link |
Contrast that with the so-called extra personal space.
link |
Extra personal space is everything beyond
link |
the confines of my reach.
link |
It would be something in the next room.
link |
It would be something down the street.
link |
It will be something at some other location
link |
in space and time.
link |
And the neuromodulators and neurochemicals
link |
that are associated with any kind of thinking about
link |
anything in the extra personal space
link |
are distinct from the neurochemicals and neuromodulators
link |
that are involved in thinking about
link |
or making actions towards the peripersonal space.
link |
And the molecule that's most associated with thinking about
link |
or orienting toward the extra personal space,
link |
again, things beyond the confines of my skin
link |
or your skin is dopamine.
link |
And this is a vitally important concept to understand
link |
when you're setting goals and seeking goals.
link |
If we are to be good at goal-seeking,
link |
if we are to be good at setting goals and assessing goals,
link |
if we are to achieve our goals,
link |
we have to be able to toggle back and forth
link |
between a clear understanding of our peripersonal space,
link |
what we have and how we feel in the immediate present,
link |
and our ability to understand what's out there
link |
in the extra personal space
link |
and our ability to move into that extra personal space.
link |
And a simple way to conceive of all this
link |
is that we evaluate our progress in the peripersonal space.
link |
We evaluate how we feel about some pursuit,
link |
even if we haven't initiated that pursuit yet.
link |
How we feel about a particular goal
link |
is truly a feeling that we experience in the here and now,
link |
even though the goal is in the future, okay?
link |
If we are going to evaluate whether or not
link |
we made progress today or yesterday or not,
link |
that's an evaluation of how we feel
link |
in the immediate peripersonal space.
link |
However, moving toward any goal
link |
involves orienting our thinking
link |
towards the extra personal space.
link |
And as we go through today's episode,
link |
I'm going to teach you a technique
link |
or rather a neuroscience-based tool
link |
that will allow you to continually transition back and forth
link |
between the peripersonal space and the extra personal space
link |
in a way that will allow you to update and evaluate
link |
and better execute your goal-seeking.
link |
The whole principle behind this
link |
is that human beings like other animals
link |
have to make evaluations about whether or not
link |
they are on the right track.
link |
However, the important thing to understand
link |
is that humans in particular can do this
link |
over different timescales.
link |
We don't just pursue food because we are hungry,
link |
we pursue food, excuse me, for a particular meal
link |
that we might be having with people tomorrow, right?
link |
We can modulate the timescale
link |
in a way that other animals don't.
link |
That's how we adjust our goal-seeking
link |
to different timescales.
link |
And in addition to that,
link |
humans are exquisitely good at biasing our behavior
link |
toward particular goals over very long periods of time.
link |
But there are a lot of mistakes out there.
link |
In fact, things that are outright wrong in the literature
link |
and in particular in the internet
link |
and then the kind of wellness and fitness
link |
and cognitive fitness space
link |
that send people down the wrong path.
link |
And those things we will talk about in a few minutes,
link |
but things like visualization,
link |
that visualization and visualization of this big goal
link |
is the best way to achieve your goals.
link |
In fact, that's not the case.
link |
There's a much better approach to doing all this.
link |
So now I'd like to shift gears
link |
towards talking about a few of the things
link |
that most people get badly wrong
link |
in setting and assessing and executing goals.
link |
This is based on peer-reviewed research.
link |
So I think it's very solid.
link |
I know it is very solid.
link |
And it runs counter to what many of us have been taught.
link |
Let's start with a simple one.
link |
We've all heard that multitasking is bad, okay?
link |
We hear multitasking is bad.
link |
It doesn't allow for focus.
link |
If you want to achieve anything,
link |
you want to accomplish anything, you should not multitask.
link |
Well, it turns out that's wrong.
link |
It turns out that there is a role for multitasking,
link |
but the multitasking has to be placed at a particular time
link |
within your goal seeking behavior in order to be effective.
link |
Really nice studies done at Carnegie Mellon University
link |
and the Dabish Lab evaluated how long people are able
link |
to focus in different environments,
link |
how long they were able to stay concentrated on their work.
link |
And it turns out that number is exceedingly low.
link |
It turns out that most people,
link |
whether or not they're doing computer work
link |
or whether or not they're doing writing or accounting work
link |
or anything of that sort can hold their attention
link |
for about three minutes at a time
link |
before they shift their attention off.
link |
That's ridiculously low when you first hear it,
link |
but that probably reflects a basic state of brain function
link |
that hearkens back to a time when we were hunter gatherers.
link |
I doubt that we were maintaining focus solidly
link |
for hours and hours and hours
link |
unless we were under some particular threat
link |
or in some particular crisis.
link |
Rather, you could imagine that people collected seeds
link |
and nuts and berries for about three minutes
link |
and then probably stood up,
link |
looked around and then kept going, okay?
link |
Or that they were hunting animals
link |
or in some sort of pursuit, fishing, et cetera,
link |
and focused, focused, focused.
link |
And then every three minutes or so,
link |
they might've looked up and taken a look at the sky
link |
or looked around to make sure
link |
that other people were there or not there, et cetera.
link |
It all stands to reason that that will be the case.
link |
Again, the neural circuits haven't evolved much.
link |
Now, multitasking has been shown
link |
to have a very interesting physiological signature.
link |
When we multitask,
link |
when we jump back and forth between things,
link |
there is an increase in the level of the neurotransmitter,
link |
also sometimes called a neuromodulator,
link |
but basically same thing for sake of this discussion.
link |
There's an increase in the neurotransmitter epinephrine,
link |
which is adrenaline.
link |
And so there are really nice studies now
link |
pointing to the fact that doing a bit of multitasking
link |
prior to jumping into some focused goal-directed behavior,
link |
whether or not it's mental behavior or physical behavior,
link |
it can actually be useful because it gets us into action.
link |
So we've all been told that multitasking is terrible.
link |
But if you, for instance,
link |
find yourself cleaning up your house
link |
and also checking your phone and doing a number of things
link |
right at the point where you should be sitting down to write
link |
or do some focused work,
link |
it probably reflects some adaptive mechanism
link |
where you use action and somewhat varied multitasking action
link |
in order to generate adrenaline in your system,
link |
because adrenaline just gets you into action.
link |
but you don't want to multitask
link |
throughout any kind of goal seeking or goal pursuit behavior
link |
because what's also very clear,
link |
and we're going to talk about this in exquisite depth today,
link |
is that visual focus,
link |
and in particular contracting your visual window,
link |
bringing the aperture of what you see to a very fine point
link |
can absolutely increase your clarity of goal seeking
link |
and the likelihood that you will pursue your goals.
link |
I've talked about this a little bit before on the podcast
link |
as a way of increasing focus for any kind of pursuit.
link |
I've talked about a practice whereby
link |
you can literally look at a dot or a line
link |
placed on a wall or on your computer in front of you
link |
for 30 to 60 seconds,
link |
and then moving into some dedicated work
link |
where you need to focus,
link |
and indeed just looking at a narrow piece
link |
of the visual world,
link |
a small piece of the visual world for some period of time
link |
and forcing yourself to hold that gaze on that location
link |
can increase your level of cognitive attention
link |
and your ability to focus and stay focused.
link |
And this is not magic.
link |
It is the consequence of the fact
link |
that most of your cognition follows your visual perception.
link |
For those of you that are low vision or no vision,
link |
meaning you're blind or you have trouble seeing,
link |
my lab does a lot of work with people
link |
who are low vision, no vision.
link |
They tend to use their auditory system,
link |
their hearing as a way to anchor their attention
link |
to particular things, okay?
link |
But most people out there can see and see pretty well,
link |
and visual focus is the way to do that.
link |
Now, earlier we were talking about this notion
link |
of peripersonal space versus extrapersonal space.
link |
And I'm just going to seed a little bit
link |
of the later conversation by saying
link |
that when we focus on an external point,
link |
we are in a process of exteroception,
link |
focus on the extrapersonal space,
link |
not the peripersonal space.
link |
So when we focus on something, say a line on the wall
link |
for 30 to 60 seconds or at our computer for 30 to 60 seconds
link |
and just look at it and then move into any kind of action,
link |
whether or not it's work action or physical action,
link |
we are at its very core,
link |
we are engaging in this pursuit of extrapersonal space.
link |
We are placing our focus outside our body
link |
and therefore we are placing the brain
link |
into goal pursuit mode.
link |
Work at NYU, in particular in the laboratory
link |
of a phenomenal researcher in their psychology department
link |
by the name of Emily Balcetis, B-A-L-C-E-T-I-S,
link |
Emily Balcetis has done really nice work on this.
link |
They've done is they've had people focus
link |
their visual attention on a goal line of some sort,
link |
and then to engage in some sort of behavior
link |
that requires a lot of effort.
link |
And they've done a lot of different experiments like this,
link |
but I'll just explain one.
link |
They always include a control group
link |
where people have to go through the same physical effort
link |
or mental effort, but they don't focus their attention
link |
just on one location.
link |
The long and short of these studies
link |
is that when people have to focus their attention
link |
on one location, like a goal line,
link |
they are much more effective in reaching those goals
link |
and they achieve them with the perception
link |
that they expended less effort.
link |
I'll give you an example of one particularly nice study
link |
from the Balcetis lab.
link |
So this particular study involves physical exercise,
link |
although, as I mentioned before,
link |
they've done similar studies looking at cognitive type work.
link |
And what they did is they had a group of people
link |
exercise wearing 15 pound ankle weights,
link |
and they had to basically move a certain distance
link |
or run a certain distance to reach a goal line.
link |
One group was focused on the goal line,
link |
visually focused on the goal line.
link |
The other group was not told to visually focus
link |
And what they found was that the group
link |
that focused on the goal line
link |
was able to achieve reaching that goal
link |
with 17% less effort, they measured effort,
link |
and it got there 23% quicker.
link |
That's a remarkable difference, right?
link |
So same distance traveled with same workload
link |
because everyone's wearing the same 15 pound weights
link |
One group is simply looking at the goal line.
link |
The other group is not told to look at the goal line.
link |
Simply by looking at the goal line does something
link |
to the psychology and physiology of these people
link |
that allows them to move forward with less perceived effort
link |
and to do it more quickly.
link |
That's remarkable, right?
link |
And in this case, they're focused on the goal line,
link |
but in a few moments, we'll talk about
link |
how one can use updating of goal lines,
link |
so incremental goal lines,
link |
starting with an intermediate goal
link |
and then extending the goal line further and further.
link |
But just sit back for a second and think about that.
link |
Just by changing where a person looks,
link |
they change their perceived effort
link |
and their ability to do something more effectively,
link |
more quickly than a group that is not deliberately focusing
link |
their visual attention on one location.
link |
That's incredible.
link |
And it's so incredible, in fact, you might say,
link |
well, how could that possibly be?
link |
Well, it turns out it has a very specific
link |
underlying physiological reason,
link |
and that has to do with changes
link |
in our so-called autonomic nervous system,
link |
the aspects of our nervous system
link |
that prepare us for readiness and action,
link |
or that prepare us for resting and relaxing.
link |
So what is special about focusing one's visual attention
link |
at a given location?
link |
Well, it turns out that we have two branches
link |
of our visual system.
link |
So visual information all comes in through our eyes,
link |
but then it can head down two different pathways.
link |
One pathway is engaged when our vision
link |
is brought to a common point,
link |
what we call a vergence eye movement.
link |
So if we're focusing very intensely on a given point,
link |
regardless of how far away from us that point is,
link |
our visual system engages a certain set of neurons,
link |
neural circuits, that are involved in resolving fine detail,
link |
and that can evaluate small changes
link |
over small periods of time.
link |
Just think of it as a very detailed camera
link |
of the visual world, and it tends to be very restricted.
link |
The other pathway through the visual system
link |
is a so-called magnocellular pathway,
link |
and this is a pathway that's involved
link |
in taking in global information
link |
about lots of things that are happening around us,
link |
movement of things to our right,
link |
movement of things to our left,
link |
things that are happening down on the ground
link |
and all around us, and that pathway
link |
involves a sort of relaxation, if you will,
link |
of the neural circuits that are associated
link |
with alertness and attention.
link |
When you walk down the street
link |
and you're not thinking about much,
link |
provided you're not looking at your phone,
link |
you're not focusing on one location,
link |
you're more or less in a relaxed state
link |
compared to when you're looking for a particular sign,
link |
you're looking for a bus or a train that's coming
link |
or a particular person,
link |
and that should inherently make sense.
link |
When your level of attention and alertness goes up,
link |
there's sort of a small but perceptible increase
link |
in your level of arousal.
link |
It's not really stress necessarily,
link |
but arousal of alertness.
link |
And it turns out that the visual system
link |
accomplishes this increase in alertness
link |
by communicating with your circulatory system
link |
and the system that delivers blood and nutrients
link |
and oxygen to the rest of the tissues in your body.
link |
So let's talk for a second about what focusing our vision
link |
on a particular location does,
link |
because in this study from the Balcetas lab,
link |
what they found was focusing on a goal line
link |
allows people to move more effectively toward that goal.
link |
This is something you can leverage in all aspects
link |
of all goal pursuits.
link |
What happens when we focus on a particular location?
link |
Believe it or not,
link |
there's an increase in a particular feature
link |
of our blood pressure.
link |
Now your body has, of course,
link |
arteries, veins, and capillaries,
link |
and your heart pumps blood first to the arteries
link |
and then to the other components of your vascular system.
link |
And we have so-called blood pressure, right?
link |
Blood pressure is just how much the fluid volume
link |
is pressing on those arteries, veins, and capillaries, right?
link |
So you can imagine a pipe
link |
with very little fluid moving through it,
link |
that's low pressure.
link |
You have a pipe with a lot of fluid moving through it,
link |
that's even more pressure.
link |
You have a pipe with a lot of very viscous,
link |
meaning very kind of sticky thick stuff moving forward,
link |
that's even more pressure.
link |
We have blood pressure,
link |
and you've probably had your blood pressure measured.
link |
There's always two numbers, right?
link |
You have a top number, which is the systolic blood pressure,
link |
and then there's the bottom number below the line,
link |
which is the diastolic pressure.
link |
So the important thing to understand
link |
is that your blood pressure will rise when your heart beats
link |
because there's more fluid moving through those pipes
link |
that are your arteries, your veins, and your capillaries.
link |
And that top number is called the systole
link |
or the systolic blood pressure,
link |
because that's the pressure
link |
at the time when your heart contracts, okay?
link |
So the top number,
link |
which normally if you have a healthy blood pressure
link |
is somewhere in the range of 90 to 120 millimeters
link |
Millimeters of mercury is just the way
link |
that pressure is measured.
link |
That top number, your systole,
link |
your systolic blood pressure
link |
is what's measured when the heart contracts, okay?
link |
So that's the amount of pressure when there's a heartbeat
link |
and it's moving through your vasculature.
link |
Now, between beats, right?
link |
The heart beats, but then it relaxes.
link |
Your blood pressure is going to drop to a lower value, right?
link |
Because fluid isn't being pumped through the system
link |
And that's the bottom value, the diastolic pressure.
link |
And typically for healthy people,
link |
that's going to be 60 to 80 millimeters of mercury.
link |
So you might hear about a normal blood pressure
link |
being about, again, this is an approximate, 120 over 80.
link |
What that means is at the point where blood was being pumped
link |
through your arteries and veins, boom,
link |
that it's 120 millimeters of mercury.
link |
But then when the heart relaxes for a second
link |
before the next beat, then it drops to 80, okay?
link |
So there's high pressure, low pressure,
link |
high pressure, low pressure.
link |
The fluid is being pumped through the system.
link |
Now, why am I telling you all this?
link |
Well, it turns out that there are neural circuits
link |
that link your visual system
link |
and focusing on a particular point with that top number,
link |
the systolic blood pressure.
link |
And when you focus your eyes on a particular location,
link |
that systolic blood pressure goes up,
link |
and there are some other systems that are coordinated with
link |
it in your brain and body that start releasing adrenaline,
link |
low amounts of adrenaline in most cases,
link |
and that adrenaline further readies your body for action.
link |
So bringing our visual focus to a particular location
link |
does a number of things to the brain
link |
and the whole system of the body to prepare it,
link |
to place it into a state of readiness
link |
that makes us more likely to lean into our goals,
link |
And if we step back and think about this,
link |
this makes perfect sense.
link |
The brain and body need to be coordinated.
link |
We can't just think about a goal.
link |
In fact, a deer or a lion can't just think about a goal.
link |
It has to think about a goal
link |
and then has to feel some sort of activation energy,
link |
some willingness or desire to move forward
link |
in pursuit of that goal.
link |
So imagining a goal has to be coupled
link |
to the physical pursuit of the goal.
link |
So our visual system in a beautiful way
link |
brings together a focus, literally a visual focus
link |
on a particular point outside us.
link |
Then it recruits an increase in systolic blood pressure,
link |
which creates a systemic, a body-wide and brain-wide
link |
increase in fuel utilization, in oxygen availability,
link |
in our willingness to move forward as a body,
link |
as a whole coherent system.
link |
And then there are also neurotransmitter systems
link |
like epinephrine, as we will soon see dopamine,
link |
that get recruited as well
link |
to place us into a continual mode of action.
link |
This to me is a remarkable feature of our physiology.
link |
And it gets right to the point
link |
of some of the psychological phenomenon
link |
that we were talking about earlier.
link |
Let's just recall what some of those are.
link |
I won't list them all, but you know,
link |
a goal has to be significant, they say, okay?
link |
All the psychologists, all the popular stuff online
link |
says it has to be significant, has to be inspirational,
link |
and it has to be action-oriented.
link |
Okay, so let's say you look out into the landscape
link |
of what's available to you,
link |
whether or not it's just in your mind,
link |
or you look at a specific point.
link |
You say, ah, I want to go to that particular restaurant
link |
to eat that particular food,
link |
and you orient towards it and you move towards it.
link |
This is the way that your brain and body
link |
are coordinating their actions together.
link |
Conversely, when our visual system
link |
is in a mode of looking at everything,
link |
when the aperture of our visual system is very broad,
link |
we know that there's also a reduction
link |
in our goal-directed behavior
link |
and a reduction in the systolic blood pressure.
link |
It's as if our peripersonal space is sufficient.
link |
We don't need to get beyond our current state.
link |
We're not oriented toward any one thing in particular.
link |
Okay, so I've now described some of the psychology
link |
and some of the underlying physiology.
link |
Now I'd like to mesh this within the context
link |
of actual specific goal setting and goal pursuit,
link |
because what many of you are probably thinking is,
link |
okay, well, that's some physiology, there's some psychology,
link |
but how do you actually apply this
link |
towards setting and achieving goals?
link |
Well, you do that by understanding that your mental frame
link |
and your attention are always either positioned
link |
to your peripersonal space,
link |
focused on your immediate possessions and state,
link |
or towards things outside you,
link |
but that you also have the ability to dynamically travel
link |
back and forth between those.
link |
And so next we're going to talk about
link |
what the literature says about things like visualization,
link |
immediate and intermediate goals,
link |
long-term goals, and how to best achieve those.
link |
And then we're going to move specifically
link |
into the protocols that you can use.
link |
It's a protocol that I've specifically developed for you,
link |
the listeners, in order to incorporate all the science
link |
into a best practice that you can do anytime,
link |
any place to really identify what it is specifically
link |
that you want to pursue and the best route to pursue
link |
and achieve that goal.
link |
Focusing our visual attention on one particular point
link |
is incredibly effective for all types of goal pursuit.
link |
And if you'd like to read some of the scientific studies
link |
or read a review of the scientific studies
link |
that have looked at how narrowing one's visual attention
link |
can really enhance the effectiveness of pursuing goals,
link |
I'll put a link to this study.
link |
The title of the study is keeping the goal in sight,
link |
testing the influence of narrowed visual attention
link |
on physical activity.
link |
And this is a paper from Emily Balsettis' lab,
link |
focuses mainly on physical activities,
link |
but it mentioned some other things as well.
link |
This is a article published in Personality
link |
and Social Psychology Bulletin in 2020.
link |
So it's recent, it's exceptional paper in my opinion,
link |
really gets to the heart of how all this works
link |
and some examples of where it's been implemented.
link |
So let's apply this visual tool in a very simple way
link |
to any type of goal that you want to pursue.
link |
If you already know what goal you want to pursue,
link |
maybe it's a workout,
link |
maybe it's a cognitive work of some particular sort.
link |
Again, the process is very simple.
link |
You're going to focus your visual attention
link |
on one point beyond your peripersonal space.
link |
So it could be on your computer, it could be on the wall,
link |
it could be a horizon, it could be at a distance,
link |
and you're going to focus your visual attention there.
link |
And with some effort,
link |
you're going to hold your visual attention
link |
for 30 to 60 seconds.
link |
You might blink, that's okay,
link |
but you're going to try
link |
and hold your visual attention there.
link |
So no moving your head around,
link |
no diverting your attention to other locations.
link |
Some people will find it very easy to do,
link |
other people will find it quite hard.
link |
Your mind may drift cognitively, that's okay,
link |
but try and bring your visual attention
link |
to that common point.
link |
Several episodes ago, I talked about
link |
how there are actually studies
link |
looking at developing this kind of training in students
link |
for ADHD and the data on that are actually quite encouraging.
link |
So for people who have ADHD and focus issues
link |
and attentional issues, this can be effective.
link |
For people who don't, this can also be effective.
link |
Again, it places your brain and body
link |
into a state of readiness.
link |
And then the idea is to move into the particular actions
link |
that bring you closer to your goal, okay?
link |
We haven't yet talked about how to set goals
link |
and how to assess progress.
link |
This is simply how to pursue goals, okay?
link |
But the visual component is important.
link |
In fact, I would argue that the visual system
link |
and harnessing your visual attention to a narrow point
link |
is going to be the most effective way
link |
to get your brain and body into a mode of action
link |
to pursue whatever goal it is you're trying to pursue.
link |
That practice is in stark contrast to multitasking,
link |
where by definition, your attention is moving
link |
from place to place to place, right?
link |
I mentioned that multitasking can be effective
link |
in getting your system into somewhat
link |
of an increased level of activation
link |
so that you can pursue a more focused goal.
link |
But the visual attention to a particular point
link |
is going to be the most effective way
link |
to bring your system into a state of readiness
link |
and action for goal pursuit.
link |
There's another really interesting way
link |
that you can leverage your visual system
link |
toward long-term goals.
link |
The Balcetas Lab has also done
link |
some really interesting experiments
link |
looking at people's ability to set
link |
and stick to long-term goals.
link |
And the long-term goal that they looked at
link |
was one related to saving money for later in life.
link |
This is something that a lot of people struggle with.
link |
A lot of people have a hard time investing money
link |
or saving money for later in life,
link |
simply because as human beings,
link |
we vary in the extent to which we worry
link |
about what's going to happen later.
link |
There's also a phenomenon of so-called delayed discounting.
link |
Delayed discounting is the fact
link |
that goals become less rewarding
link |
when they exist further out in the future, okay?
link |
You may have experienced this walking past a donut shop.
link |
I'm just going to admit it over and over again on the spot.
link |
I love the smell of them, I love the taste of them.
link |
I try not to eat them
link |
because I'm told they're not that good for me
link |
and indeed, I don't think they are.
link |
I occasionally cave and I eat one or many,
link |
but in general, I try not to cave
link |
to the immediately rewarding properties
link |
of the smell and the taste of the donut.
link |
But what we know is that if you smell a donut
link |
or you smell a wonderful piece of food,
link |
in the immediate term, it brings your level of focus,
link |
your mental focus to the immediate phase
link |
and it feels very rewarding.
link |
Like if you had it now, it would just be so good.
link |
But if you actually extend that reward out to tomorrow
link |
or the next thing you think,
link |
oh, you know, today happens to be a Saturday
link |
that we're recording, but oh, you know,
link |
on Tuesday morning, I'm going to get a donut.
link |
It doesn't have the same value because the reward system
link |
doesn't work as well for long-term goals.
link |
It's not as salient, it's not as tangible a goal,
link |
especially for something like a donut.
link |
Whereas the kinds of goals that work
link |
when you place them out into the longer term
link |
and can create a heightened sense of motivation
link |
tend to be things that are much more rewarding to us.
link |
So delayed discounting simply says
link |
that the further out in time that a given goal is,
link |
the less effective that reward will be
link |
in motivating one's behavior.
link |
And indeed, you see this with saving money for retirement,
link |
you see this with all sorts of long-term investment.
link |
The Balsetis lab therefore did an experiment
link |
where they looked at people's tendency
link |
to save money for later in life.
link |
But the groups that they created in the study
link |
were really interesting.
link |
They had one group imagine what it would be like
link |
to be 30 or 40 years older,
link |
and then to invest a certain amount of money
link |
according to whatever it is
link |
they thought that they would need.
link |
And they measured the amount that they had set aside
link |
and saved for later in life.
link |
The other group actually viewed photos of themselves.
link |
So picture images of themselves
link |
that were artificially digitally aged
link |
so that they could see themselves
link |
30 or 40 years into the future.
link |
And it turns out that people in that second group
link |
simply by perceiving their own image in the future
link |
invested far more money into later life.
link |
They set aside more money.
link |
Somehow it bridged the gap
link |
between their immediate experience of life
link |
and the longer arc toward what it was going to be like
link |
in 30 or 40 years.
link |
So a very powerful result in my opinion,
link |
because what it says again
link |
is that our visual perception of the future
link |
or our visual perception of the present
link |
is what allows us to anchor our goal-directed systems
link |
and our motivation to take on things
link |
that in the immediate term might not seem that useful.
link |
So you can imagine all sorts of variations on this.
link |
You can imagine that every time I want a donut,
link |
I'd see a vision of myself
link |
or an actual physical picture of myself
link |
as a consequence of having eaten many donuts every day
link |
for the next 10 years.
link |
I don't know what that image would look like
link |
because I've never seen it.
link |
That's not an experiment that I necessarily need to do
link |
because I'm not that motivated to eat donuts.
link |
But I have to confess,
link |
somebody who I think I'm pretty good at managing resources,
link |
but I think if I were to see an image of myself
link |
there's so many things that are associated
link |
with visual images,
link |
like what our body must feel like,
link |
what our needs are probably going to be like in that state
link |
what sorts of things we may or may not still be able to do
link |
And that anchors back to immediate goal-directed behaviors,
link |
such as setting aside money for retirement,
link |
such as investing in one's health practices.
link |
And indeed, there's a study that has looked at
link |
how people will invest in exercise and healthy eating.
link |
If they just think about the future
link |
and what they might be like in the future
link |
versus seeing images of themselves in the future
link |
if they were to go down a healthy or unhealthy route.
link |
So again, the point is that the visual system,
link |
what we see is principally important
link |
in defining what we do in the immediate term,
link |
even if what we see relates to something
link |
in the far off distance.
link |
I think these are phenomenal studies
link |
and they get right down to an important issue
link |
that's been kicked around over and over in the literature
link |
and in the discussion about goal-seeking,
link |
which is visualization.
link |
We hear, keep the big goal in mind, focus on the big goal.
link |
So now we're going to address
link |
what does the science say about visualizing big goals?
link |
If you're somebody who's interested in business
link |
or let's say you're focused on relationship
link |
is thinking about the perfect relationship
link |
and what that would look like
link |
and the family that you would have and where you would live,
link |
is that effective in generating the kinds of behaviors
link |
that will lead you to that?
link |
Is it effective to think about the big win at the end?
link |
Well, it turns out it is,
link |
but you have to be very, very careful with when
link |
and how you implement that visualization
link |
because if you do it correctly,
link |
it can really serve your goal-seeking well.
link |
And if you do it incorrectly,
link |
it can undermine the entire process.
link |
So does visualization work?
link |
Well, it turns out that visualization of the big win,
link |
the end goal, so the Super Bowl win
link |
or eight gold medals in the Olympics
link |
or graduation from the university of your choice
link |
or making a certain amount of money
link |
or finding the partner of your choice, et cetera,
link |
that visualization is effective
link |
in getting the goal pursuit process started,
link |
but it actually is a pretty lousy
link |
and maybe even counterproductive way
link |
of maintaining pursuit of that goal,
link |
meaning continuing to engage the sort of actions
link |
that are going to get you to eventually achieve that goal.
link |
I think this is going to be surprising to people at first,
link |
but if we think back to our discussion
link |
about the physiology of the blood pressure system,
link |
Good scientific studies have been done
link |
where people are told to imagine
link |
or even script out their long-term vision
link |
and goal for themselves.
link |
What is the big goal?
link |
And they're taught to or told to imagine it
link |
with a rich amount of detail to think about
link |
how it's going to feel in their body and the big win.
link |
And basically what happens is
link |
if you measure people's blood pressure
link |
or other metrics of physiology,
link |
you see an increase in that systolic blood pressure.
link |
There's kind of a ramping up of the readiness
link |
and excitement for that goal,
link |
but that increase in blood pressure quickly wanes.
link |
And over time, that visual of the long-term goal
link |
becomes a poor thing to rely on
link |
in order to generate the actions that are required
link |
to reach that goal.
link |
In fact, there's a much better way
link |
to maintain ongoing action toward a goal
link |
that also involves visualization,
link |
but it turns out it's not about visualizing success,
link |
it's about visualizing failure.
link |
The Balcetas lab and other labs
link |
have looked at whether or not people make progress
link |
toward goals of different types,
link |
whether or not they're thinking about the goal,
link |
they're thinking about that goal line
link |
and what they want to achieve,
link |
that long-term goal
link |
and all the wonderful things associated with it,
link |
or whether or not they're thinking about
link |
all the ways in which they could fail
link |
and route to that goal, right?
link |
This is not typically what we are encouraged to do.
link |
Typically we are told, don't imagine failure,
link |
push failure out of your mind,
link |
only focus on success, fake it till you make it,
link |
or it's a phrase that I absolutely hate, frankly,
link |
because it's not even clear what that means
link |
and it's not even clear what the ethical form of that is.
link |
I think it means continue despite any anxiety
link |
or fear that things won't work out.
link |
But if you look at the literature, the scientific literature,
link |
what the Balcetas lab and other labs have shown
link |
is that there's a near doubling,
link |
near doubling in the probability of reaching one's goal
link |
if you focus routinely on foreshadowing failure,
link |
you think about the ways in which things could fail
link |
if you take action A or you take action B,
link |
and instead therefore you take action C.
link |
You're supposed to think about how things could fail
link |
if you don't get up and run each morning
link |
if your goal is say a fitness goal.
link |
So let's use that as an example,
link |
because even though I realize people are in pursuit
link |
of many things, not just fitness,
link |
fitness goals and physical goals are a very concrete thing
link |
that we can all get on the same page about
link |
because they're related to actions.
link |
Let's say somebody sets a goal of running five miles
link |
four times a week minimum and as many as seven
link |
four times a week minimum before 8 a.m.
link |
Okay, in a previous podcast on habits,
link |
I talked about the benefits of not necessarily
link |
setting specific times that one will do things,
link |
but setting time blocks that one will do things.
link |
So you say before 8 a.m. you're going to run five miles
link |
and that's going to happen up to seven days a week, okay?
link |
One version of this would be, okay, sit back in a chair
link |
and think about how great you're going to feel and look
link |
if you're doing this every day,
link |
how your health is going to improve,
link |
how everything's going to, your blood markers of lipids,
link |
et cetera, are going to improve, okay, fine.
link |
That's the visualization goal of visualizing the endpoint.
link |
Turns out that is far less effective
link |
and maybe even counterproductive compared to thinking about
link |
what's going to happen if you don't do this,
link |
the negative health outcomes that are going to occur,
link |
the disappointment you're going to have in yourself,
link |
the fact that you're going to wait until 7.30,
link |
that's not long enough for many people to run five miles,
link |
you got to put it on your shoes and it can be pouring rain
link |
or even hailing or snowing outside
link |
and now you're not going outside unless you're somebody
link |
who's particularly motivated to do that, okay?
link |
So foreshadowing failure turns out to be the best way
link |
to motivate toward goal pursuit.
link |
In fact, as I mentioned before,
link |
there's a near doubling in the likelihood
link |
that people will reach goals of any kind
link |
when they're constantly thinking about
link |
how bad it's going to be if they fail.
link |
If we think back to the neural circuit
link |
associated with assessing value in our goal pursuits,
link |
this makes perfect sense.
link |
The amygdala, that center of the brain
link |
that's involved in anxiety and fear and worry,
link |
well, the amygdala is one of the four core components
link |
of our goal setting and goal pursuit circuitry.
link |
And there's no bypassing that,
link |
there is no one listening to this or watching this
link |
whose amygdala is not involved in their goal setting
link |
and goal pursuit behavior.
link |
And so while I'd love to be able to tell you
link |
that all you should think about is rainbows and puppies
link |
and all the wonderful rewarding things
link |
that are going to happen when you achieve your goals,
link |
the truth is you should be thinking mainly
link |
about how bad it's really going to get if you don't do it,
link |
how disappointing yourself you're going to feel,
link |
how it will negatively impact you
link |
if not in the immediate term, in the longterm,
link |
if indeed your goal is to reach your goal.
link |
So I want to emphasize that I'm not interested
link |
in encouraging people to flagellate themselves,
link |
I'm encouraging people to achieve their goals.
link |
And it turns out the best way to do that
link |
is by foreshadowing failure.
link |
And the more specific you can get by writing down
link |
or thinking about or talking about how bad it will be
link |
if you don't achieve your goals,
link |
the more likely you are to achieve those goals.
link |
Part of the reason for that almost certainly has to do
link |
with increases in systolic blood pressure
link |
and increases in readiness in your system
link |
when you imagine failure.
link |
The brain and body are much better at moving away
link |
from fearful things than towards things we want.
link |
I wish I could tell you that wasn't the case,
link |
but there is a true asymmetry in the way we are built.
link |
In fact, the brain and body can engage
link |
in what's called one trial learning.
link |
When something bad happens,
link |
we eat a food that makes us sick,
link |
we have an interaction with a person or place
link |
that we really don't like,
link |
it only takes one trial to really, one event, one time,
link |
to reorient or rewire our neural circuitry
link |
so that we have a bias toward moving away
link |
from that thing in the future.
link |
When things go well, unfortunately,
link |
that doesn't often occur.
link |
If things go really, really well,
link |
it might orient our brain and body
link |
toward wanting more of that thing
link |
and we'll have neural circuitry changes
link |
that will lead us to engage
link |
in that particular behavior interaction again,
link |
but it is never as effective as these avoidance circuits.
link |
So again, foreshadow failure.
link |
If you're going to visualize in a positive way,
link |
do that at the very beginning of some goal pursuit,
link |
maybe intermittently, every once in a while,
link |
you imagine the big win of scoring perfect on an exam
link |
or winning the championship or the great relationship,
link |
but most of the time, if you want to be effective,
link |
you should be focusing on avoiding failure
link |
and you should be really clear
link |
about what those failures would look like and feel like.
link |
Now let's talk about goal setting.
link |
Going back to that prominent literature,
link |
the psychology and popular literature,
link |
again, we can hear some of these themes start to emerge.
link |
The goal should be significant, we are told.
link |
It should be inspirational.
link |
It should be aggressive yet realistic.
link |
Well, okay, that's all fine and good,
link |
but let's get semi-quantitative about this.
link |
Let's at least get biological about this.
link |
How inspirational does it need to be?
link |
Does it need to be the kind of thing
link |
that is so inspiring to me that I can't sleep at all?
link |
Well, that wouldn't be good because I believe,
link |
and I know many of you have heard me
link |
say many, many times before, regular deep sleep,
link |
80% or more of the nights that you go to sleep
link |
is going to be crucial to your cognitive
link |
and mental functioning and your ability
link |
to achieve your goals in the long-term.
link |
That's absolutely clear.
link |
So it's got to be inspirational and exciting,
link |
but what does that really look like
link |
and what does that correspond to
link |
and how do we actually make that happen?
link |
Well, once again, there is a mismatch
link |
between what the real data show
link |
and what we're most often told.
link |
Turns out that, again, work in Balsedis' lab,
link |
but also other laboratories has addressed
link |
whether or not the probability of achieving a goal
link |
goes up or down depending on whether or not one visualizes
link |
or sets a goal that is easy, moderate or impossible.
link |
Okay, an impossible goal would be, for instance,
link |
if I say, I'm going to jump from my front driveway
link |
all the way up to the road,
link |
the road's quite a distance away,
link |
it's more than 20 meters away, it's just not going to happen.
link |
It's not going to happen in this lifetime,
link |
it's not going to happen in any other lifetime,
link |
not unless it involves some elaborate technology
link |
that I'm not aware of, a jet pack or something like that.
link |
It's just not going to happen, right?
link |
An easy goal would be something like, can you jump
link |
or could I jump two feet in front of me?
link |
Okay, now I'm using a trivial example here,
link |
but this could be translated to any kind of goal,
link |
school goal, physical goal, et cetera.
link |
Turns out that when people set goals,
link |
whether or not they are nutritional goals,
link |
eat more of this or eat less of that,
link |
whether or not they're fitness goals, run more, lift more,
link |
or some other goal, swim less, swim more,
link |
whatever it is their goal happens to be,
link |
some learning goal, some relationship goal,
link |
some attempt to modify their behavior,
link |
turns out that if the goal is too easy,
link |
it's too within reach,
link |
it doesn't recruit enough of the autonomic nervous system
link |
to make pursuit of that goal likely.
link |
Now that might be surprising,
link |
at least it was surprising to me,
link |
you think, well, something is really, really easy,
link |
there's a very low bar to achieve it,
link |
people are probably more likely to do it,
link |
but it turns out that's not the case.
link |
When we hear that a goal needs to be inspirational,
link |
When we hear that something's too easy to recruit our action,
link |
Well, Balsettia's lab measured systolic blood pressure
link |
and found that when goals were too easy
link |
for people to attain,
link |
they didn't get that increase in systolic blood pressure
link |
and recruitment of the other neural and vascular systems,
link |
meaning the blood systems and the nervous system,
link |
that would place them into ongoing effort,
link |
and so they quickly gave up.
link |
Also, if a goal was too lofty,
link |
if it was too far from their current abilities,
link |
it didn't recruit enough systolic blood pressure.
link |
Even if people could get very excited
link |
about something mentally,
link |
it simply didn't place their body into a state of readiness
link |
because it wasn't tangible
link |
that they could actually perhaps really achieve it.
link |
So it turns out that when goals were moderate,
link |
when they were just outside of one's immediate abilities,
link |
or that one felt that, yeah,
link |
that would take a lot of effort,
link |
but it's within range or maybe in range,
link |
like maybe I can do it, maybe I can't,
link |
then there was a near doubling
link |
of the systolic blood pressure in the good sense.
link |
It didn't go into the unhealthy range
link |
and a doubling or more of the likelihood
link |
that they would engage in the ongoing pursuit
link |
of that particular goal.
link |
So here we're talking about goal setting.
link |
What we're saying is set goals that are realistic,
link |
but that aren't so realistic
link |
that they're easy.
link |
The goals need to be realistic and truly challenging.
link |
Don't set goals that are so challenging and so lofty
link |
that they crash that blood pressure system
link |
in the other direction
link |
and make you or anyone feel unmotivated.
link |
In hearing this, it makes sense,
link |
but I don't think I would have predicted it
link |
had they not done this very controlled study.
link |
I would have thought the loftier the goal,
link |
the bigger the goal,
link |
the more that it recruits the autonomic system
link |
and the more that people are likely to lean into the energy
link |
and effort to pursue and attain that goal.
link |
I also would have thought
link |
that if a goal is really easy to achieve,
link |
that it would engage the systems of action
link |
in the brain and body enough
link |
that people would sort of get into motion
link |
and pursue that goal.
link |
But neither is the case.
link |
Again, set goals that are difficult to achieve,
link |
but that are not so lofty that they collapse your system
link |
and that you feel overwhelmed.
link |
And the important thing here is that how we perceive a goal,
link |
whether or not we think it's within reach or not,
link |
of course, will vary depending on whether or not
link |
depending on whether or not other aspects of our life
link |
I mean, we can think that we are hot on the heels
link |
of a lifetime goal and everything's going well.
link |
And then there'll be some crisis, interpersonal crisis,
link |
or there'll be a health crisis and you'll be shut down.
link |
And then that goal seems very, very hard to attain.
link |
So we will talk about how to update goals
link |
under different contexts in a few minutes.
link |
But of course, this is going to be an averaging.
link |
This isn't something that you do just once.
link |
But the takeaway again is very simple,
link |
set goals that are moderately hard to hard,
link |
but not so hard nor so easy that they don't engage
link |
your brain and body properly.
link |
Moderate goals are best if you want to achieve your goals.
link |
Now I'd like to talk about three particular areas
link |
of scientific study that point to goal pursuit,
link |
goal assessment, and goal achievement.
link |
Previously, I told you that it's great
link |
to foreshadow failure,
link |
that that's a great way to get your system
link |
into a state of activation.
link |
I also told you that you want to set goals
link |
that are challenging, but possible.
link |
And again, here, I'm paraphrasing
link |
from the work of Emily Balsettis.
link |
I want to be very clear.
link |
There are a few other things that one can do
link |
in order to bias the likelihood that you will succeed
link |
in trying to achieve your goals.
link |
First of all, limit your options.
link |
Trying to pursue too many goals at once
link |
can definitely be counterproductive.
link |
Now I realize that life is complicated.
link |
We all have multiple goals that we're trying to pursue,
link |
but if we have particular goals that are important to us,
link |
we have to be careful to not get distracted by other goals.
link |
And many people run into this problem.
link |
So setting one or two or maybe three major goals
link |
for a given year is going to be more than enough
link |
for most people and is actually going to be challenging
link |
Now, of course, we have daily goals and monthly goals
link |
and yearly goals, but if we have big lofty goals,
link |
we need to be careful not to contaminate our mental space
link |
and our visual space with too many goals.
link |
And why do I say visual goals?
link |
Well, what various department stores and supermarkets
link |
have discovered is that the greater the number of things
link |
in our visual attention, the more that we can draw
link |
our attention and our goals off a line of pursuit.
link |
What does that mean?
link |
Well, let's think about it in the practical context.
link |
This has actually been done.
link |
Big department stores have figured out
link |
that if they stock their shelves chock-a-block
link |
with many, many options of food or clothing items
link |
or objects or anything like that,
link |
people simply buy more stuff.
link |
People are very prone to orienting their attention
link |
to whatever's in front of them.
link |
You put a lot of stuff in front of them,
link |
their attention drifts.
link |
You put fewer things in front of them,
link |
their attention is more narrow.
link |
In a later episode, we'll talk about designing a workspace
link |
that's optimized on the basis of this.
link |
It doesn't mean being in a room with nothing
link |
except just your desk and a computer.
link |
It doesn't have to be that sparse,
link |
but visual sparseness actually can help us
link |
orient our focus and our behavior.
link |
When we have a lot of things in our visual environment
link |
or a lot of things in our cognitive environment,
link |
it's the same thing.
link |
And so if you're going to try and pursue a fitness goal,
link |
a relationship goal, an academic goal,
link |
and a long-term life financial goal all at once,
link |
that's four things.
link |
And you're going to have to come up with systems
link |
that allow you to isolate those goals in a very rigid way.
link |
And if you do have multiple interleaving goals
link |
and overlapping goals and simultaneous goals,
link |
in a few minutes, we're going to talk about a process
link |
that will allow you to use your visual system
link |
to align towards each of those goals sequentially
link |
in a way that makes it much more likely
link |
that you'll achieve them.
link |
So now let's talk about specificity of goals.
link |
We've all heard that the more specific a goal is
link |
and the more specific we are about when and how
link |
we are going to execute that goal,
link |
the higher probability that we will actually
link |
achieve that goal.
link |
And indeed that's the case,
link |
but there's an additional feature that's not often discussed
link |
that is vitally important.
link |
And in fact, maybe more important than having a specific
link |
time of day or a specific end point in mind.
link |
There's a really nice study that was done
link |
looking at recycling.
link |
And this is something that a number of groups, businesses,
link |
households, and individuals are trying to do more of.
link |
They're trying to lower carbon footprint or contribute to
link |
the world in some general way by throwing away fewer things
link |
that could potentially be recycled.
link |
So this has been studied in the context
link |
of the work environment where a business decides
link |
and lets everybody know that there's going to be
link |
a greater effort toward recycling cans or bottles
link |
or bottles and cans, et cetera.
link |
And then the way these studies were done is that
link |
the janitorial staff was swapped out temporarily
link |
for researchers that actually measured the number
link |
of recyclable items that showed up in the trash
link |
and not in the recycle
link |
as a function of the total amount of trash.
link |
Why did I say as a function of the total amount of trash?
link |
Well, it's a way of controlling for differences
link |
in beverage consumption from one week to the next.
link |
Anyway, the point is they were able to very carefully
link |
measure how much people are recycling before
link |
and after this call to action to recycle more.
link |
What they found was if they said,
link |
we are going to try and recycle more,
link |
try not to put cans and bottles in the trash.
link |
There of course was an improvement in recycling,
link |
but it was pretty modest.
link |
Whereas when there was a very concrete plan
link |
and everyone knew what that concrete plan was,
link |
for instance, to place all bottles and cans
link |
into the recycle, not the trash,
link |
or to limit the amount of trash by 50%
link |
or to eliminate all recyclable items from the trash.
link |
So when they made it very concrete,
link |
exactly what the action steps were,
link |
there was a remarkable, I mean,
link |
close to a hundred fold or more improvement in recycling
link |
behavior that lasted many months
link |
after this call to action was made.
link |
The takeaway from this is quite straightforward.
link |
It means that having a concrete plan is essential.
link |
You can't just say, I'm going to become a better recycler,
link |
or I'm going to do things that are better
link |
for the environment,
link |
or I'm going to become more physically fit.
link |
It has to be a specific set of action steps
link |
that get right down to details
link |
about what success would look like.
link |
I've heard this before described
link |
as what does right look like?
link |
What is the actual outcome that one would like to achieve
link |
in terms of action steps?
link |
So not necessarily feeling states.
link |
It wasn't that they all sat around and said,
link |
how great we're all going to feel about ourselves
link |
in the world when we accomplish this goal.
link |
It was very concrete statements,
link |
very concrete plans about action steps
link |
that would deliver one to one's goal.
link |
Somewhat straightforward and intuitive,
link |
but nonetheless worthwhile.
link |
What it suggests is that for all of us,
link |
if we have certain goals that we want to achieve,
link |
we need to be exquisitely detailed
link |
about what the action steps are that we're going to take
link |
and to constantly update those action steps
link |
so that we have a higher probability
link |
of meeting those action steps.
link |
Some of you may be asking,
link |
how often should one assess progress?
link |
Well, that of course will depend on the given goal
link |
that you're trying to pursue.
link |
But in the studies that I've been referring to here,
link |
the assessment of progress
link |
and the updating of concrete plans was done weekly.
link |
So it seems like weekly is a good starting place
link |
to address how well one performed in the previous week.
link |
And then based on that performance
link |
to update the action plan for the upcoming week.
link |
So weekly seems like a good solid rule of thumb
link |
for setting particular action goals
link |
and assessing one's progress
link |
towards the immediate and longer-term goals.
link |
Any discussion about goals and goal pursuit
link |
would be incomplete without a discussion
link |
about the molecule dopamine.
link |
Dopamine is often thought of as the molecule
link |
of pleasure and reward,
link |
but actually it is the molecule of motivation.
link |
This is best illustrated by a classic set of studies
link |
that have been carried out in both animals and in humans.
link |
The animal study can be described the following way.
link |
Two rats, each in a separate cage.
link |
You can provide those rats with the opportunity
link |
to indulge in something that they like,
link |
like food or mating or heat if it's cold in the environment
link |
or a cool spot in the cage,
link |
if it's warm in the environment and so forth.
link |
And what you find is that rats
link |
will very readily approach the rewarding thing.
link |
They will mate, they will eat,
link |
they will pursue something that is of pleasure.
link |
Now, if you are to take one of those rats
link |
and deplete its dopamine neurons,
link |
you can eliminate its dopamine neurons
link |
or block dopamine in the brain.
link |
What you find is that those animals
link |
will still enjoy pleasure.
link |
They will consume the food, they will mate, et cetera.
link |
However, their motivation to achieve pleasure
link |
is vastly reduced.
link |
In fact, if you place the item of pleasure,
link |
the mate, the food, et cetera,
link |
even just one rat's length away from that rat,
link |
the rat without dopamine will not even move one length
link |
of its own body in order to achieve that pleasure.
link |
And there are naturally occurring experiments in humans
link |
that mimic that result very accurately.
link |
There are certain conditions in humans
link |
where there's a depletion of dopamine.
link |
And what you find is that the depletion of dopamine
link |
does not inhibit an ability
link |
to experience pleasure necessarily.
link |
It inhibits an ability to pursue
link |
or go through the series of action steps
link |
in order to achieve pleasure.
link |
So dopamine really sits at the heart
link |
of our motivational state to seek out goals
link |
and to seek pleasure.
link |
And this is true for immediate goals
link |
that take place within a timeframe of minutes
link |
or a timeframe of a day or the timeframe of a week
link |
or the timeframe of a lifetime.
link |
Dopamine is the common currency by which we pursue goals.
link |
Now, dopamine does a number of things
link |
that are very interesting.
link |
I'm going to describe a few of them
link |
as they relate to goal-seeking behavior.
link |
First of all, there's a fundamental feature
link |
of how our brain releases and uses dopamine
link |
that's called reward prediction error.
link |
And the simplest way to think about
link |
dopamine reward prediction error
link |
is that dopamine is released in the greatest amount
link |
and places us into a greater state of motivation
link |
when something happens that's positive and novel.
link |
Now, an important thing to understand about dopamine
link |
is that it's not always released on the same schedule.
link |
There are a couple of different ways that dopamine is released
link |
and when it is released relative to your anticipation
link |
of a reward is key.
link |
If you don't expect something positive to happen,
link |
you're just going about your day
link |
and something positive happens,
link |
dopamine and a lot of dopamine is released.
link |
I had this happen recently.
link |
I had no idea that I was going to be receiving
link |
something in the mail, but I went to the mail,
link |
I looked in the mail and I got something very positive
link |
and I was really, really excited about it.
link |
This is a real event that happened just today.
link |
However, if we anticipate something positive
link |
is going to happen and then that thing happens,
link |
we experience dopamine as part of the anticipation.
link |
So even before we get the reward,
link |
there's an increase in dopamine.
link |
It's not as high as it would be if something really novel
link |
and unexpected and positive happened,
link |
but we do get an increase in dopamine.
link |
And then when we actually experience the reward,
link |
we experienced the positive thing,
link |
there's a smaller increase in dopamine.
link |
So again, the biggest increases in dopamine
link |
are response to things that are positive and unexpected.
link |
Lesser dopamine is released
link |
when we anticipate something good will happen.
link |
And when that happens, yes, we get some dopamine
link |
and we also get some dopamine
link |
when the positive thing happens.
link |
Think about anticipating a great meal with friends.
link |
We have some dopamine churning, friends come over,
link |
then we have the meal
link |
and we also get some dopamine from that,
link |
but not nearly as much as we would
link |
if it had all happened as a part of a big surprise.
link |
Then there's also the case in which we predict
link |
that something good will happen.
link |
When that happens, there's an increase in dopamine
link |
just as there was before.
link |
But then if that thing doesn't happen,
link |
for instance, our friends don't show up for dinner,
link |
then there's a drop in dopamine below our initial baseline.
link |
That drop in dopamine is the chemical essence
link |
of what we call disappointment.
link |
Now, this dopamine reward prediction error, as it's called,
link |
can be leveraged toward trying to reach our goals
link |
because it tells us where we should set our milestones.
link |
We can't be in a mode of simply being focused
link |
on the finish line.
link |
Very few people can do that over long periods of time
link |
in a way that's effective.
link |
Now, earlier I talked about a study
link |
where people were focused on a finish line visually
link |
and they were moving through space
link |
with these ankle weights on,
link |
but that was a very short-term goal, okay?
link |
So if a goal is within minutes
link |
or maybe even within an hour or is in
link |
with our immediate visuals environment,
link |
maybe we can do that.
link |
But most goals of the sort that most people are pursuing,
link |
fitness goals, academic goals, business goals,
link |
relationship goals, et cetera, involve some milestones.
link |
So understanding what we know about reward prediction error,
link |
we can make better choices
link |
about where to place the milestones,
link |
how far out in the future to place milestones.
link |
So then the question becomes how often
link |
or at what intervals should one assess progress?
link |
And it turns out this is very subjective,
link |
but that there's a way to make it objective.
link |
Now, in a previous episode of the Huberman Lab Podcast,
link |
I had a discussion with the great Robert Sapolsky,
link |
and we were talking about how the brain
link |
can subjectively change whether or not a given behavior
link |
or experience is positive or negative.
link |
And the example that Robert gave is a really phenomenal one.
link |
It's a study that's been done in rats and also in humans,
link |
where it took a rat, they had a rat run on a running wheel.
link |
Rats, turns out, like to run on running wheels.
link |
And the blood pressure of that animal,
link |
the health metrics for that animal, the lipid profiles,
link |
many, many things improved, okay?
link |
The rat was exercising and it got healthier
link |
and presumably got happier.
link |
We could have asked it, but we wouldn't know.
link |
Doesn't know how to tell us, but we can measure blood lipids.
link |
We can measure blood pressure and all sorts of things.
link |
And indeed, when that rat exercised
link |
or when people exercise, they generally get healthier.
link |
Except in that particular experiment,
link |
they had another animal where every time rat number one ran,
link |
rat number two was forced to run.
link |
It was on a running wheel and it was forced to run,
link |
not because it wanted to, but because it was forced to.
link |
And what was remarkable is that the physiological effects
link |
of being forced to do something
link |
were in the complete opposite direction as they were
link |
when those same behaviors were undertaken voluntarily.
link |
In other words, the rat that was choosing to run
link |
got healthier and the rat that was forced to run
link |
Blood pressure went up in a direction
link |
that wasn't effective and useful.
link |
Blood lipids got worse.
link |
Stress hormones went up, et cetera, et cetera.
link |
And you see the same thing in humans.
link |
Now, what this says is that our subjective understanding
link |
of why we are doing something is fundamentally important
link |
for the effects that we will get from that behavior.
link |
And indeed the effects that that behavior will have on us.
link |
So this has two major implications.
link |
First of all, in terms of reward schedules,
link |
we can decide to use any reward schedule
link |
that we want for a given behavior.
link |
We can decide that the milestones for a,
link |
let's say a plan of getting
link |
in really terrific cardiovascular shape over the next year,
link |
we can decide to assess every day and ask ourselves,
link |
how good was our progress?
link |
And if we made progress,
link |
then we're going to reward ourselves.
link |
We could do that every third day.
link |
We could do it every week.
link |
We could do it every five minutes
link |
if we actually have the time to do that.
link |
The reward schedule, the dopamine system
link |
is highly susceptible to the subjective effects,
link |
the so-called top-down effects of when we decide
link |
that something is going to be good for us,
link |
if we analyze it on a given timeframe,
link |
well, then it's going to be good for us.
link |
So what I suggest people do is pick a particular interval
link |
at which they are going to assess progress.
link |
And if you've been making regular progress towards a goal
link |
that you reward yourself and the reward indeed
link |
is all cognitive, it's all mental.
link |
It's telling yourself, yes, I'm on the right track.
link |
Now, some people will say, wait,
link |
but I want to know exactly how often I should do that.
link |
You need to do that at an interval
link |
that you can maintain consistently, okay?
link |
So you're not going to reward yourself every minute
link |
or every step of every jog that you take,
link |
unless you can do it every minute of every step
link |
of every jog that you take.
link |
For that reason, I think that daily
link |
or ideally weekly assessments are going to be best.
link |
I think that checking in at the end of a week,
link |
looking back on the previous week
link |
and assessing how well you performed
link |
in pursuit of a given goal,
link |
how many times a week you ran or how many times you studied
link |
or how many times you did something that you wanted to do
link |
or avoided something that you didn't want to do.
link |
I think that's a reasonable and tractable schedule
link |
to assess once a week.
link |
So that's one point that pick a milestone
link |
that you can maintain consistently throughout the pursuit
link |
The second thing is that the subjective effects
link |
that were described by that Sapolsky study
link |
or that Sapolsky described rather are absolutely essential
link |
for all aspects of goal-seeking behavior.
link |
We cannot underestimate the extent
link |
to which the dopamine system
link |
and our sense of whether or not we are on the right track
link |
is under our cognitive control.
link |
If we constantly place ourselves
link |
into a mode of thinking that we are failing,
link |
well, then indeed,
link |
we are not going to churn out much dopamine.
link |
Now, earlier I said we need to predict and visualize failure
link |
but that is not the same thing
link |
as thinking about ourselves as failing.
link |
We need to predict what the outcome would be if we failed,
link |
but then encountering that and in behaving in a certain way
link |
and thinking in a certain way
link |
and pursuing our goals in an effective way,
link |
maybe checking in on that each week,
link |
we definitely need to reward ourselves cognitively
link |
for the correct and successful pursuit.
link |
What this means is that anticipate and think about failure
link |
as a mechanism of generating motivation
link |
and indeed fear and anxiety
link |
so that you lean into the correct behaviors
link |
and you lean away from the incorrect behaviors
link |
to reach your goal.
link |
But then weekly or so,
link |
whatever you can maintain consistently,
link |
you absolutely want to reward yourself cognitively
link |
by telling yourself, I'm on the right track.
link |
I got another week where I accomplished whatever it is
link |
that I'm trying to accomplish.
link |
A concrete example that I'm following now
link |
is this 150 to 200 minutes of zone two cardio per week
link |
because that's shown to be very effective
link |
in improving mental and physical health metrics.
link |
So once a week, I'll check in with myself.
link |
If I reach that 150 to 200 minute threshold,
link |
then I'll reward myself simply by checking off a box
link |
and saying, okay, I'm on track, I'm on track, I'm on track.
link |
This dopamine system is critical to re-up,
link |
to remind ourselves that we are on track
link |
if indeed we are on track
link |
because dopamine itself provides a state of motivation
link |
and readiness to continue
link |
in the regular pursuit of our goals.
link |
Dopamine, the molecule is actually used
link |
to manufacture epinephrine and norepinephrine,
link |
which are other molecules in our brain and body,
link |
which put us into that readiness and action state.
link |
They're actually the molecules that help generate
link |
that increase in systolic blood pressure
link |
that puts us into a state of readiness.
link |
So you can think about dopamine as a self amplifying system
link |
provided that you are leveraging the dopamine system
link |
on a consistent schedule.
link |
Now, by also following a consistent schedule of self reward,
link |
you set yourself up for any positive unanticipated rewards
link |
So for instance, if you're checking in with yourself weekly,
link |
telling yourself that you're doing well, if indeed you are,
link |
and then out of nowhere, for instance, you're out on a run
link |
or you're doing something, I'm using fitness as an example,
link |
but you're doing something,
link |
you find yourself performing particularly well,
link |
that's a unexpected dopamine reward
link |
that will further amplify the system.
link |
Now, I know many people out there
link |
having heard me talk about dopamine before,
link |
worry, well, can I release too much dopamine
link |
and then the whole system will crash
link |
and then I'll run out of motivation.
link |
In general, that doesn't happen
link |
unless people are using pharmacology,
link |
supplements or prescription drugs
link |
or illicit drugs to increase dopamine.
link |
This is why I'm a big fan of things like cold showers
link |
and cold water exposure which has been shown
link |
to lead to long lasting 2.5X increases in dopamine
link |
or in some cases, supplementation with things
link |
like L-tyrosine which are precursors to dopamine
link |
or in some cases, caffeine which can increase
link |
the number of dopamine receptors that we have
link |
so that whatever dopamine we have floating around
link |
can be more effective in activating
link |
these motivational states.
link |
But things that really increase dopamine
link |
and then cause it to crash can be problematic.
link |
One way to conceive of dopamine
link |
is as a sort of dopamine wave pool.
link |
You've probably seen these wave pools
link |
where some pressure is pushed into the pool
link |
and then you get these waves going.
link |
If those waves are consistent enough
link |
and they're of high enough amplitude,
link |
the waves can continue to go up and down and up and down.
link |
But if it's a giant wave,
link |
if you get a huge blast of dopamine,
link |
well, then a bunch of the water sloshes
link |
out of the wave pool and then you basically have
link |
to take some time off, reset that dopamine level.
link |
That's what happens in addiction
link |
and when people start pushing in a lot of drugs
link |
or other things into the system
link |
that increase dopamine too much.
link |
So today we've almost exclusively been talking
link |
about behavioral tools.
link |
It is possible to incorporate supplements
link |
and things of that sort that can increase dopamine
link |
as a way to getting into ongoing motivational states.
link |
But I caution people about relying on those too much.
link |
Really what you want is you want a situation
link |
where your own positive feedback,
link |
your own understanding that you are reaching
link |
the milestones that you've set out for yourself,
link |
that you're achieving those
link |
and that is what's causing these waves
link |
or these increases in dopamine
link |
that will further amplify your motivational states.
link |
Another very interesting aspect of dopamine
link |
that I've not talked about at all on this podcast before
link |
is actually how the dopamine system
link |
interacts with the visual system.
link |
We've talked a lot about how harnessing
link |
your visual attention to a particular point is great
link |
and can help serve your ability to both set
link |
and achieve goals.
link |
Really wonderful work that was done by Wolfram Schultz,
link |
who's one of the great pioneers in this area of dopamine
link |
and dopamine reward prediction error,
link |
showed that for people that have normal levels of dopamine,
link |
their visual search,
link |
meaning how they scanned visual environments
link |
tends to be pretty constrained.
link |
They might move their eyes around
link |
a particular visual environment searching somewhat.
link |
For people that lack dopamine,
link |
they actually have very little movement of their eyes.
link |
They don't actually tend to look very far into the horizon.
link |
They don't have that very focused vergence point
link |
that we're talking about that kind of,
link |
I guess for lack of a better phrase,
link |
that kind of eye of the tiger focus on a goal,
link |
rather their eye movements are depleted
link |
and they're not actually evaluating horizons
link |
off in their future.
link |
They're not focused so much on the extra personal space.
link |
And this actually can be restored in some of these
link |
that took place in Parkinson's patients
link |
and other people who have dopamine depleted,
link |
that when dopamine is restored pharmacologically,
link |
their visual focus is re-enhanced again.
link |
Now, there are a lot of details to this study
link |
that don't map perfectly onto everything
link |
that I've talked about.
link |
But the point is this,
link |
when we are focused on a particular point in visual space
link |
or a particular goal or horizon,
link |
all those systems, our blood pressure, epinephrine,
link |
and indeed dopamine get recruited
link |
to put us into a state of readiness and willingness
link |
to go pursue things in that extra personal space.
link |
When our visual attention is very diffuse,
link |
all of that relaxes and we tend to be more comfortable
link |
staying in the place that we are in our peripersonal space.
link |
And the effect works in the other direction too.
link |
When dopamine is increased,
link |
our visual attention for particular things
link |
out in space increase.
link |
So the way it works is reciprocal.
link |
When we use our visual system in a particular way,
link |
bring it to a point of focus,
link |
it recruits chemical and neural systems
link |
in our brain and body
link |
that put us into a state of readiness and pursuit.
link |
And when we increase certain chemicals in our brain and body
link |
like epinephrine, like dopamine,
link |
then we also allow our visual system
link |
to be in a state of looking out at particular locations
link |
in our visual world.
link |
So the system works in both directions.
link |
And some people leverage this by using things like caffeine
link |
or taking things like L-tyrosine to increase dopamine.
link |
And again, it works both ways.
link |
There's no right or wrong way to do it.
link |
I'm a particular fan of using behavioral tools
link |
always prior to using supplementation
link |
or any kinds of other tools
link |
because behavioral tools have a very unique feature
link |
that supplementation and other chemical tools don't,
link |
which is that behavioral tools used over time
link |
engage neuroplasticity.
link |
As we start to practice using our visual system
link |
to harness our attention to particular locations
link |
and in that way move toward particular goals,
link |
we get better and better at using those systems.
link |
In fact, the systems for focus and motivation
link |
themselves have plasticity.
link |
So we get better at being motivated and focused
link |
when we place our visual attention at a given location.
link |
Using chemical assistance of a safe kind,
link |
of course, check with your doctor,
link |
but things like L-tyrosine or caffeine or those combined,
link |
yes, it will increase dopamine
link |
and will increase our ability
link |
to engage in visual focus somewhat.
link |
But those compounds alone don't modify the circuitry
link |
in the way that we want.
link |
So I always say behavioral tools first,
link |
then nutritional tools, then supplementation tools,
link |
and then if it's right for you and safe,
link |
maybe you advance into some of the other
link |
more sophisticated tools.
link |
I'd like to just briefly recap
link |
what I've covered up until now.
link |
And again, emphasize that much of what I've covered
link |
has been based on the beautiful work
link |
of Emily Balcetas and colleagues.
link |
I do hope to get her as a guest on the podcast, by the way.
link |
First of all, set goals that are challenging but possible.
link |
Those moderate goals, not super easy, not super difficult,
link |
but moderately challenging goals
link |
seem to be the most effective
link |
in moving people towards their goals
link |
over the short and long term.
link |
Second, plan concretely.
link |
You need a concrete set of actions
link |
that you're going to follow in order to reach your goals.
link |
Third, foreshadow failure.
link |
This is a somewhat surprising one to me.
link |
I would have anticipated that imagining success
link |
It turns out that imagining success and visualizing success
link |
can be useful at the outset of a goal
link |
and maybe every once in a while in pursuit of that goal,
link |
but that it's not terrific for putting you
link |
in constant pursuit of that goal.
link |
Rather, foreshadowing failure, visualizing failure
link |
and all the terrible things that it's going to bring
link |
seems to be more effective and that maps very well
link |
to what's known about the neural circuitry
link |
and the involvement of the amygdala.
link |
Focus on particular visual points
link |
as a way to harness your attention and to remove distractors.
link |
Removing distractors and getting your body and brain
link |
into a mode of activation,
link |
getting that healthy increase in systolic blood pressure
link |
that puts you into forward motion towards your goals
link |
is absolutely key.
link |
So that's a brief summary
link |
of what I've covered up until now.
link |
There were other things too, of course,
link |
the dopamine system and the power of subjective
link |
top-down control in regulating that dopamine system.
link |
But I want to be sure to include a tool
link |
that's been especially powerful for me,
link |
that's grounded in the neuroscience research
link |
and in the psychology research.
link |
And as I describe this tool next,
link |
I think you'll see the ways in which it meshes nicely
link |
with the work that Emily Balcetas and colleagues have done.
link |
This is something that I've personally been doing
link |
for many years based on my understanding
link |
of the visual system and the understanding
link |
that indeed we can move our cognition and our perception
link |
from a place of interoception
link |
and focusing on our peripersonal space,
link |
that space within us and immediately around us
link |
and on the things that are immediately accessible to us,
link |
that we can shift from that mode
link |
to this mode of exteroception of focusing on things
link |
outside the confines of our skin
link |
and that are beyond our reach,
link |
that are literally goal-directed behaviors
link |
and goal-directed thoughts.
link |
And this is something that in the past
link |
I've talked about a little bit
link |
and I've talked about something called space-time bridging.
link |
And we haven't talked too much about the time domain
link |
of the visual system today,
link |
but space-time bridging is simply a way
link |
of using one's visual system
link |
to focus on the peripersonal space and interoception
link |
and then gradually in a deliberate way,
link |
stepping one's focus into the extra personal space
link |
and then back to the peripersonal space
link |
in a way that gives you a lot of flexibility and control
link |
over that ability in your daily life.
link |
So I'm going to first describe the tool
link |
and then I will explain more about the underlying science
link |
and the underlying mechanism.
link |
Here's how you would do this.
link |
You could do this indoors or outdoors,
link |
although ideally you would do it in a location
link |
where you could view a horizon.
link |
It could be through a window
link |
or ideally outdoors without a window.
link |
It could be done any time of day.
link |
At night, it might be a little more challenging,
link |
but it goes the following way.
link |
What you first do is you would close your eyes.
link |
This could be done seated or standing,
link |
but you would close your eyes
link |
and you would focus as much of your attention,
link |
including your visual attention on your inner landscape,
link |
on your interoception.
link |
So that would be your breathing, your heart rate,
link |
maybe even the surface of your skin,
link |
but really focusing internally.
link |
Now, how can you focus your visual attention internally
link |
if your eyes are closed?
link |
Well, you do that by imagining your inner landscape, okay?
link |
So you don't have to imagine your heart beating
link |
and so forth, but what you're trying to do
link |
is eliminate perception of the outside world.
link |
You're eliminating exteroception
link |
and you're focusing all of your cognitive attention
link |
and your perceptual attention
link |
on what you're experiencing within the confines of your skin
link |
or at the level of the surface of your skin
link |
and inside your body.
link |
And you would do that for a duration
link |
of approximately three slow breaths, okay?
link |
So close your eyes.
link |
You would do breath one, breath two, and breath three,
link |
concentrating all your attention on your internal landscape.
link |
Then you would open your eyes
link |
and you would focus your visual attention
link |
on some area on the surface of your body.
link |
So for me, the way that I typically do this
link |
will be to focus on, say, the palm of my hand.
link |
So I'll focus my visual attention on the palm of my hand.
link |
And I then do three breaths again,
link |
focusing on my internal state,
link |
but now I'm splitting out a little bit of my attention
link |
from interoception to exteroception.
link |
I'm focusing on something outside me.
link |
The ratio or the split of attention is about 90-10.
link |
About 90% of my attention is focused internally,
link |
but I'm also focusing some of my attention externally.
link |
Most people can do this pretty easily.
link |
Then there's a third, what I call station.
link |
I now move my visual attention to outside my body,
link |
to some location in the room,
link |
or if I'm outside in the external environment,
link |
something in the range of five to 15 feet away.
link |
And I'm trying to move 90% of my attention
link |
to that external object.
link |
So now I'm really biasing my perception
link |
and my attention towards exteroception.
link |
As I breathe, I'm paying attention to those three breaths.
link |
So that's why there's still 10%
link |
that's focused on my internal landscape,
link |
because I want to pay attention to those three breaths,
link |
but I'm focusing as much of my attention outside of myself,
link |
maintaining just a little bit on my internal state
link |
so I can measure the cadence of those three breaths.
link |
Then I move my visual attention to yet another station,
link |
which is further away,
link |
typically a horizon or something
link |
as far off in the distance as I can possibly see,
link |
again, for the duration of three breaths.
link |
And at that point, I'm trying my very best to move 99,
link |
if not 100% of my attention to that external location.
link |
And then what I typically will do
link |
is I will try and expand both my vision and my cognition
link |
to a much broader sphere.
link |
This is that magnocellular vision
link |
that we talked about before,
link |
where I'm not focusing on a particular location
link |
I'm trying to dilate the aperture of my field of view
link |
so I can see as much of the visual landscape
link |
as I'm in as possible.
link |
If you're in an internal, excuse me,
link |
if you're in indoors, then that might be the ceiling,
link |
the walls, and the floor of the environment you're in.
link |
If you're outdoors,
link |
it would be to expand your visual focus
link |
as broadly as you possibly can,
link |
again, for the duration of three breaths.
link |
Then I would return immediately to my internal landscape.
link |
I would close my eyes and I would do three more breaths
link |
focusing entirely on my interoception,
link |
on my internal landscape,
link |
what we call before my peripersonal space.
link |
And I would then repeat that peripersonal space, 100%.
link |
Focused on my hand, 90%,
link |
10% on my peripersonal space or my internal landscape.
link |
Stepping out to another location
link |
where it's mostly exteroception,
link |
maybe a little bit of recognition of my internal state.
link |
Then to the horizon, then to this broader visual sphere,
link |
then back into my body.
link |
And I would work through each of those stations
link |
maybe two or three times.
link |
The entire thing takes about 90 seconds to three minutes,
link |
depending on how many breaths you do.
link |
I said three, but you could do one or 10,
link |
it doesn't really matter.
link |
Or it's also going to depend on, for instance,
link |
how slowly you're breathing,
link |
because your breathing might be faster than mine
link |
What is all of this doing?
link |
Why do I call this space time bridging?
link |
And why is this useful for goal setting?
link |
The reason I call it space time bridging
link |
is that the visual system is not just about analyzing space,
link |
it's actually how we batch time.
link |
It's how we carve up time.
link |
And the simple way to state this
link |
is that when we focus our visual attention
link |
on a very narrow point that's close to our body
link |
and our immediate experience,
link |
we tend to slice up time very finely.
link |
We're focused on our breathing.
link |
We're focused on our heartbeats.
link |
In fact, our breathing and our internal landscape
link |
and our heartbeats become the sort of seconds hand,
link |
if you will, on our experience.
link |
We are carving up time
link |
according to our immediate physiological experience.
link |
Whereas when we focus our visual attention outside our body,
link |
not only do we engage that exteroceptive
link |
extra personal space system,
link |
and we start to engage the dopamine system,
link |
the goal-directed system,
link |
but we also start batching time differently.
link |
When we focus our visual system
link |
into a broader sphere of space
link |
or into a space beyond the confines of our skin,
link |
we start carving up time, our frame rate changes.
link |
Now, this is useful in the context of goal setting,
link |
goal assessment, and goal pursuit,
link |
because with the exception of a very few isolated examples,
link |
almost all goals involve setting some goal
link |
that's off in the future,
link |
and then carving up the time between now
link |
and the achievement of that goal
link |
into milestones that range in duration.
link |
even if we try and just make them every week,
link |
are going to come at some unexpected intervals.
link |
And that's actually can be helpful for reinforcing behavior.
link |
Intermittent reward that's intermittent and random
link |
is the most effective reward schedule we know.
link |
But the problem is always,
link |
how do we keep our cognition in line with the long-term goal
link |
while also being focused on these more immediate goals?
link |
And so this particular practice
link |
that I call space-time bridging,
link |
but we could give it a different name.
link |
I'm sure there are better names.
link |
Maybe you can suggest some
link |
in the comment section on YouTube
link |
that are more accurate or more mapped to it better.
link |
But this behavior, or this practice, rather,
link |
is teaching us to use our visual system
link |
and thereby our cognitive system
link |
and thereby our reward systems
link |
to orient to different locations in space
link |
and therefore at different locations in time.
link |
And that is the essence of goal-directed behavior.
link |
That is the essence of setting a goal.
link |
It's about thinking about what you want.
link |
Then it's about setting milestones
link |
that are intermediate to that goal.
link |
Then it's about assessing
link |
whether or not you're reaching those milestones.
link |
And then it's, of course, about updating your goals
link |
if you need to update your goals.
link |
All of that is an enormously confusing batch of challenges
link |
if you think about it all at once.
link |
But if you break it down into these elements
link |
that the visual system can help you find
link |
and move towards those milestones,
link |
I think there's ample evidence to support that,
link |
and that your control over your visual system
link |
that you can deliberately set it to different locations,
link |
and then you make a practice
link |
of stepping through these different stations
link |
on a regular basis.
link |
Again, I do this each morning.
link |
I do this once a day.
link |
Rarely have I done it twice a day.
link |
Rarely have I missed a day.
link |
But by doing that, you can be very effective
link |
in teaching the systems of your brain
link |
that are related to goal setting and reward
link |
to map to different timeframes.
link |
So I found this to be a very effective protocol.
link |
The Balsettis work has mainly focused on visual tools
link |
that are of a single horizon.
link |
Here, I'm talking about multiple,
link |
what I called stations or horizons.
link |
But what's very clear is that an ability to move
link |
from different visual stations,
link |
and to do that in a deliberate way,
link |
in a focused and conscious way,
link |
clearly maps to an ability to conceive of different goals
link |
over different periods of time,
link |
and I do believe can be greatly beneficial
link |
in allowing one to set particular goals
link |
and then move through the milestones to those goals,
link |
and to constantly update one's pursuit and reward
link |
in reaching those milestones,
link |
and eventually the overall goal.
link |
Per usual, I covered a lot of material today.
link |
We talked about some of the neuroscience and psychology
link |
and popular understanding of goal-seeking behavior,
link |
how to assess goals, et cetera.
link |
Talked about the beautiful work of Emily Balsettis
link |
at New York University and her work
link |
on the use of the visual system to better achieve goals.
link |
And indeed, things like visualization
link |
and why forecasting failure can be more effective
link |
than forecasting success,
link |
as counterintuitive as that might seem,
link |
that's what the data point to.
link |
And we talked about the importance of setting concrete plans
link |
and really what that means,
link |
and what intervals at which to assess progress,
link |
and what intervals at which to assess reward
link |
and how the dopamine system is involved.
link |
And in addition, I described this practice
link |
that one can incorporate as a daily or semi-daily practice
link |
of so-called space-time bridging,
link |
of using the visual system and your ability
link |
to deliberately step your visual system
link |
from stations that are within your body,
link |
so-called peripersonal or interoceptive space,
link |
out into the world further and further,
link |
and then back again in sequence,
link |
as a way to harness and cultivate
link |
and build up these systems that link vision, space, time,
link |
reward systems, and so forth.
link |
Ultimately, as you set out to accomplish your goals,
link |
there are going to be a number of basic steps
link |
that everyone will have to follow.
link |
You'll have to clearly identify
link |
what the long-arching ultimate goal is.
link |
You'll have to identify what the milestones will be.
link |
You might not know all of them at the outset,
link |
but you ought to have some idea about the intervals
link |
at which you are going to set those milestones
link |
and set your reward schedule for assessing progress
link |
in route to those milestones and your ultimate goal.
link |
My hope is that you'll be able to incorporate these tools,
link |
if not all of them, perhaps just one of them or two of them,
link |
in pursuit of whatever particular goals
link |
you happen to be focused on at this point and in the future.
link |
If you're enjoying and or learning from this podcast,
link |
please subscribe to the podcast on YouTube,
link |
Apple, and Spotify.
link |
That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us.
link |
In addition, on YouTube,
link |
you can leave us comments and feedback.
link |
You can also leave us suggestions about guests
link |
that you'd like us to include
link |
or topics that you'd like us to cover
link |
in the comment section on YouTube.
link |
And on Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review.
link |
There's also an opportunity to leave us a written review.
link |
Please also check out the sponsors mentioned
link |
at the beginning of the podcast.
link |
That's perhaps the best way to support this podcast.
link |
And in addition, we have a Patreon.
link |
It's patreon.com slash Andrew Huberman,
link |
and there you can support the Huberman Lab Podcast
link |
at any level that you like.
link |
In today's episode,
link |
and in previous episodes of the Huberman Lab Podcast,
link |
we talked about supplements.
link |
While supplements aren't necessary for everybody,
link |
many people derive tremendous benefit from them
link |
for things like sleep and focus and so forth.
link |
It's really important that if you're going to take
link |
supplements, that they be of the absolute highest quality.
link |
For that reason, we partner with Thorne, T-H-O-R-I-N-E,
link |
because Thorne supplements have the highest levels
link |
of stringency with respect to the ingredients they include
link |
and the precision of the amounts of the ingredients
link |
they include in their products.
link |
If you want to see the supplements that I take,
link |
you can go to thorne.com slash the letter U slash Huberman,
link |
and you can see the supplements that I take
link |
and get 20% off any of those supplements.
link |
And if you navigate further into the Thorne site
link |
through thorne.com slash U slash Huberman,
link |
you can also get 20% off any of the other supplements
link |
that Thorne makes.
link |
If you're not already following Huberman Lab
link |
on Instagram and or Twitter, please do so.
link |
There I teach neuroscience and neuroscience related tools
link |
that sometimes overlap with the content of the podcast,
link |
but oftentimes is unique from the content of the podcast.
link |
Also, if you haven't already done so,
link |
please subscribe to the Huberman Lab
link |
neural network newsletter.
link |
The neural network newsletter is a monthly
link |
zero cost newsletter where I very succinctly spell out
link |
or list out protocols for things like sleep,
link |
learning, neuroplasticity, and other topics as well.
link |
You can go to HubermanLab.com, click on the menu,
link |
go to newsletter, it's a simple signup.
link |
We will not give out your email information to anybody.
link |
All our privacy policy is there, again at zero cost
link |
and the tools that are there very cleanly spell out
link |
a number of the protocols that you can hear about
link |
And in closing, I want to thank you once again
link |
for joining me in this discussion about the biology science
link |
and in particular, the neuroscience of goal setting,
link |
goal assessment, and achieving goals.
link |
And last, but certainly not least,
link |
thank you for your interest in science.