Welcome to the huberman live podcast where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew huberman. And I'm a professor of neurobiology
and Ophthalmology at Stanford school of medicine.
Today, we are talking about goal, setting and achieving goals. Now, we've done three full episodes about this topic. Previously, I did a solo episode about this
topic where I described
the Neuroscience of
the circuitry in the brain and body.
D that underlies goal-setting and pursuit. I also hosted
two expert guests who have done extensive research on these topics,
those guests were dr. Emily belch ettus from New York University and dr. Maya Shankar,
so today's episode is going to focus on the key takeaways from those three previous episodes as well as incorporate new information that has been published in the scientific literature since those episodes aired. So that by the end of today's episode, you will have a potent.
Kit for setting and pursuing
goals. We will talk about how to select
which goals to pursue. And when we will talk about how to measure your progress, we will talk about how to initiate and sustain motivation. As you pursue your goals. We are also going to dispel some prominent myths about goal-setting in Pursuit, given that this is a toolkit episode. I will talk about some of the underlying biological mechanisms for the protocols that I described. But most of what I will cover our
the
Calls themselves, the how to identify a goal, select the
best goal for you to pursue how, to initiate gold Pursuit, how to maintain goal, pursued, how to evaluate progress and how to do the post hoc analysis. After you achieve a goal, or as the case, maybe not achieve a goal. Although I am confident that if you implement, even a subset of the protocols that we cover today, that you stand the greatest possible chance of both setting, the proper goal and achieving that goal. And I can say that both with
And humility because the protocols I described were not created by me. They are gleaned from the scientific peer-reviewed literature
and they have been shown to work.
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is
separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme. I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's
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for goal. Setting a suit. I'm mostly just going to give you those protocols, but before I do
that, I want to take just three minutes.
Thomas just three minutes or less and describe the neural circuitry involved in goal, setting and pursuit. And there are two reasons to do that. First of all, the
biology of goal setting and pursuit is absolutely beautiful. It's incredible that we, and many other animals. In fact, have
this neural circuitry
and that it works in the way that it does.
But equally important is that when we have a mechanistic understanding, or framework for
how a protocol or set of protocols work, it makes it much easier to tweak those protocols and customize them to our unique needs.
Okay. So with that
said, the goal setting and pursuit circuitry, essentially consists of four major stations in the brain. Although it's important to
point out
that each of those stations
has a number of other connections that are important for the whole goal setting and
pursuit process. But we can distill things down to four, major, hubs, or stations within the brain. And those are the basal ganglia. The lateral. Prefrontal cortex, and the orbital frontal cortex.
So going through those
one by one,
The amygdala is a structure within the brain. You actually have two of them. One on each side of the brain that is involved in circuits associated
with arousal in driving levels of alertness. It's also involved in fear. You probably heard that many times before, but also things like
anxiety and actually, the amygdala can be involved in what we call
positive valence experiences, not just the bad stuff like fear and anxiety but also positive forms of arousal and even learning the
basal ganglia include a
lot of different brain structures.
But for sake of today's discussion, what you need to know is that the
Basal ganglia includes two major Pathways one is the so-called go pathway, which is the pathway involved in generating actions and the other is, the
so-called no-go pathway or the pathway involved in withholding or ceasing action.
And this is really important to understand because with all goals, we have to ask ourselves, are we trying to learn how to do something new? Or are we trying to withhold a certain set of actions? And of course, any time we learn anything, it's a process of both generating and withholding certain actions.
So we've got the amygdala and we have the basal ganglia, which has this go
action initiating and no, go
action withholding circuitry within it and then there's the lateral. Prefrontal cortex, which is involved in immediate and long-term planning and this is going to be a key component of today's discussion because we aren't going to be talking about lateral. Prefrontal cortex per se but we are going to be talking about time perception in the context of setting and
achieving our goals
because setting and achieving our goals is all about being able to
orient both.
In space knowing where we are and what we're doing. But also in
time know where we are in that
road of progress, toward achieving, our goal or crossing that finish line and repeatedly updating those Finish Lines in many cases.
And the fourth structure is the orbital frontal cortex, which like all brain areas tends to be a multitasker, does a
bunch of different things.
But for sake of today's discussion, it's important to understand that the orbital frontal cortex is involved in evaluation of our current emotional
state, and arousal state.
As it relates to our goal Pursuit. For instance, are we happy because
we are sensing progress, or are we unhappy and feeling frustrated or sad or angry? Because we are feeling that we are not achieving progress or that somehow we can't get into the sorts of actions that are going to allow us to eventually reach our
goals. Okay? So I described four, major structures all of which communicate with each other and of course a lot of other brain areas and those four structures, where the amygdala, the basal ganglia, the go and no go circuitry, the
The lateral prefrontal cortex and the orbital frontal cortex and those represent. The core components of the neural circuitry
involved in goal, setting and pursuit. Now I realize I didn't time that section so I don't know whether or not it was three minutes or less but if it was
shorter than three minutes great and if it was longer than three minutes
well I promise to shave a couple minutes off the end of this episode.
Okay so now you have the understanding that we all have the same neural circuitry for goal
setting in Pursuit. I find that amazing regardless of whether or not you want to achieve a fitness goal.
Or an academic goal or work gold, monetary goal, relationship goal. Maybe you want to just get better at relaxing. I've been told I should perhaps pursue that goal. Well, you're going to use the same neural circuits for each and any of those, I
find that incredible. I also find that very reassuring because what it means is that if we can focus on the tools and protocols, that are anchored in the
biology of goal setting and pursuit, as we understand them to exist, in all humans and indeed in other animals as well.
Well then we should have the greatest possible confidence that we will, in fact, achieve our goals.
So how do we go about doing that? Well, the first question you need to
ask yourself is what goal. Do I want to pursue and the
first protocol
for deciding? What
goal you want to? Pursue is actually quite simple one in terms of how it stated, but it's fairly complex for a lot of people to answer. And that is which specific goal. Are you going to try and pursue? Because, guess what, folks, most people who try to
Achieve many goals, simultaneously fail at all of them. This is what I call the overhaul approach
when people think. Okay, you know on January
1 or next month or next
week or perhaps, even today, I'm going to start exercising, I'm going to start meditating, I'm going to learn a language, I'm going to learn to dance. I'm gonna do all these different things and that's just too many goals. I think here is an appropriate place to highlight the word priority a priority literally means one thing that you
Place ahead of all others, these days. We hear a lot about priorities
plural, but we really should be thinking about
priority and defining our priority
for learning in a given phase. So, if you are somebody, who wants to get more physically fit or you want to learn something cognitively, that's terrific. You are allowed to have multiple goals, but I highly recommend that you first select. Just one goal, of
course you don't let go of other aspects of your mental health and physical health that you don't throw your life away and service to this one goal.
We've all seen how that goes, and it's not a pretty picture, but rather
that you continue to engage in healthy ways with the
other aspects of your life that you are proficient at or mostly proficient at but that you select one goal that you're going to try and attain. How you
select. That one goal of course is going to reflect your values, your motivation your resources, but it's very important that you spend some serious time.
Defining that one priority. That one goal for this initial goal setting. And
Suit period. And in a moment, I'll tell you how long that goal Pursuit period ought to be.
But for some people, the best way to define which goal they're going to pursue is to write out the different things that they want. And then essentially
cross off the various things that they're willing to put on hold for the time being and circle, the thing that they're really going to focus on and only that
thing. And again, this is highly individual, it's going to depend on
you, your past, your present, your future, your
resources, all of that. But having that one priority is going,
Really increase the probability that you're going to achieve your goal. Now, we also know from the scientific literature that how lofty that goal
is will impact whether or not you are able to achieve it. And I think most people mistakenly believe that if a goal is easy to achieve,
it's more likely that they will achieve that goal, sort of a duh, but in fact, the opposite
has been shown to be true. If a goal is to easy to achieve, it seems that it doesn't recruit sufficient amounts of the arousal
Network that involves the
Amygdala but a bunch of other brain structures as well. That get people
into the necessary
actions to continually pursue that goal. This perhaps should not be surprising
in order to learn something. We have to shift our nervous system into states that are somewhat
uncomfortable. They should be
safely, uncomfortable States, but they should be uncomfortable States and we're going to talk more about this as the episode continues, but any kind of successful learning or goal Pursuit is going to
involve errors. It's going to involve
Failures. It's going to involve frustration. It's going to involve anxiety. All of those states of Mind and Body. In fact, shift the brain into modes of so called neuroplasticity, they give it the
ability to change and that should make perfect
sense because if you can complete what you need to do
easily, there's absolutely no reason for the neural circuitry in your brain or body to shift in any way. Why would it rather those states? Have discomfort frustration, anxiety Etc.
Represent shifts in neurochemical states that literally open the opportunity for neural
plasticity to occur the
changes between neurons that allow
those neurons and their Associated neural circuits to perform differently in the future when we learn something.
So the key here is twofold first Define the specific priority goal that you're going to pursue and set
aside all other goal Pursuits
and in doing that it makes sense to pursue a somewhat loftier goal
then perhaps a more.
Mundane goal or if you know exactly what goal you're going to prioritize that you try and Achieve perhaps more than you think you ought to be able to achieve
within that given goal
and within the goal that you decide to prioritize. You want to set a level of progress, a level of
performance that you're striving to attain. That's a bit above what you actually believe. At this time you can accomplish
now in doing. So you are inevitably going to
encounter some frustration and anxiety
but remember the component of the
Neural circuitry that we talked about at the beginning of the episode,
the orbital frontal cortex that orbital frontal cortex is not just part of our neural
circuitry that assesses how we feel in a given moment as we're trying to pursue a goal. But it
also understands context it has the
capacity to for
instance,
see that you are experiencing anxiety,
know that you are frustrated. But now that you understand that anxiety, and
frustration that comes with making errors is actually the Gateway.
It's a necessary. Gateway to achieving neural circuit changes so called neuroplasticity.
Well, the orbital frontal cortex understands that context. It literally can take information about neuroplasticity can take information
about frustration, which you now
have, and it can combine those such that when you
experience that frustration, you experience those errors and you
previously would have wanted to quit. Now, you know that you are literally making progress. You're literally shifting those neural
circuits in the direction of improved learning.
Ting. Now
it's also important to remind that neural plasticity. The changes in neural circuits
that allow for improved performance in the
future. Does not occur instantaneously that frustration that occurs during our attempts to learn or to pursue a goal is the trigger for
neuroplasticity. The actual rewiring of neural circuits that are allows for proficient correct performance occurs during deep, sleep and other forms of deep rest. This is something I've covered extensively in episodes on neuroplasticity
and learning. And if you'd like to learn more about
Plasticity. In fact, if you'd like a zero cost
toolkit that defines, the so-called super protocol
for neural plasticity and learning. That is not just nested within the context of goal Pursuit and learning. We have that you can go to huberman labs.com. You go to the menu, scroll down to newsletter and you can sign up. It's completely zero cost and you'll get that as a brief, I believe, it's a two, or maybe three page PDF,
okay? So returning to goal setting and pursuit. First, you need to set your goal, you really should take the time required to Define your priority.
What are you going to try and learn and then you're going to pick a goal that really feels challenging that feels like it might even be Out Of Reach because that will recruit the neural circuits associated with arousal their
motivating enough to get you into action. Now I
want to be very clear. I'm not suggesting that you pick a goal that's
impossible to achieve or that you believe is impossible to achieve that's not going to serve you. Well
rather I'm saying pick a goal that feels just a bit Out Of Reach and don't obsess too much about whether or not it's a lot Out Of Reach or a little bit out of
Each pick something you're excited to pursue that you would really like to accomplish set that goal and then just set aside all other goals. Still of
course, maintain or improve other aspects of your life that are necessary for daily living for mental health, physical health Etc, but really just focus on one goal. I promise that you will be
far more satisfied with the
results if you can truly set a priority.
So once you've defined at the specific goal that you are going to prioritize, there are two more things that you need to do.
Do before you start to pursue that goal, the first one is that you need to define the
specific verbs. The actions that are involved in pursuing that
goal. This is absolutely critical. A lot of people will set a sort of title goal or a goal State. I'll
say, oh, you know, I want to be rich or I want to be
smart or they will say, I want to be fit or proficient in a given language. It's really important that you put additional specificity on your goal. In fact,
It's important that you put a lot of specificity on your goal and that you focus mainly on verbs when defining that specificity. Now, there are a lot of reasons for this that have to do both with increasing the probability that you will achieve your goal as well as maintaining motivation as you pursue that goal. So for instance, rather than saying, you want to be fit, or you want to be a better Runner or swimmer, you would want to get very specific about the verb that you're going to engage
in in order.
To achieve that goal. Now it's somewhat obvious in the case of running or swimming, I think everyone understands that. If you want to be a better Runner there is going to be some running involved. If you want to be a better
swimmer, there's going to be some swimming involved, of course, but presumably, there will be
some other behaviors as well. Everything from driving to the pool or lacing up your shoes. I mean,
there's essentially near infinite number of verbs
involved in any type of goal Pursuit. So what
we are talking about
here is
really defining the goal on a piece
of paper. And I do think that's
Important, you should write this down and I think the process of
selecting your goal that priority as well as defining the
specificity of the verb action that you're going to pursue should be done on paper. You of course are going to think but then you should write it
out seeing things on paper and writing them out by hand, with pen or pencil. Really has been shown to engage neural
circuitry in a way that is different than typing with your thumbs into your phone, which
by the way, is a new feature of human evolution. I do believe
this is the first time in human evolution that we have written
Written with our thumbs, I don't know, I don't have a time machine. I can't go back and check, but I'm willing to place a bet that that statement is
correct. So, the point is that writing things out is not only important. It's also the most effective way to
embed knowledge in our nervous system. And so I highly recommend that you write things out on a piece of paper in your process of goal setting.
So when we are talking about generating verb
specificity about your goal, it would
look like the following. So let's say, I want to quote unquote,
More fit or
learn conversational French or anything for that matter. Gardening. Maybe I want to build a gazebo in the backyard or a deck in the backyard. The
key thing to answer is what is the major block of
action that's going to be involved in pursuing that goal. So for instance,
if you want to get more fit and you're going to do that, primarily through running and weight training or swimming and weight training, you would want to get very specific in defining that priority goal, as I'm going to run X number of miles.
As per week, or I'm going to go to the gym 3 times per week to lift weights, although I would recommend getting even more specific than that. I would recommend that you literally right down, I'm going to go to the gym three times per week for a minimum of 60 minutes where 50 minutes of that are carrying out hard
work. Okay, with of course rest between sets Etc. Or
I'm going to attend three classes per
week or perhaps even just one class per
week of
Learning conversational French. Plus, I'm going to spend two hours per week of practicing say word
problems or mathematical problems.
Whatever it is. You want to Define first a priority. Then you want to define the verb action. That represents the bulk
of effort towards that priority. So running, in the case of the person who wants to get fit by running weightlifting, in the case of the person that wants to get fit by weight, lifting of the, of course, I highly recommend people do both resistance training and cardiovascular training.
Indeed, they want to be truly fit
or in the case of language learning or learning how to code or gardening or something that sort to really Define the verb actions involved and then to place specificity in terms of the amount of time
that one is going to
try to achieve each week in
pursuit of that specific priority goal. Now I
realize that that process itself takes a bit of time but when you look back on the hundred year
plus scientific literature of what leads to successful goal setting. And
Pursuit. You
find over and over again that those two components we've been talking about specificity and measurability are
Paramount. You just simply cannot discard those from the process. If you expect yourself to achieve your
goals so whether or not it's the ABC method or it's the smart method or the smarter method again, all
acronyms coin did not by me. But by
others previous to this conversation you're going to find elements of
specificity and measurability showing up again and again. So these are key features of any protocol.
That you are going to use in order to try and set and achieve your goals.
And I should mention that setting specific goals and clearly defining. The verbs that you are going to engage in to pursue those goals and defining how
long you are going to try and engage in those verbs. Each week to
achieve those goals, has significant
impact on the probability of success. We're
not talking about a minor effect. In fact,
in the original episode, I did about goal setting and pursuit. I talked about the so-called recycling.
Study. I'm not going to describe in a lot of detail right
now. But essentially, this study, looked at motivating people to recycle more recyclable products in the workplace. And what they found was that when people were told what the specific goal was and what specific actions, they needed to engage in were
and how much of a given batch of refuse. So, say, you know, after lunch, there's some boxes or some Forks, Etc, some napkins. How much of that refuse
they were going to try to put into the recycle versus the trash?
It led to a greater than doubling of successful achievement of that goal. Now, that's a perhaps trivial goal to some of you.
Although let's face it. Recycling is important but that result
has been shown again and again and again for different domains
of goal-setting a suit. So this
thing of setting specificity really spending time with it on paper setting specificity of action so which specific actions and then setting specificity of how long you are going to gauge in each of those actions each week.
Greatly increases the probability that you will achieve that. What previously seemed to be a all too lofty,
goal earlier, I mentioned that during the course of today's episode, we were going to
dispell some common myths about goal-setting in Pursuit.
So now I'd like to mention two popular
myths about goal setting in Pursuit.
The first one is that if we set a
post it you know, a little Post-it sticky where you write down
what you're trying to achieve and you put that on the refrigerator. You put that on your
That it increases, the probability that you are going
to stick to your goal.
Turns out, that is not the case. And the reason for that is that your visual system adapts to whatever is regular in your
environment, doesn't matter whether or not that environment is sparse. So it only has a few things in it or whether or not it is dense like a forest.
Anything that shows up regularly in our visual environment gets
cancelled out. This is actually a basic feature of the way your visual system is wired.
Word. So for those of you that are taking a sticky, note or a magnet or sign and putting it on your mirror and leaving it there from day to day. Maybe that says you know run 60 minutes today or study French, 20 minutes or whatever the
goal happens to be if you leave it there
day to day today it actually diminishes the likelihood of progress. I know that seems kind of hard to believe but it's true. Instead a better approach is to continually
Right that thing out each day and put up a new sticky, put it in a new place. Perhaps on the refrigerator sometimes in the kitchen, maybe on the windshield
of your car although of course remove that while you're
driving Etc. If you are going to incorporate visual reminders in your goal setting and go
Pursuit process, you want to change those each and every day. This is actually something that perhaps app developers will start to incorporate because I think the notifications that come
through on various apps designed to
remind us to do. Certain things can be helpful,
but they're to, We tend to
To attenuate to them and we simply either do not notice them where we start to swipe them away over time. So visual reminders, can be very effective if you want to use
them great you certainly don't
have to but if you're going to use them you want to update them every single day, otherwise your visual system and certainly the areas of your brain that are
associated with assessing novelty and emotionality will simply start to cancel those away.
So the first common myth that we're dispelling is what I call the Post-it fallacy. The idea that if you write something down on a Post-It,
Can
you post it in an area that you frequent every morning or every day or every night that you stand a higher probability of adhering
to what is on that Post-it? That is simply not true. You would want to replace it every day and you would also be wise to move that post it to different locations. The second myth
is that if you want to
increase your motivation toward pursuing a goal and you want
to increase the probability that you will achieve that goal that you should engage in so-called
accountability, meaning that you should tell people, you are
going to achieve that goal.
Now, I realize that there are some prominent
examples in pop culture
of people, posting something on social
media and saying, you know, in three
years I'm going to be, you know, playing in Wembley Stadium or in two years watch. I'm going to be
at the top level of my game, whatever that game happens to be sure, there are examples of that, and those are beautiful and inspiring examples.
However, the scientific data tell us that if we inform people around us,
That for instance we are going to write a
book or that we're going to start a
podcast or that we are going to run a marathon or whatever it happens to be more often than not we get feedback. That is generally positive inform I think that's
good and to be expected. Frankly, you know friend tells us, hey I'm going to write a book or
I'm going to pursue a new fitness goal or I'm going to learn a language. We say great go for it. You can totally do it. You're very likely to succeed go for it. How do you want me to support you? Is there anything I can do to support you? Those?
All are frankly, healthy exchanges. And yet the data tell us that the positive feedback that we get from others. When we
announced that we're going after a
goal activate, certain reward systems and motivation systems within our brain, that then quickly dissipate and then diminish, the probability that we will engage in the type of behaviors
that actually lead us to achieve that goal. So, we
have the Post-it fallacy and we have the myth of accountability
fallacy within the
Of goal pursuit. Of course, I'm not saying that accountability is bad to. The, contrary accountability is a great thing both to ourselves and to others it's something that we should all cultivate throughout life. I'm merely talking about the myth of accountability in the context of goal Pursuit. And I'm actually being more specific than that. I'm saying, don't tell people that you're going to go out and Achieve something prior
to initiating action toward that goal because in
fact, the positive feedback that we get will diminish the probability that we will
Continually pursue that goal in a way that allows us to achieve
it. So you could interpret the information. I just gave you as meaning that perhaps, it's better to tell someone who doubts us
that we are going to achieve a goal. And then of course they're not going to give us the positive feedback, we're not going to get all that reward circuitry activated rather we're going to get the friction circuitry
activated of us wanting to prove ourselves and overcome
the let's just say the lack of faith in our ability to achieve a goal and
indeed that
I can't work. There is evidence that can work, but then of course you have to find someone who doesn't believe in you. You have to get them to tell you. They don't believe in you and that could have all
sorts of deleterious psychological effects, that might undermine the goal Pursuit process and other things as well. So if you are lucky enough to know somebody who doubts you go
ahead, tell them that you want to pursue
your specific priority goal but
more likely than not the best thing to do is to
Simply keep that goal to
yourself. You may need to inform a family member or others of, you know, where you will.
Be
between the hours of 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. if you're going to be exercising or learning language or meditating, whatever it is during that period of
time. But what I'm referring to here is what I will call the, don't tell the world rule. Don't tell the world that you're going to achieve X, Y, or Z.
Just simply tell
yourself. In fact, I would suggest that the more time you can spend with that one or two or three sheets of paper where you defined the goal, the specific actions that you're going to take, how you're going to measure
progress, which we'll talk about it
more later.
Our time that you can spend with that goal in your mind and on that paper, the higher, the
probability that you will achieve that goal
that stands in stark contrast to telling everyone around you that you're going to achieve a certain
goal. The so-called accountability myth or the myth of accountability. Within the context of goal Pursuit would be the more specific way to describe that myth. Now
it turns out there is some utility to having one person. That is a so-called accountability, buddy. If that person is really just strictly addressing
Leti, they are reminding
you to do what you need to do or they are
asking you. Did you do what you said you were going to do? But that's a bit more of a tough. Love accountability model. What the don't tell the world rule is really about is not getting the kind of dopamine and other forms of neurochemical reward that come from. It's just simply
saying that you're going to pursue a goal because as you'll
soon, learn that dopamine and other molecules to, of course,
are going to be critically important, not just for initiating, the sorts of actions required to achieve your goals.
For re-engaging and constantly, updating your strategy to ensure that you reach your goals.
It's worth mentioning that the friction model of achieving your goals, it does work. I mean, I, for instance them, somebody that
if, you know, I were to say to a family member or friend, hey, I'm going to achieve a particular goal and they said, there's no way you can do it. That would
recruit a certain set of neural circuits and hormones and neurochemicals in me, that would make me much more likely to lean into the
required set of efforts to achieve that goal.
Goal. But there's a danger in approaching a
given goal that way.
Especially if the goal is something that you already want to pursue, which is that then a lot of your effort becomes framed in the context of making someone else wrong as
opposed to achieving the goal. And of
course, you can do two things in parallel, you can achieve, your goal, and prove somebody else wrong. But as we've talked about, in various episodes on motivation and pursuit and the dopamine system, and as we'll talk about a bit more in a few minutes, there's something tremendously powerful.
About learning how to derive pleasure from the effort process itself. That is learning to enjoy the process of pursuing, a goal for sake of that
goal for yourself, rather
than trying to pursue a goal, simply to prove somebody else wrong. I'll just tell you right now that intrinsic motivation motivation, that is directly attached to the thing that you are doing and route to a goal is the most powerful and sustainable source of motivation. As many of you know, I've been
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Only about goal-setting we haven't yet. Talked about goal Pursuit
is that you want your goal to be
measurable. And when we say measurable,
you really have to Define two things. First of all, you are going to have to Define how long you are going to pursue this
goal overall. In other words, how long you think it will take before you achieve your goal
and in addition to that, you are going to have to Define how much time you are going to spend
pursuing that goal each week or each
day. Now, there are an infinite number of
I'm blocks that one could use to answer these questions. So, for instance, you could set an overall yearly goal and you can break it down into monthly goals. Where you spend x amount of time on that goal, each week and x amount of time on that
goal, each day and essentially ladder up from the shortest time frame to the longest time frame
required to achieve that goal. And certainly all of
that is doable but that I believe is going to be an overwhelming amount of work and indeed is going to be counterproductive toward achieving your
goal.
What I recommend, which of course, is gleaned from the scientific literature. At least the consistencies or the center of mass, that is the
major findings that show up again. And again in the
scientific literature on goal setting a
Pursuit is that you establish a roughly 12 week period of time to focus
on your specific goal. Now, of
course achieving the entire goal might take longer than 12 weeks, but chances are, it's not going to take shorter than 12 weeks. Although if it does
you could simply
Close out that goal Pursuit. And then pursue another goal, there's no reason you can't do that,
but there's nothing magical about this 12-week period. But it seems to adhere to a number of things in society and culture and work schedules in seasonality,
meaning the
holidays and the shifts in the overall Seasons, that works for most goals and most people. So, a 12-week cycle or roughly 8 3 month
cycle, sometimes called the quarterly cycle of goal Pursuit, toward your particular goal.
I think is a good
macro time to focus on
and then within that 12-week cycle, to Define very clearly, how many hours each week and each day and on which days
you will pursue that goal.
Okay. So it's 12 weeks
cycle to pursue your goal. That goal might be
achieved by the end of that 12 weeks or even prior. It might not be, but you said, a 12-week cycle or
quarterly cycle or if you prefer to think about it 83 month cycle,
and then you define how many
Hours per week, you are going to spend pursuing that goal
and then you define how many hours per day, you are going
to spend pursuing that goal
and then you define which days of the
week you are going to pursue that particular goal.
I think those three numbers the 12-week quarterly AKA three months cycle the
number of hours per week and the number of hours per day and particular days that you're going to spend working on a goal
is going to be effective for ninety percent if not
Not more of different types of
goals out there. And as with defining, the
specific goal itself, I highly recommend that you write this down with a pen or
pencil is just 0, so much data to support. The fact that writing things down, ideally in complete sentences on a piece of paper
with a pen or pencil serves to reinforce
the goal setting and pursuit process, greatly increasing the probability that you will achieve those goals.
So what you're really
defining in that process
are the specific verb actions that you are going to take and the
Specific quantifiable amount of time that you are engaging in
those verb actions in order to achieve your goal. What we haven't discussed yet however is how to
define or quantify the goal itself. Now, of course, in different Endeavors you're going to have the
opportunity to
quantify and Define goal achievement in different ways. So for instance, if you want to be able to run a sub
six-minute mile or a sub five-minute mile, or if you're really impressive
sub,
Four minute mile. Well, that's a highly quantifiable goal that you can break down into a series of training steps
or Milestones meaning that you could quantify at the beginning of your goal Pursuit. How long it takes you to run a mile. You could then set out to achieve a
faster time within two weeks or three weeks. And then do the
appropriate training to achieve those numbers and simply keep updating that in order to eventually reach your quantifiable goal at 12 weeks again, you might not complete your goal,
Running a sub 5 minute, mile or sub six-minute mile at the end of 12 weeks, but perhaps if your goal is to be able to run a sub, five-minute mile by the end of the
calendar year and you're
initiating this whole goal Pursuit thing on the first of the year. Well, then you have 12 months broken into four,
three months cycles and you would essentially set the quantifiable goal. At the
end of the year, December 31st, perhaps is when you actually do that run where you hopefully would achieve that sub, 6 minute or five-minute mile, or maybe even
four minute mile
And
then you backtrack from that date and you set Milestones of goals that you're trying to achieve. That's a highly quantifiable set of goals because it is literally distance Over time.
However, in a lot of
Pursuits, in fact, I would argue in most Pursuits. You don't have that very clear, quantifiable result, you might have, for instance the achievement of a doctoral degree or a bachelor's degree or an AA degree or professional degree of some sort which represents a Finish Line.
You could perhaps even attach a grade point average or a publication goal to that,
but in most Endeavors that aren't athletic, or aren't within the realm of Finance, it becomes much harder to very clearly
Define your goal in purely quantitative terms. So that is the reason why we spend so much time talking about the measurability of the
specific amount of time that you're going to engage
in the verb actions that each day which days each week.
Week over the course of these 12-week Cycles. Because
ultimately, what's going to allow you to arrive at
successful achievement of your goal,
regardless of whether or not that goal is highly
quantifiable X. Number of dollars, X, number of minutes to complete a mile run or swim at
cetera.
Or it's something that's a bit more nebulous in terms of
quantify ability, like
conversational French, right? There's conversational French that you can learn. There's also a conversational French that incorporates humor, or that incorporates Good Humor or
perhaps, you want to get better at
writing poetry or simply spend time writing. Poetry. I can you
quantify the quality of that poetry? Well, perhaps you know, if you could win a particular prize for poetry but I think for most
Endeavors they are more
Loosely defined in terms of their quality.
If I ability, now we
can always attach. Quantify ability to the ultimate end goal if we choose. So for
instance, I could decide that I'm going to learn
conversational French and I could decide that the ultimate goal at the
end of this 12-week period is to be able to have a
10 minute conversation with somebody who is fluent in French their native born in France
and that I'm going to make zero mistakes. That's a pretty lofty goal,
but the point being that if you are picking a goal,
that is not easily quantifiable. We want to be exceptionally precise about the
amount of time that you were going to spend engaging in the specific verb actions that are going to allow you to make progress toward your goal.
Because ultimately, whether or not, it's a highly quantifiable goal where it's a more Loosely quantifiable goal. In terms of the end goal. The process
of achieving goals is always going to be in the form of actions and actions themselves are always quantifiable. Its number of hours of dedicated work toward that particular.
All a common example of an end goal, that's very hard to quantify in terms of the end goal itself is the writing of a book for instance. Now, you could set out to write an 800-page book. But most people agree that the length of the book should have something more or less to do with the content and not the other way around. In other words that you don't just want to
add a words in order to achieve a certain number of pages
that said, most all experienced
Riders will tell you, at least two things, they'll tell you
first. Don't wait for inspiration,
simply.
Set a period of time each day that you're going to write and write X
number of words or for
x amount of time each day or perhaps even just three days a week. But most of the experienced writers that I've spoken to write every single day and they write
800 words per day or two thousand words per day or 500 words per day. Whatever they can
do consistently, they may do it for time. They may do it for words but they are writing during that time, they are not waiting for inspiration to land on them. They're not trying to get optimally
caffeinated and perhaps they didn't even
Sleep that well, the night before, in other words, they are dedicated to engaging in a particular number of hours of
word generating action rather than trying to focus on getting the number one bestseller at the end after the book is published, of course they can wish for that number one position on the bestseller chart But ultimately, the
greatest probability of achieving that goal
is going to come from engaging. In a particular number of
hours of generating a particular number of words each day. So again, the highest probability of a
Achieving our goals of achieving any kind of goal is going to be by understanding the specific verb actions that we need to engage in and then quantifying the amount of time that we engage in those
specific word actions and then simply doing those verbs.
So up until now we've been talking about goal setting and we really haven't talked about gold Pursuit itself. So now I'd like to talk about what the scientific literature says is the best protocol for initiating.
Our goal Pursuit for starting toward our
And to do. So we have to
address a set of key questions, the questions you have to ask yourself are do I
want to pursue this goal? Meaning in my highly motivated to pursue this goal or even
mildly motivated to pursue this goal. Do I want to do the things involved to get this thing to accomplish this
thing or am I feeling resistance?
Do I not want to pursue this goal or
perhaps? This is a day to day. Shift that occurs where some days you're really motivated and other
days you are not
Now, the reason to ask yourself the set of
questions, is that the data say that there are two different strategies? In fact, to markedly different
strategies, that you'll want to incorporate
depending on whether or not you were motivated or you are
unmotivated to pursue that particular goal,
for whatever reason. And of course there's an entire psychology to motivation and you could get a therapist or a coach to work with in order to address that underlying
psychology. Yes, it might ladder back to Childhood issues, it might ladder back to
esteem things. None of that can be covered here in.
Sort of meaningful depth. Because frankly, we each have different circumstances, different past different psychology's.
There are however, some
universals that we can all apply in order
to help us get started toward our goal.
And this is nested in this whole
concept of whether or not we should visualize the end
and successful, completion of our goal. So keep the end in mind as we start off toward a goal, or whether or not we should incorporate a different
strategy. Here's how it goes. So if you
Yourself.
Do I want to achieve this goal and I would hope the answer is yes, because the overall goal should be something that you want to pursue. It should be something that you are deeply Desiring to accomplish. Then
you have to ask yourself next. Do I want to do the things
required to achieve that goal?
Now, maybe you don't want to do all of them, you only want to do some of them, but given that you've
now carefully Quantified, which specific actions you're going to be doing on which days of her, how many hours and how many weeks for these 12-week blocks you could
Ask yourself, do I want to do this thing today? And if the answer is yes. Well then it turns out that spending just one two, three, maybe five minutes but even just one minute visualizing the outcome, the positive outcome of course. And the feeling state that you may
have because of course, you don't know, you don't have a time machine, you can't feel yourself into the
future but you can make a good guess as to how you
might feel in the future, if you accomplish that
goal spending.
NG one, two, three, maybe five minutes in a sort of meditation, although sort of a
visualization. It's perhaps the better way to
describe it thinking about that feeling State and the outcome. And some of the things that are going to be associated with that, outcome turns out to be a great practice to engage
in, just prior to initiating, that day's work toward that goal.
However, if you arrive to your
practice, meaning you show up to the
piano to learn piano or you're sitting down to the table. Or maybe you haven't even got enough motivation to go
toward the piano. Or
Word your notebook or computer or whatever landscape it is that you are going to be pursuing your goal within and you are having quote unquote, a hard time, getting motivated toward that goal. Well then it turns
out what the scientific literature tells us is that
visualizing the end keeping the end in mind positive visualization of all the good things that you experience. When you achieve that goal is not going to be an
effective strategy to motivate you rather if you are not feeling
motivated,
Then what the scientific literature tells us is that you actually want to spend one, two, three maybe five minutes visualizing failure, visualizing how
terrible you will feel if you do not achieve your goal,
visualizing severe
consequences, perhaps
mostly of the sort like telling yourself gosh, I set a goal,
set a 12-week
block, I quantify it. I know, I want to do this here. I have the time to do it and I'm
simply just not doing it. And in that case, you would think, okay, well, you should kind of build
Self up, maybe call a friend, text her friend, get some encouragement. Know, the scientific literature tells us that when we are not motivated and it is a goal that we actually want to pursue. And of course here I'm talking about adaptive, goal, pursued, many things that are going to enrich your mental health, physical, health Etc, not things that are going to be detrimental to us.
Well then, if you're not feeling motivated, you want to spend
123 perhaps five minutes,
meditating concentrating
on what it's going to feel like to fail and the
That you are not succeeding but indeed that you are
failing and I know this sounds like rather
harsh advice that this protocol sounds like kind of a
self-flagellating protocol, it's not intended to be self-flagellation. In fact, it should not be self-flagellation. But rather what you want to do when you are not motivated, is to think about failure and what that failure at the end of
12 weeks will feel
like, and the reason for that is that the data tell us that when we visualize positive,
Comes yes. It deploys, certain neural chemicals in our brain and body that make us feel good. Although frankly if you've heard
that imagining something creates the same neurochemical and neural
circuit states in the brain as actually
experiencing that thing. That is
simply not true. That's a myth. We've talked about this in previous episodes that's simply not true but if
you are having a hard time getting motivated toward a goal that you actually
want to achieve
then spending that short amount of time thinking about how lousy
Lousy, you'll feel when you don't achieve
it, recruits certain elements of your so-called autonomic nervous system, it creates shifts in
the release of things,
like epinephrine norepinephrine, even release of the so-called reward molecule dopamine, which in fact,
is not the molecule of rewarded, is the molecule of motivation and its associated with pain, its associated with negative
thoughts, and of course, it's
associated with positive thoughts and
outcomes, but basically what I'm saying is, if you're highly motivated to do something, you're ready to go.
Spend one to three minutes, maybe five visualizing the positive outcomes that you're going to
experience when you ultimately finish out that 12 week cycle as a consequence of all the great work that you've
done. If however, you are not motivated, if you don't, like, I don't want to do this thing. I'm procrastinating, I'm just not feeling like doing it. Yes, I want to achieve the goal, but I just don't feel like doing it. Well, then your task is to
take one, two, three, maybe five minutes and think
about how much more lousy you will feel
when you do not achieve that goal, at the end of
Twelve weeks and that the data tell us recruit certain elements of your
nervous system, your hormonal system that are more successful in getting you into action,
into starting toward your goal. Then we're you to try and build yourself up towards all that positivity. So yes indeed there is a place for negative thinking,
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To process, we need to think about the
specific time domain or the amount of time that we're trying to do that within. So, for instance, there are
tools that you can use to stay motivated with in the one hour learning
block that you happen to be doing on Monday morning
for instance. And there
are other tools and protocols that you can incorporate towards staying motivated, from one day to the next or from one week to the next.
But I think the most useful of those tools are going to be the tools that you incorporate to stay motivated within a given
training block.
Walk or practice block toward your goal because what I just
described a few minutes ago was the process of how to initiate your daily
work, right? You ask yourself that
question. Am I motivated? The answer could be. Yes, could be know if you really want to get,
you know, quantitative about it, you could give yourself a 1 to 10 score 10 being the most motivated. Frankly, I'm not that quantitative about that sort of thing. A more subjective about it, but I know some of you are real number junkies, and you really like to quantify everything, keep a journal and look back. See how that relates to your sleep? You know, some people are of that.
In
tation other people like myself, are simply going to, you know,
sit down and say, okay, it's time. It's time to train or it's time to
practice whatever the thing. Maybe how motivated am. I don't like a 6 out of 10 or a seven out of ten. Okay, I'm ready to go. I'm going to visualize the end in mind in a positive way or
if I'm a 2 out of 10 or anything less than a 4 out of
10 and thinking, not that motivated. So that I'm going to basically scare myself into doing the work that day. So that's how you initiate the work each day. And I just gave you a couple of quick examples of how you could
Quantify that took me about 30 seconds to do that example out loud, take you about 30 seconds to do but again if you want to quantify it in more detail and write it down and related to other things, be my guest.
So now you already have a science based protocol
for how to get started each day toward your
goal. Now, what about within the
one or two hour block, or perhaps 90-minute block, that you're going to use to pursue your goal. And
here, it's very important that you have a number of tools
that will allow you to both
At the
optimal amount of
focus so that you're really concentrating on pursuing that goal. Your concentrated on the verb actions that will deliver you to. That goal is perhaps the best way to state that
and that you can constantly update or renew your
level of focus, should it start to dissipate? Now, I want to be clear. I've done entire episodes about focus and how to increase focus with behavioral tools. Everything related to meditation which indeed can increase your ability to focus.
Focus. I've talked about nutritional tool, supplementation
tools prescription drug related tools. There's a lot of information on
that you can simply go to huberman.
Lab.com, put focus into the search function and it will take you
to not only those episodes and the toolkit for that, but the specific time stamps for that,
but we are going to talk about now is not about how to increase Focus per se rather
it's about how to use. Focus in particular visual focus in order to increase your
or maintain your level of motivation within a
You've been learning block, within a given batch of time
on a given day where you are pursuing your goal. You're engaging in that practice which of course, will include frustration. Anxiety. It has to if you're going to get any better and how
to set that motivation, and keep that motivation
throughout that hour or 90 minutes or 2 hours is
critical. So, how do you do that? Well, it turns out it's fairly straightforward, so it's anchored in the
fact that your cognitive Focus, your ability to
maintain a narrow cone of attention,
as well as your bodily state of
Readiness.
And your mental state of Readiness to perform work is
powerfully anchored to your visual system.
As many of you have, heard me say before
your eyes are actually two pieces of brain. I mean, to be more specific, the neural retina has that line the back of your eyes. Like, pie crusts
are
literally two pieces of your central nervous system of your brain that were extruded from the cranial Vault during development. So yes, these two bits and for those listening, I'm just pointing to my eyes, your eyes.
Are two pieces of brain outside of your skull and your eyes can view things broadly. So you can so-called soften your gaze and view the entire Horizon. You can see the periphery of the room by relaxing your eyes, you can actually do this. Now, in fact, when you drive, most of the time you're doing this, you're not looking in a particular. Focal point is reviewing things in so-called
panoramic vision and of course, you can
draw your visual Focus to a particular location. What we call a vergence eye movement, that is
you're bringing your eyes in toward the center, toward your nose a little bit, and you're focusing them in a more narrow.
Cone
of visual attention. This is something you can
do almost imperceptibly to others. Although if
we were to measure your eye movements what we would see is that your eyes are
actually moving inward, a little bit toward your nose. When you do this virgins, eye movement and narrowing that cone of visual
attention and then they're relaxing into a state of being slightly
further out from your
nose. Not the eyes themselves, of course, they can't move within the sockets, but the pupils of your eyes are moving out a bit from your nose, and your, in so-called
Panoramic Vision.
So essentially what I'm saying is that you can
narrow or broaden your visual attention and that's something that can take a little bit of practice. I highly recommend that you try this and you practice it a little bit
but indeed everyone has the neural Machinery to do this from birth. This is not something that requires neural
plasticity to be able to do you can do this right now. You can
narrow your visual attention. You can
expand or relax your visual attention and thereby narrow or relax, your visual field from being smaller or larger
There are data that
show that when we narrow our visual attention and we
hold that narrow visual tension on a
spot several things happen. First of all, there's recruitment of circuitry within the so-called brain stem that then deploys neurochemicals that increase our level of
alertness and arousal. That's right. When you focus your
visual attention on a more narrow location or one location in front of you. And you hold that Focus. You are causing
The release of neurochemicals that increase
your overall level of alertness in the brain and body. Conversely. When you relax your visual Focus so-called panoramic Vision you are turning off that recruitment, you're not actively recruiting molecules for
relaxation within the brain, but you are turning
off this release of the neuro chemicals associated with increasing, focus and arousal. So why am I talking about this in the context of goal Pursuit? Well, if you are
feeling
Lack of motivation at any point within a given
training block, or bout ISM calling it. This could be at the beginning, this could be five minutes in, this could be half an hour in,
you would be wise to pick a visual Target. Ideally a visual Target that is within the general range of the work that you're trying to perform. In other words, if
you're doing desk work or the piece of paper, you would draw that visual Target on a piece of paper. Approximately, the same distance that you were reading or that you were looking at music. You can tell how little
Playing a piano I've done in my life but the point being
that you set the visual Target at approximately the same
distance that you would be performing your particular work. So if you're doing a sport, the distance might be some many meters off in the distance. Whereas if you're doing desk work of some kind then it might be much closer
and then you focus your eyes on that location and you
actively work to maintain that Focus just like I'm doing now into the camera
for a given period of time and I recommend that you set a timer
And that you, of course, allow yourself to Blink. Like, I just did there and that you try and Achieve at least 30 seconds, but even better would be 60 seconds. Even better would be 90 seconds of that
focused virgins. Eye
movement during which several things
happen, including the deployment of those neural chemicals from the brain stem that I talked about before which are going to increase your level of autonomic arousal and also increase your level of focus further. And there, I'm not just talking about visual Focus, I'm talking about cognitive Focus.
It has also been shown that when we focus on a particular point in the way that I'm describing here, that it increases our so-called systolic blood pressure. As many of, you know, blood pressure is always described to us as a given number over another number. And the first number is the so-called systole or systolic pressure, which is the amount of pressure,
your vascular system. When the heart beats as the fluid of, your blood is pumping through the arteries, veins and capillaries of your system. And then the bottom number
Is the amount of pressure within those arteries veins and capillaries in between heartbeats. Oh it's the systolic over the diastolic
and what we know is that visual focus and here. I'm still holding my now on the
camera. So for those of you listening, I probably blinked once or twice but I'm really trying hard to maintain my focus directly within the
camera. This visual Focus increases the systolic blood pressure. It increases the deployment of those neurochemicals from the brainstem and we know it also can recruit
Route. The Liberation of molecules such as dopamine and some Associated molecules elsewhere in the brain that together act in a synergistic way to increase our level of focus and motivation. This is based again on work, describing the neural circuitry of what I'm describing here and work from Emily. Belch Edison's lab, which has shown that if people focus on a Target on a goal-line, literally, a physical location within their environment and then they initiate some work. It could be physical work.
Cognitive work. Not only do they experience. Significantly decrease levels of perceived
effort while engaging in that work but they also complete that work in a significantly reduced amount of time.
Meaning that within a given training, Valtor, training block, you are able to get significantly more work done and you perceive that as less
effortful or requiring less effort than had you not done this visual Focus. Now,
I've been doing this for quite some time now into the camera. This is actually a
practice that I've been doing for well over
Over a decade and it's actually a practice that I use when I podcast or when I post on social media. It's part of the reason why I'm accused of being a non blinker, quite often.
But I want to remind people that you are allowed to Blink, don't let your eyes dry out. It's perfectly fine to Blink. It's not going to inhibit
the effectiveness of this protocol, but
I don't think I can really overstate how valuable this sort of protocol is first
of all, it's completely behavioral. It costs nothing, it's completely safe as long as you remember to
blank, and it allows you to increase your level of focus.
Level of motivation and the sustainability
of your focus and motivation while in goal Pursuit. So it's a quite
valuable protocol to incorporate and it's something that you can
do once for 30 seconds and then lean into whatever it is, you're writing process, you're running process. It's something that you could do
repeatedly throughout that learning about and it's something you can practice offline, a little bit away from that training bout as a means to sort of learn and get familiar with so that then you can incorporate it very
quickly and repeatedly and with much more effectiveness
It's during these different learning doubts.
Again, it's a highly valuable tool, that's grounded in neural, circuitry grounded in neurochemistry and that Emily Bell Chet has. His lab has shown in numerous
domains physical Pursuits, cognitive Pursuits can really help people achieve their goals and to achieve them more easily or at least with less perceived
effort and more quickly. Now, we can get a bit more granular about the incorporation of this tool, this protocol, but before we do, we should acknowledge that all of the things that lend
themselves to
Improved, cognitive focus and physical ability. Still hold true, right? You still need to get good sleep as many nights of your life as you possibly can. You still need to eat properly? You still need to
try and limit your stress. We have podcast episodes related to all of those topics we have tool
kits available at zero cost, relate to all of those topics.
I'm not saying that this visual
Focus or visual Target Training is the only tool that you should incorporate. It's a tool that you want to superimpose
on the foundation of all the things that
bring you.
To your practice with the best possible cognition, the best possible physical Readiness. And that when added to that Foundation of excellent sleep. Excellent nutrition. Social connection sunlight in the morning etcetera, is going to increase the probability that you're going to make those learning about as effective as
possible. Now, some of you may be thinking
elevating your blood pressure is bad. Why would I want to elevate my blood pressure?
Well, it turns out that it's increases in systolic blood pressure, achieved with this visual Target Training or focusing on a finish.
Fine, for some period of time are transient and they are perfectly safe. So essentially what it does is it
boosts or bolsters, the activity of the autonomic nervous system. It kick-starts the deployment of those chemicals, and those neural circuits that then allow you to be motivated for some period of time. But then
that is a transient increase in
autonomic arousal which is why perhaps every 20 minutes or perhaps on the hour you might stop, do a 30-second. We're 62nd visual Target Training than lean back into your
The process of however, you it is, you are pursuing your goal.
I should also mention that, if your eyes are getting
tired, doing, whatever goal Pursuit, you happen to be engaged in. It's also a good idea to go into that panoramic, Vision mode. The easiest way to do that, is to go outside or to be outside and to view a horizon and not look at any one particular point on the horizon, but if you're indoors as I am, now you can also just relax your eyes blinking, a few times. And getting rid of that vergence, eye movement, and
try and visualize the corners of the
room where the
To
the room, rather the floor and the ceiling all at once. That's a good way to explain how to so-called relax your eyes and take you out of that virgins. Eye movement, I say this because a lot of people will
feel when they're pursuing their goal, that's
kind of fatiguing. So you have to remember to Breathe, Right? You still want to breathe as you're
pursuing your goal and you certainly want to be visually focused on your goals for your cognitively focused
on your goal in your motivated. But that from time to time you also, relax, take a moment. Shake things off. Look into your panoramic Vision mode, and then go back to your mode of goal, pursued.
Shoot. Now, there are a few other protocols that might seem, oh, so simple. But frankly are, oh, so effective that I'd be remiss if I didn't mention them. The first of those is actually something that I'm borrowing from Tim Ferriss who did a post on Instagram, which we will link to, which I think is just spectacular, which is 30 things
that he wished, he had known when he was
20. And while the internet is chock-a-block full of such less that particular list is truly impressive, those are things that I too
wish I had known.
When I was 20 but also when I was 30 and 40 and so on
but one particular thing on that list of
30 is particularly relevant now
which is that the best productivity app is already on your
phone which is to put your phone into airplane mode or more ideally and this is the one that I
try my best to incorporate to Simply
turn the phone off and remove it from my workouts or my attempts to learn language or my attempts to learn anything. I realize that some people need to keep their phone with them.
For reasons related to communicating with family or coworkers, Etc, that's
fine. If you need your phone but to the extent that you can remove yourself
from distractions, that's certainly going to enhance your ability to focus on what you need to focus on in pursuing your goals. That's or stands without saying it's kind of a DOT. And yet I think a lot of people are
searching far and wide for the productivity
app for the secret hack, for the thing that's going to allow them to be productive. And often times, there are dues actions that we can take in order to become more productive. We're talking about
Those today, we talked about those in other episodes, but there are, of course, important don'ts. So don't have your phone facing up with Wi-Fi and cellular service on. If you want to be productive at something that doesn't involve your phone. Ideally, you'll turn it over, you'll turn it off, you'll get rid of it. You'll put in the Next Room. If you're like me, you'll sometimes lock it in the car. I think the most
extreme that I've ever gone to ensure that I
didn't engage with my phone during goal Pursuit was during the early
days of having my laboratory and I was writing multiple
grants.
In parallel, which is an
immense amount of work, I would walk into the laboratory in the morning and I would hand a student or
postdoc my phone and I'd say don't give this back to me until 5 p.m. And if I ask for it back if I even ask for it, once everyone in the lab gets $500, there were quite a few people in my lab and so it's a significant cost to that and I must tell you there were numerous times throughout the day when I impulsively, just thought. Okay, I'm going to need my phone. Damn it. I don't want to have to do it and I also wanted to demonstrate to them that I
could create an incentive
system whereby I could
With Scruff myself into getting the work done and indeed much to their dismay. I never once had to pay them out. Although when we got the grants and indeed, even when we didn't get the grants, I did take them all to dinner.
Now, another key protocol for maintaining motivation, while pursuing your goals stems from our understanding of the dopamine
reward and motivation. Pathways topics for which I have done multiple indeed three podcast episodes previously and we can
provide a link to all three of those as well as the
toolkit.
That we published and that's available to you at zero cost. On
our website about
how to regulate dopamine, both
Baseline, dopamine stores, and Peaks and dopamine. There's a lot there to be understood and Incorporated,
because it has to do with various things, not just in the realm of goal, pursued, but also feelings of well-being, staving off,
depression, things of that sort. The dopamine system is linked to 0. So many important aspects of Life far too many.
Then we could discuss right now. And we have those previous episodes in which we do discuss.
That material nonetheless,
it is important to understand that dopamine is the molecule of motivation and to some extent reward, but really motivation and that if you want to maintain consistent motivation, during
say your individual bouts of work toward your goals
and from one bout to the next, not just within a
session. But from day to day across sessions and from week to week and indeed,
From 12 week cycle to 12 week cycle, if that's required and from one goal
that you set to the next goal that you define
and decide to pursue, you want to understand this particular feature of dopamine, which is that
yes, dopamine and its release is
highly valuable toward getting more motivated and feeling more motivated but that it
has certain
properties related to things like dopamine, reward prediction error,
baselines of dopamine Etc.
That make it the case. That if you reward yourself,
every time you reach a milestone, say you finish out an hour or two hours of work. So you treat yourself to something, you reward yourself that you are going to diminish,
both the potency of that
reward and you're going to reduce your motivation over time. That might be surprising to you, but if you were to watch those episodes, it would all become clear. As to why that is the case. It is
also true that if you were to only reward yourself
when
You accomplish your goal or perhaps more commonly? If you look at the accomplishment of your goal, as the only reward in the whole process of goal Pursuit, an achievement that is going to undermine your probability of success as well. Rather the
best way to incorporate the
mechanics of the dopamine system such that you can
achieve, not just immediate motivation but ongoing motivation is to incorporate what is
referred to as random intermittent reinforcement.
Which is what the casinos used to keep people playing and it simply means
randomly reward yourself and randomly
don't reward yourself for successful completion of Milestones. Those Milestones could be
within It Bout of
effort or it could be across bouts of
effort. So let's say you set out at the beginning, on your piece of paper to basically let's say run or practice at some cognitive Endeavor, four hours, total per week and you're going to do that Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And
Saturday, should you reward yourself at the end of each session? Should you reward yourself at the end of each week? The answer is it depends and it should
depend in a random intermittent way. So the simplest way to do this is whenever you complete a milestone could be,
at the end of a day, you did
your one hour, whatever it was that you designated. You were going to do on that particular day, should you reward yourself cognitively or with some physical thing.
I don't know what that physical thing might be, but it don't know. Could be.
A meal could be a movie. Could be something that you
enjoy. Well, the answer is you should flip a coin and if it's heads
yes, reward yourself and if its Tail's don't, it's that simple. It is that simple. It should be
50/50
probability and it's random as to whether or not you reward yourself. Now,
with physical rewards, like monetary rewards, are food rewards or a movie or participating in something else that you enjoy. It's a bit easier to define the cognitive rewarding of One's Own
effort.
Something that people really struggle to comprehend. But what I'm not referring to, when I say cognitive rewards is, I'm not referring to saying yes, I'm the best and really trying to shower yourself
with internal praise and tell yourself that you're the greatest thing that ever happened. Simply because you perform this learning about what I'm simply referring to is the kind of internal dopamine reward that comes from telling yourself. Like,
yes, I'm making progress. I'm making progress. I'm on the path. I'm able to set a goal and achieve a goal which might seem like a healthy thing to do.
Ooh psychologically. And in fact
it is it's great and I think
it's really important. That people be
able to self reward themselves, especially self reward for
verbs that put them in a more adaptive stance in life that enhance their mental health, physical, health, and performance. And that, of course also includes relationships. We're not just talking about solitary Pursuits. Here, we're talking about Pursuits that bring us into the world that allow us to lean into life with more Vigor and with more Effectiveness, not just to help ourselves but to help
others. So what I'm referring to is completing something and internally padding.
Self on the back for having completed that thing.
That is a good thing to do, but if you want to maintain ongoing motivation, you're not going to do that every time, you're not going to punish
yourself but rather you
finish out about of learning you flip the coin. Let's say it lands. Tails on that day, you simply shift into the next thing
you need to do that day. Now,
it is not easy to suppress thoughts.
We know this, it's very hard to suppress negative thoughts
but it's still hard to suppress positive thoughts. So internally if your
Glowing from the fact that you performed. Well, don't try and suppress that. That's okay, but if you flip a Tails,
then you don't want to actively engage in a self reward process. However, if you flip the
coin and it's heads, well, then you should absolutely engage in a self reward process. And that process should consist of 30 to 60 seconds of closing your
eyes. You don't have to works better if you close
your eyes and simply thinking about the fact that, yes, you can set a goal, you can engage in the specific, set of
questions. Do I want to
do this practice today?
Do I not want to do this practice day and then the specific set of actions maybe they involve visual focus and the other tools we talked about turning off of your phone, Etc. You are somebody who
can get things done. You are somebody that is moving forward toward your particular goal. And so you just sort of
create a little bit of a positive cognitive loop
around that ability that you are. In fact building
up. And that's something that people often Overlook, which is that not only is moving toward a goal, great, because
it
establishes more robustness in
In the neural circuits that allow us to
perform that thing right? I mean after all that's what learning is eventually you don't achieve the same frustration and errors that you do when trying to perform that thing. Eventually you learn how to play the piano, you learn how to speak conversational, French. You run that Subs six-minute mile
but also the neural circuits associated with self-generated motivation. And with the
tools that we're talking about themselves are subject to neuroplasticity. So those become more robust and that's fantastic. Because when you eventually reach one goal,
I would hope that you would then update and set out to achieve another goal and you will find that over time, you will be more effective in achieving other goals by virtue of the work that you did in pursuing a previous goal. Because ultimately, it's really about defining goals and then learning how to quantify the actions required and then engaging in those actions. So there's the specific circuits involved in
generating those
actions which are very goal specific and then there are the circuits, which circuits are
We talking about or talk about that, amygdala the lateral,
prefrontal cortex the orbital frontal cortex. And the basal ganglia, we talked about earlier that have been built up that have been
reinforced because as I mentioned, there is one universal circuit for goal Pursuit and
achievement. So, Random intermittent reinforcement is the key. And while I spent a good amount of time, talking about self-generated cognitive reinforcement, this also applies to any kind of
physical rewards, the movie that you're going to reward yourself with the ice cream cone, the whatever that you're going to.
Reward yourself
with perhaps its monetary perhaps its food, perhaps, its social
random intermittent rewards are the ones
that are going to keep you motivated and are going to best increase. The probability of success, not just within a given bout of learning, not just day to day, not just week-to-week, not just quarter to quarter. But across the lifetime,
an important protocol to
incorporate in your goal. Pursuits is one that I learned from dr. Maya Shankar, when she was a guest on the huberman lab
Cast. And she talked about the so-called middle problem. The
middle problem is the fact that people tend to have a lot of motivation at the outset of pursuing a goal.
Although you now know that sometimes or some people don't have a lot of motivation when pursuing their goal at the start. So they need to think about failures and how terrible everything will be and then they will certainly have motivation. It's going to be a fear-based motivation. But
in general people tend to have more motivation at the start of pursuing a goal and at the
And when they get close to, or they start to perceive the finish line, but that most people experience, the so-called middle problem, we're in the middle of a learning about or in the middle of the week or in the middle of a 12-week cycle,
they are less motivated and this is actually been Quantified in numerous studies and there are several ways to
overcome the middle problem. The simplest one is to acknowledge it to recognize that it's coming. And so when it does come and your experience
seeing lower levels of motivation,
perhaps even increased failure
rates and you're not performing as well. You're getting frustrated to know that that's a natural process
that everybody experiences and just knowing that can sometimes allow people to move through that
to the place where then they can sense the end of the learning about
or they can sense that they're making some progress, the finish line is there, and then they get that increase in motivation again.
However, sometimes the middle problem is such a problem that people
Need some tools to move through it. And the best way to move through the middle problem or in fact to eliminate, it is actually to make the middle of a learning about its own separate thing that you acknowledge the presence of and that you break up into
three separate ballot. So here we're talking about
carving up the one hour learning Valtor, the to our learning about into an initial
phase where you either have
naturally occurring motivation, or you use it fear-based visualization to increase your motivation. You lean into that. And then
It's assume it's a one hour learning about and then at about the 25 minute Mark you start to experience lower levels of focus perhaps then you use the visual Target protocol but then you go back into your bout of
learning and
you're not feeling very motivated. It's hard. Your mind is drifting. You want to pick up your phone, you want to do other things. You find yourself doing other things. That's the period of time to take. Say the 25 minute to 45-minute period within the session and divide it in two, perhaps three or even four smaller.
Of time. And you perhaps have
heard of chunking before chunking is
simply breaking something down into smaller chunks, that are more achievable, simply what we're talking about here,
but really chunking up that middle section of a learning about can be very effective at essentially eliminating, the middle
problem. Now for those of you that are going to be really nitpicky, you'll say wait you take that
20 minutes from The 25-minute, Mark to the 45-minute Mark, within your, our learning about and you divide it up into four little chunks. And in those two middle chunks, I'm going to feel the middle problem.
Those two middle chunks. Ah well that's not actually the way it pans out. Fortunately, when you break things down into small enough chunks, you eliminate the middle problem and you
experience sustained motivation. Now, the
extreme interpretation of that would have you measuring every minute or even every second of a learning about and having consistent
motivation throughout that because, for instance, if you can concentrate for 10 seconds, why wouldn't you simply be able to just mark off? Ten Second increments? Well, at
some point the marking
off or the monitoring of those.
Prince is going to be distracting toward the thing that you actually want to do. So
the simple thing to do is to
acknowledge the middle problem, right? The fact that
we have more motivation to start and at the end of
our goal Pursuit sessions than we do with in the middle and then to Simply chunk
that middle section into three, maybe four smaller chunks. And if you need to incorporate things like the visual Target protocol one or three or perhaps even eight times with in that middle section. So be it it's
going to help you move through.
With better focus and better motivation.
And what I just described can of course be
applied to the longer bouts of effort that don't occur just during one learning about but perhaps across the week. So for instance, if you are doing four days a week
of language learning or Fitness training so maybe it's a Monday Wednesday, Friday, Saturday type of
schedule you may notice
that in the middle of the week the Wednesday training session tends to be the one that you're less motivated to do for whatever reason. There could be any reason at all for which the motivation is lower, in the middle of the
week, it doesn't matter well.
Case you would want to First acknowledge the presence of the middle problem.
So you would want to acknowledge that that
Wednesday training about is prone to the middle
problem because it is indeed the middle problem. It's in the middle of the Monday and the Friday training ballots.
So then you would want to approach it with the understanding that it's going to be there and that you are going to need tools and
protocols, that will allow you to overcome it by, for instance, taking
that one or two hour session on Wednesdays and putting a bit more
time toward a visual Target protocol at the
beginning.
To increase your focus a bit more visualizing failure, if you are feeling
a motivated that means not motivated and nerd speak, a motivated toward
doing that Wednesday session and you would want to break up that once a session into smaller chunks.
So instead of
looking at that two
hour session, you might break it up
into a series of 15 minutes,
smaller learning, bouts done consecutively back-to-back and then in doing so you have essentially taken that Wednesday session and I'll bet that it becomes at
Least among your most motivated sessions.
So, the middle problem exists. It's important to acknowledge and there are tools to overcome the middle
problem on any time scale. You simply have to Chunk Up the middle
and approach things with deliberate increased Vigor. Just as you would you know if you're running and there's always a tough Hill, you have to really sore gear up for attacking that
hill and then to do that, repeatedly in those smaller chunks until you've completed that session.
So today I've been talking about how to approach goal setting in Pursuit, at an inner Realm.
The specific times that one
is engaging in goal setting and pursuit the writing down of goals, defining of goals, the timing and then the actual training sessions, or the practice sessions toward achieving that
goal, what I haven't talked about is, how to
show up to all of that in the best possible State of Mind and Body in order to achieve the best possible result. And of course, there are numerous things that we need to do in order to quote-unquote show up at our best where we would stand the best possibility of
Performing our best and learning the
best.
In those learning about things like getting adequate sleep, getting sunlight in her eyes early in the day
adequate and proper nutrition
social connection. And so on talked, about all of that in previous podcast episode. So I'm not going to talk about those again
now, but it is important to recognize that the backdrop
of Our Lives. How well we've slept, what's going on in our personal lives will all Impact things like motivation.
And frankly, our ability
to even identify what's important because, you know, if we're dealing with a Health crisis or someone close to us is dealing with the health.
Isis. We tend to have our attention diverted toward that, but I do want to acknowledge all of
that because it is critically important in
defining, how you're going to show up to these Endeavors and for that matter, all Endeavors. Now, with that said, there are a
few things that you can do in order to try and optimize your ability to focus and your level of motivation during your goal
Pursuit. And there are some really
interesting data and protocols that I haven't talked
so much about on this podcast ever that are relevant to today's discussion.
And at this rate,
It's to our so called circadian rhythms in attention. We have a robust rhythms in our
ability to focus and our level of motivation that vary across the 24-hour AKA circadian cycle.
With a regular rhythmicity. That is independent of how badly we want a
goal, or how afraid, we are of failure, right?
All the stuff about motivation, and fear of failure, and
desire etcetera, all of that is still
true, but we all have a naturally occurring. Rhythm of Rock
Rise and
fall and return to rise and fall of our levels of attention and motivation. And this is
something that's been described beautifully
in the scientific literature. In
fact, I'll provide a link to what I consider a really nice review on this topic. This is a review that was published by Pablo Valdez in the Yale Journal, biology and Medicine in 2019. Entitled circadian rhythms in attention and there's a lot of information within this review, but we can distill out of couple of
useful gems from it. So
if you are, somebody who is embarking
Getting on the pursuit of a goal which is particularly hard that's going to require a really high level of motivation and focus. Know that there are three times during the day when you stand to have the greatest level of
focus and attention. And of course, this will vary depending on when you went to sleep at night, and when you wake up,
there's natural variation in circadian rhythms. But it's worth knowing that most people find that their level of attention and motivation is going to be highest 30 minutes. Three hours and 11
hours after way.
Waking up. Okay,
so 30 minutes three
hours and 11 hours after waking up.
And this relates to a number of important, biological principles related to circadian shifts in body temperature,
which are also related to the Circadian shifts. That means changes around the 24-hour cycle in the release of particular drill chemical. So the amount of dopamine
available to be released by
any sort of goal. Pursued. A reward, the amount of
Serotonin available. Lots of neurochemistry in there, lots of neural.
Retreat. But these heightened levels of focus and motivation. That just occur naturally, regardless of
what goal, one is trying to pursue, in fact, regardless of whether or
not, you're trying to pursue any goal, 30 minutes, three
hours in 11 hours after waking, your focus and motivation are going to be their greatest relative to other times in that 24 hour cycle. Now, as I tell you this, I can imagine that. Some of you are thinking, great. I'm going to schedule
one bout of goal, Pursuit, three hours after waking in another one, eleven
hours after waking
If you can do that, and that fits with your work and
other demands of Life,
your relationships, Etc. Terrific. However, I
don't want this 30-minute three hour and 11, our
protocol to be considered a rule.
And here's why most people don't have a tremendous degree of
control over their schedule,
things like work, and family, and other demands constrain them in
terms of when they can get the work in. And while I do think it's extremely valuable to schedule the specific time or roughly.
The specific time even though that's an oxymoron. Meaning a period of time during the day, say
before 9, a.m. or
between 9:00 and noon that you are going
to carry out your goal Pursuit Endeavors. I've talked about this in previous podcast, some people do very well by scheduling an exact time
from noon to
2:00. I'm writing other people like myself, do a little
better if I set a constraint, but
it's a little bit broader such as I'm going to exercise before 9. A.m. that could be anytime before 9 a.m., or I'm going to
engage
Age in language, learning sometime between say, 6, p.m. and 9 p.m. as opposed to setting a specific time.
That's just what works best for me. People vary in terms of whether or not they respond best to setting a specific time or a Time block, and setting up these kind of barriers after, which you are essentially telling yourself, you won't do it. But and this is a very important but
It is most
important that you actually engage in the goal Pursuit. And I experienced this recently, I'm trying to run
more these days. I still
enjoy doing resistance training. I still run
three days a week, but I'm trying to run a little bit
longer as opposed to just doing the one long run per week and then
a two shorter runs later in the week. I've
talked about this in my optimal Fitness, protocol episode, if you want to check that out, or check out the PDF where it's all distilled down to one or two pages. If you like, but in any event these days I'm trying to extend the amount of time.
I'm running. I'm just enjoying that. It's kind of a throwback for me, too. When I ran across country as a senior in high school and this was the time of year when I would start getting ready for the fall season. So I'm enjoying running more and just this last week I had the experience of having a very
full Sunday and that's usually day when I run in the morning or hike during the
middle of the day. And I simply did not get around to it because I had a lot of other important things to do. And what I found was 9:00
p.m. rolled around 10 p.m. rolled around, and I started
thinking
I wish I had gone running. My Monday was going to be busy. So what did I do? I
laced up my shoes and I went for a run at 10:00 p.m. something. I haven't done since
college, or maybe even high school and I ended up running for 90 minutes from 10 p.m. until 11:30 p.m. definitely, not the optimal time for me to go running. In fact, I was thinking, oh this is might disrupt my sleep but in fact it didn't I came back. I showered had a little bit of food which normally I don't eat that late and I slept like a baby and I felt great the next day waking up at my normal time, which cuse me to another important?
Vic fact, that relates to protocol and protocol
flexibility, which is something that I gleaned from a
colleague of mine at Stanford School of Medicine who works in the Sleep laboratory and I intend to have him as a guest on this podcast which is
that much of our subjective feelings of
energy and well-being during the day have to do
not just with how well,
and how much we slept the night before. But
how positively we view, our previous day's experiences and how positively we
view our
Next day and in fact that same day for suits and experiences. So
in other words how we feel about our previous day performance, and how we
feel about what we're about to embark on during our
day can increase our energy and that might seem obvious to a number of you. But these days as I and many others out there
talking so much about the importance of sleep, which is, of course, essential you do want to get great sleep as many nights of your life as you possibly
can. And if you don't sleep much for a given night, hopefully
it's for reasons that you enjoy and
Things like a party or a wedding or you know use your
imagination but it's also the case that when we successfully complete something that
we told ourselves that we are going to do, we feel great about it and that if it means that we sleep a little bit less or that we have to do our practice bout you know
at 3 p.m. or 2 p.m. a time of day when we're really ordinarily in the trough of attention and we have to use 20 different tools or one tool 20 different times in order to get through that. Bout of learning. The fact that we complete it leaves
us with a feeling of accomplishment.
And I'm certain, although I don't know exactly which that there are
neural chemicals and hormones that reflect that.
It's almost a certainty going to involve dopamine and
other neurochemicals,
but the point is not to get reductionist about it. The point is that yes,
heightened attention. And focus occur naturally 30 minutes.
Three hours in 11 hours after waking. But the really important thing about all of this goal, setting and pursuit is to do it to get it, done to set the goal to do it, specifically make it quantifiable,
when you're going to do it, make it about
Verve states. And
And simply do it.
Thank you for joining me. For today's discussion all about science based,
protocols for how to set and pursue your
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