Essentials: Tools for Setting & Achieving Goals | Dr. Emily Balcetis

0:00 Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials,

0:01 [music] where we revisit past episodes for the most

0:04 potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health,

0:08 physical health, and performance.

0:11 I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology

0:14 and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.

0:17 And now, for my discussion with Dr.

0:19 Emily Balcetis.

0:20 Well, thanks for being here.

0:22 It's my pleasure.

0:23 Yeah, I've been looking forward to this for a long time,

0:26 uh because as a vision scientist uh who is also

0:29 very interested in real-life tools and goal setting and motivation,

0:33 your work lands squarely in the middle of those interests.

0:36 Just to kick things off,

0:38 you could tell us just a little bit about goal setting and goal retrieval.

0:43 What's the deal with vision and motivation?

0:45 How do those two things link up?

0:47 When psychologists ask people like, "How are you What are you doing to help make

0:50 progress on your goals?" They say all kinds of things.

0:52 A couple of things always pop to the top, which is, you know,

0:55 self pep talks or I remind myself of how important it is to to do this job

1:00 or put up post-it notes around uh to like

1:02 constantly be nagging me about what I need to do.

1:05 All of that takes a lot of time and effort and commitment.

1:08 And so, what a surprise that people burn out, right?

1:11 It's exciting to work on a goal when you when you first set it,

1:14 you might make some initial progress, but then eventually we get you know,

1:18 not even to the halfway point before things get real.

1:22 Things are are challenging and we fall by the wayside.

1:24 So, then I you know, with my team, I was trying to think of like,

1:27 "Well, what are strategies that don't require

1:28 as much effort that we can automate, that we can take advantage of what's

1:31 already happening within ourselves, within our body,

1:33 within our mind that might overcome one of those challenges?"

1:38 And that's when we started to land on the idea of vision.

1:40 And we thought, [clears throat] "You know what?

1:41 There are strategies that we can use to look at the world in a different

1:44 way and that we can [clears throat] automate

1:47 that might help us to overcome some obstacles, to make progress on our goals,

1:52 to maybe literally see opportunities that we hadn't been able

1:55 to see before." You've published a number of studies in this area,

1:58 but maybe you could highlight some of the more

2:01 important findings in the area of how people can adjust their vision in order

2:06 to meet goals more quickly and more efficiently.

2:09 So, you know, we started thinking about what are the goals

2:12 that are most important to people that they struggle with the most.

2:15 And regardless of where you look or who you ask or when you ask it,

2:18 people's number one goal is something related to their health, right?

2:21 So, one of the first things that I did was um go over to Brooklyn.

2:24 There's a couple armories all around um

2:26 the the the boroughs here around New York City.

2:29 And one And the one in Brooklyn in particular is now a YMCA.

2:33 You know, somebody had invited me, a physical therapist, said, "Hey,

2:35 you should come out and and check out what's happening here

2:37 with your interest in exercise and trying to find new ways of helping people,

2:41 new tactics that they can add to their tool belt.

2:43 Uh I think you're going to find

2:44 some interesting people that are working out there,

2:46 who, as it turns out, are some of the fastest runners in the world.

2:49 Like, you know, one of the people that was in the the last

2:52 Olympics before I showed up won the gold medal for the 400 m.

2:55 And I thought, "When these people are running, I bet they are like hyper aware

3:00 of everything that's going on in their surroundings.

3:02 Where are they relative to the competition?

3:04 What's happening in their peripheral vision?

3:06 What's going on on the side?

3:07 Who's behind them?

3:08 Who's in front of them?" They probably have this like master sense,

3:12 this master visual plan at any point in time,

3:14 and that's what probably makes them elite.

3:17 So, when I started asking them, "Is that the case?

3:20 Do you Do you really pay attention to what's in your surroundings?

3:22 What's behind you?

3:23 What's on the side?" They said, "No." Like, all of them said,

3:26 "No." And sometimes when I do do that, it's a mistake.

3:28 So, that was surprising.

3:30 Totally went against my intuition about what

3:32 they do that likely contributes to their success.

3:35 What they said instead was that they are hyperfocused.

3:38 They assume this narrowed focus of attention,

3:40 almost like a spotlight is is shining on a target.

3:44 Now, when they're running a short distance,

3:45 that target might literally be the finish line,

3:47 the line that they're trying to cross.

3:49 If it's a longer distance, they set sub goals, like, you know,

3:52 the person, the shorts on the person up ahead that they're trying to beat.

3:55 Or they choose some sort of stable landmark,

3:57 like a sign that that they would pass by.

4:00 It's like a spotlight is shining just on that or like

4:02 they have blinders on the sides of their face.

4:04 That's all they're paying attention to.

4:06 And I thought, "Oh, that's something we can play with, right?" Like,

4:08 they are elite and they are accomplished.

4:10 So, then we started thinking like, "Okay,

4:13 what about people who who aren't competitive runners?

4:16 Is this a tactic we can teach people?" The answer is, "Yes.

4:19 You can tell people about what these Olympic athletes are doing.

4:22 Imagine that there's a spotlight shining just on a target.

4:25 Choose Choose something up ahead,

4:26 the stop sign two blocks up that you can you can just see.

4:30 And you know, imagine that you you have blinders

4:33 on so that you're not really paying attention to the people

4:35 that are passing by or the buildings or the garbage

4:37 cans or the or the trucks that are on the road.

4:39 You know, tune those out and focus in on that target

4:43 until you hit it and then choose another one, right?

4:45 Sort of recalibrate, choose the next goal.

4:47 Now, one of the first studies that we did was was teach

4:50 that strategy and juxtapose or compare it against a group that we said,

4:54 "Just look around naturally.

4:56 You know, you might see that finish line

4:57 up ahead and there's things on the periphery.

4:59 Whatever your eyes want to do, whatever you think is going to work best,

5:02 feel free to do that and tell us what

5:03 you're looking at." Then we gave them a finish line.

5:05 We created sort of, you know,

5:06 an exercise that's moderately challenging um but possible.

5:10 We put ankle weights on that that accounted

5:12 [clears throat] for about 15% of their body weight,

5:14 told them to lift their knees up, sort of high stepping to a finish line.

5:17 So, this would be challenging uh for them to do um but we said,

5:22 you know, it's an indicator of overall health and fitness.

5:24 Some of these people had narrowed their focus of attention

5:26 and some were just looking more expansively or naturally.

5:30 And what we found is that those people that we trained,

5:32 just everyday normal people doing this this moderately challenging exercise,

5:37 they were able to move 27% faster.

5:39 They could do the exercise more quickly, and they said it hurt 17% less.

5:44 Everybody was in the same sort of circumstance,

5:46 but yet their experience was really different.

5:48 So, we were really excited about that, right?

5:50 Because it meant that this strategy,

5:51 we could use it on people who are not elite athletes.

5:54 It could be easily adopted, a quick training session might can teach people

5:59 to look at the world in a different way.

6:01 Again, this narrowed attention was different than whatever they do naturally,

6:05 the comparison group, um but it had a big outcome.

6:08 It had a big difference on the way that they were engaged in the exercise.

6:12 Are they focusing on a specific point or is

6:14 it kind of the entire horizon of that goal?

6:16 Because the finish line is indeed a line.

6:18 In our interviews with people, our our sort of focus group studies,

6:22 um it seems like it's more like a a circular point.

6:26 And that's in fact what we're teaching people, what we're training them to do.

6:30 So, rather than going broadly, looking across a line from left to right,

6:34 we are encouraging them to like imagine

6:37 a circle of light that's shining on some target.

6:40 Now, of course, a finish line is a line,

6:41 but if they're staying in their lane, if they're on a track, right?

6:44 You can imagine that there is that there is a circle

6:46 shining just on where in their lane they'll cross that finish line.

6:49 Or if it's a stop sign, you could imagine a circle of light illuminating that.

6:53 So, that's what we're teaching people to use,

6:55 and that's what seems to be effective to maintain that focus

6:59 rather than sort of being pulled to engage with peripheral vision.

7:03 And there's some amazing people um some runners in history,

7:06 like Joan Benoit Samuelson.

7:07 She's one of the first uh female marathon

7:10 competitors who has won has won multiple marathons.

7:14 She's Canadian.

7:15 I think she's won Feel free to correct me, like, 10 marathons in in her life.

7:20 Uh and she talks about sort of not assuming this like this wide

7:24 but mm but narrow wide but not deep or tall uh attentional focus.

7:31 She talks about like finding the shorts on somebody ahead of me and focusing

7:35 on on those shorts until she passes them and then resetting that goal.

7:38 The most pressing question I have in my mind is,

7:41 can we I uh all of us use this strategy to make the starting line a goal point?

7:50 Because for a lot of people,

7:51 it's not about going from start to finish, it's about getting to start.

7:55 And is there any physiology or physiological changes I should

8:00 say to reflect the idea that maybe just visually focusing

8:03 on the start line would actually get me more excited

8:06 as opposed to make me less excited to engage in effort?

8:10 Mhm.

8:10 There's certainly vision science that's tied up

8:12 in that very first stage of of goal setting, like identifying what that goal is

8:17 in the first place and taking those first steps.

8:20 A lot of people's go-to strategies that involve vision

8:22 are are vision boards or dream boards or, you know, post-it notes, right?

8:27 They're creating some sort of visual representation

8:30 of what it is that they want to accomplish.

8:32 You know, almost like a scrapbook,

8:33 collect visual icons that reflect where you want to be to motivate yourself.

8:38 It's a really common tactic that's effective for identifying what you want.

8:43 But it may not actually be effective for helping you to meet the goal,

8:46 to get the job done.

8:48 So, colleagues of mine at New York University um have probed why.

8:52 Why is that?

8:52 Why is just, you know, thinking about what you want in your life and um

8:56 and sort of putting yourself vicariously into those shoes,

9:00 imagining what my life will be like if I can accomplish everything on this list,

9:05 why doesn't that work?

9:06 Well, first of all, does it work?

9:07 The answer is no.

9:08 And why does it not work?

9:10 Uh because what happens, these colleagues,

9:13 Gabriele Oettingen and and her and her research

9:15 team have found, is that, you know,

9:18 going through and dreaming about or or or visualizing

9:22 how great my life will be when I get X,

9:24 Y, and Z done, um that is that is like a goal satisfied.

9:30 I have identified what it is that I want.

9:32 I have experienced it, even if just in an imaginary way.

9:36 I've had that positive experience of of thinking about how great

9:41 my life is going to be when I get this thing done.

9:43 And they start to sort of rest on their laurels.

9:46 She's actually measured systolic blood pressure and heart rate.

9:49 And they found that people who do that, who go through that experience

9:52 of visualizing how great my life will be when I get X,

9:55 Y, and Z done, their their systolic blood pressure,

9:58 the bottom number on your blood pressure reading, decreases.

10:02 Now, I'm all about finding ways to relax,

10:04 but motivation scientists know that systolic

10:06 blood pressure is actually an indicator

10:08 of our body's readiness to get up and act, to do something.

10:12 Now, that can be the going out for a walk, going out for a run, hitting the gym.

10:16 It can also be things like doing math problems, right?

10:19 Even if it's it's something that's just mental,

10:21 systolic blood pressure actually goes up in anticipation

10:25 of your body or your mind needing to do something,

10:28 taking the first steps on a goal.

10:31 So, then it helps us to understand of like, okay,

10:33 if I've just created this dream board, this vision board,

10:36 and put myself psychologically in that space of a goal satisfied,

10:39 why is it bad that blood pressure goes down?

10:41 Because it means your body is chilling out.

10:43 It's like, all right, cool.

10:45 I just accomplished something pretty major.

10:47 I'd actually now don't have the physiological resources at the ready

10:51 to take the first step right now to do something about that.

10:55 So, so that was a pretty monumental, uh,

10:58 finding for motivation scientists to understand

11:00 that like creating these dream boards, these vision boards,

11:02 or to-do lists might actually backfire because it in it in it

11:06 of itself is the creation of a goal and the satisfaction of the goal,

11:11 and then people understandably give themselves some

11:13 time to just enjoy that positive experience.

11:16 Everything you're saying again is consistent with what we

11:18 know about the physiology of dopamine circuits for motivation.

11:22 I have a a good friend who perhaps in incidentally,

11:25 perhaps not, is a cardiologist at a major university.

11:29 Said that one of the major errors that people make with book writing

11:34 and completion is they will tell people they're going to write a book,

11:38 and people will say, oh, you definitely should write a book.

11:40 Everyone's going to love your book, and they never end up writing it.

11:43 And his theory is that they get

11:44 so much dopamine reward from that immediate feedback

11:48 with all the protection of never having

11:50 the book criticized that they never write the book.

11:52 I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but um,

11:55 I guess it raises the question, what's the better strategy?

11:58 Yeah.

11:58 So, I'm not saying that people who enjoy

12:01 dream board creation should stop what they're doing.

12:04 But the process of goal setting shouldn't

12:05 stop with articulating what the goal is.

12:07 So, at that same point that we're trying to figure out, what do we want to do?

12:10 What what is my vision for the future?

12:13 In those planning sessions, we need to simultaneously uh,

12:17 think about a couple other things.

12:18 One is um, how are we going to get there?

12:22 So, take it out of the abstract, take it out of this idyllic visual iconography,

12:27 and start thinking about the practical day-to-day.

12:29 We need to break it down into more manageable goals,

12:31 not just my 10-year plan for myself, but my 2-week plan.

12:34 What what can I accomplish in the next 2 weeks and the 2

12:37 weeks after that's going to set me on the right trajectory.

12:39 Plan big picture, think big picture abstractly,

12:42 but then also break it down more concretely.

12:44 That's probably not surprising,

12:45 but it's an important aspect of the goal setting process.

12:50 Then again, Gabriele Oettingen in my department

12:51 has identified [clears throat] a third,

12:53 often overlooked or under-appreciated stage that has to happen

12:58 at that goal in the goal setting process.

13:00 And that's thinking about the obstacles that stand in your way of success.

13:04 And that it will actually help improve motivation in the long run.

13:08 And sometimes people think that that like is counterintuitive.

13:11 You're saying like, for if I want to increase my motivation,

13:14 have more motivation, then I need to think about how hard it's going to be,

13:16 all the ways that I'm going to fail?

13:18 Because it's like coming up with a plan B,

13:21 a plan C, plan D in advance of actually experiencing that.

13:25 If you were on a boat and the boat started to sink,

13:27 that's not the time you want to start looking for life jackets.

13:30 You already want to know where one is, so you can go to it right away.

13:33 And it's the same thing with goal setting is that you want to know,

13:36 what am I working towards,

13:37 how am I going to get there, and if I experience this obstacle,

13:40 here's what I'm going to do about it.

13:42 You may never experience that obstacle, but if you do,

13:45 you're probably going to be shy on time, thin on resources,

13:48 maybe experiencing an anxiety that hijacks your brain so you're

13:51 not functioning at that optimal level of judgment and decision-making.

13:55 You want to already have like the snap next step in place,

13:59 so you can just hop to it.

14:01 Right?

14:01 We're not going to do our best thinking when we're in crisis mode.

14:04 Um, but we don't have to if we have used if we have already used

14:08 our resources in advance to come up with that plan B or that plan C.

14:11 Michael Phelps, incredible athlete, right?

14:14 This is something that he and his coach

14:15 have routinely incorporated into their uh, into their training.

14:19 Back in 2008, he was hot for the first time on the international stage.

14:23 It was the Beijing Olympics.

14:24 Michael Phelps was on the brink of doing something that no

14:26 one else in the history of the Olympic Games has ever done,

14:29 which is winning eight gold medals in a single Olympiad.

14:33 At the time of this story, he had already won seven,

14:36 and he had just the 200 fly in front of him

14:38 before he could do what no one else has ever done, win the eighth gold medal.

14:41 And the fly is his thing, right?

14:43 This should have been in this should have been easy, like a no-brainer.

14:45 He's going to win this, he's going to break Olympic history.

14:48 As soon as he dove into the pool, his goggles started to leak.

14:52 And by the time he had done three lengths of the pool,

14:55 he just had to flip around and and come back

14:57 to the to the starting line {slash} finish line, back to the edge.

15:01 Um, so by the time that happened,

15:03 his goggles were completely filled with water, and he was swimming blind.

15:06 I would have panicked.

15:07 I would have sunk to the bottom of the pool.

15:08 I wouldn't have even been in the pool, to be honest.

15:10 Like, I'm not a swimmer, definitely not going to be in the Olympics,

15:12 but uh, but for him, he didn't.

15:14 It wasn't a moment of panic like it probably would have been for nearly

15:17 every other person in that situation because

15:20 he had foreshadowed that kind of possible failure.

15:23 He had imagined that obstacle hitting him in advance,

15:26 and not even just imagined it, but practiced it.

15:28 What will we do?

15:29 He routinely practiced swimming with his goggles not fully secured on his face.

15:33 His coach notoriously would rip the goggles off of his head,

15:37 smash them on the ground for maybe dramatic effect or something so that he

15:39 didn't even have any goggles possible to grab as he's as he's in practice.

15:44 So, because he had foreshadowed that possibility and the solution,

15:48 if my goggles start to leak, then I will do, in his case,

15:52 start counting my strokes, then I'll make it through.

15:55 He knew exactly how many strokes it would take for him

15:56 to get from one end of the pool to the other.

15:58 He started counting his strokes.

16:00 He won that he won that race, the 200 fly.

16:02 He won his eighth gold medal, and he'd go on to win 15 more in his career.

16:06 So, we might not all be swimmers,

16:08 we might not all aspire to Olympic-level performance,

16:11 but I love that example because I think it it helps sort

16:14 of demystify or give us an alternative perspective on the importance um,

16:19 and the motivational reasons why thinking about obstacles in advance,

16:23 thinking about the ways the two, three,

16:25 four ways that your plan might go awry is actually effective at helping us

16:29 to overcome the obstacle that might otherwise lead us to throw in the towel.

16:33 So, I do think that there's great power in thinking about our visual

16:36 experience alongside other tactics that we might use for meeting our goals.

16:40 I have a question, and I to be honest, I know the answer in advance,

16:43 but I'd love for you to tell us a bit about how

16:46 unfit people view the world versus how fit people view the world,

16:50 or how unmotivated people visually see

16:54 the world as opposed to highly motivated people.

16:56 Maybe you could describe that study.

16:58 I think it's a particularly important one, mostly because yes,

17:02 it identifies a perhaps a physiological or psychological differences

17:06 between motivated and unmotivated or or fit and unfit people,

17:10 but it also provides a path to to remedy that.

17:13 Yeah, so out of my lab, but also out of several other labs,

17:17 there's been work looking looking at that relation

17:19 between states of the body and visual experiences.

17:22 They haven't necessarily tried to integrate

17:24 the motivation science element to it,

17:26 but they were looking to see do visual experiences

17:29 change as a function of different states of our body?

17:32 So, they've looked at people who experience chronic fatigue, the elderly,

17:36 people who are overweight, those that are,

17:39 you know, wearing wearing heavy backpacks,

17:41 and so who are sort of put into that experience of being overweight,

17:45 what happens to their perceptions of the environment?

17:47 Well, what they find is that distances

17:49 look further to those that are overweight,

17:51 chronically tired, older rather than younger,

17:53 weighted down with with extra baggage.

17:55 Um, distances look farther and hills look steeper.

17:58 We've done some of those studies, too,

18:00 where we try to like give people more energy or or deprive them

18:04 of of energy and see does that change their their perception of space?

18:08 They do this a lot in medical studies.

18:10 You give somebody a a drug,

18:11 and you give somebody a placebo, a sugar pill, and then importantly,

18:15 nobody really knows who's got what until

18:18 you've analyzed all the data and the results

18:20 are revealed that that these are the people

18:21 that that had the drug, the active agent.

18:24 Same idea in the psychological research.

18:26 In this case, what we did was give people Kool-Aid to drink.

18:29 And for some people,

18:30 that Kool-Aid was sweetened with sugar, an actual caloric entity.

18:34 It could give them energy.

18:36 Other people drank Kool-Aid sweetened with Splenda.

18:40 So, yeah, it's sweet, but it actually doesn't have any caloric value.

18:42 You're not giving people energy,

18:44 you're just giving them that that experience of of sweetness.

18:48 Now, some people, of course,

18:49 are really good at identifying like what's what's real sugar and what's Splenda,

18:53 but when you put it in the Kool-Aid, a pretty noxious powder,

18:56 it actually masked it for everybody, and nobody had any idea.

18:59 We asked them to guess what they got,

19:00 we tested them afterwards, and they were wrong.

19:02 So, nobody is able to guess with accuracy what was

19:06 your drink sweetened with, which is important because they were blind.

19:10 That I mean, the way that scientists use it,

19:12 they didn't know what it was that they were drinking.

19:14 We give them about 10 to 15 minutes for that sugar to metabolize,

19:17 and we measured their circulating blood glucose levels to make

19:21 sure that we had in fact given their body circulating,

19:24 you know, circulating glucose energy that they might use in the next activity.

19:30 And and the researcher again didn't know

19:32 whether they had just served sugar or Splenda.

19:36 Then we asked people to estimate distance.

19:38 So, we gave some people more energy,

19:39 or we kept others sort of at like whatever their normal level was.

19:43 And what we found is that those people who didn't even know it,

19:45 but who had been given more energy by drinking Kool-Aid sweetened with sugar,

19:50 perceived their space as as more constricted.

19:53 They that a visual illusion of proximity was induced.

19:56 They felt that their finish line,

19:57 again in the context of an exercise task, was closer to them.

20:01 [clears throat] So, in just the same way that these other physiology labs,

20:04 vision science physiology labs found that people who are chronically tired,

20:08 who don't have don't feel like they have as much energy,

20:11 or those that are physically weighted down, and for whom, you know,

20:13 moving within an environment is more costly,

20:16 um we could create that experience for people.

20:19 We did an experiment called version of that, that if you have more energy,

20:22 the world looks easier.

20:24 The distances to a finish line don't look as far.

20:29 So, that was some of the experimental evidence that we had,

20:31 um to show that people's states of their body do impact their visual experience.

20:35 Now, I'm a motivation researcher, so for me the big question is,

20:38 well, like what's the point of that study then,

20:40 besides just showing this connection between the body

20:43 and the eyes and the visual experience?

20:45 We think that that's fundamental to one

20:47 of the reasons that people experience difficulty when they're exercising.

20:51 When it's really harder for your body because

20:53 of its physical state to move within a space,

20:56 you might say like, well, why don't they just go exercise?

20:58 Because the world looks harder to them.

21:01 Because that distance that that they're supposed to walk because

21:04 a doctor tells them to, or that a partner encourages

21:06 them to, or a hill that they should hike up

21:09 because someone told them that would be good for their health,

21:11 it looks more challenging to them than it does to somebody

21:15 who isn't who who isn't who's in who's in better physical health.

21:18 Now, if it looks that way, if it looks harder,

21:21 if it feels like it might be harder, then psychologically we know that it is.

21:26 When you have set yourself up psychologically,

21:29 mentally for that kind of failure experience,

21:31 like, I don't know that I have the resources that to get this job done.

21:34 This this looks really hard, you're already motivationally in a place uh

21:39 for this task to be closer to impossible for you.

21:42 So, to put it all together then, what we know is that people whose bodies

21:45 might make it more challenging for them to exercise,

21:48 um are seeing the world in a more challenging way,

21:51 and that is having these downstream motivational

21:53 and psychological effects that makes it less

21:55 likely for them to try to take on the task in the first place,

21:58 or to experience it as harder than than other people would or do.

22:03 Is the solution the same, however?

22:06 Meaning, if these people are taught to adjust their visual goal line,

22:10 or to set a visual spotlight on an intermediate goal,

22:14 can they overcome some of this uh this challenge

22:17 that they face simply by virtue of their skewed perception?

22:21 Yes.

22:21 So, in all of the studies that we have done,

22:24 um looking at that connection between this narrowed

22:26 focus of attention and improvements in exercise,

22:29 we do not find that it only works for the people who are in shape,

22:32 or that it backfires for people who are out of shape.

22:35 It works for everybody.

22:36 This is a strategy that everybody can adopt because it's just simply about like,

22:40 what do you allocate attentional resources to?

22:42 What do you sort of ignore, and what do you focus on?

22:45 And that in that visually induces the same kind of illusion for everybody,

22:49 regardless of whether you're overweight or you're

22:51 or you're at your target weight, um or if you're struggling to get there,

22:55 or you've already accomplished where you want to be.

22:57 That visual illusion can be induced for everybody,

23:00 and it has the same kinds of consequences.

23:02 Are there any studies looking at how adrenaline

23:05 or epinephrine or any other stimulants impact motivation?

23:09 If you actually are more physiologically aroused, or jazzed, or whatever,

23:13 you know, amped up, um or you just think you are,

23:17 uh in our studies we have found that they work in the same way,

23:19 that it can produce the same kinds of consequences.

23:22 So, and I like that because it tells us like, you can actually change the state

23:25 of your body to induce these kinds of experiences,

23:28 or you can try to you can just think that.

23:31 You can trick yourself.

23:32 You can placebo effect yourself out and produce the same kinds of effects.

23:36 I had to give up coffee like 12 years ago, not because not for any

23:40 I love the taste, and so decaf is my jam,

23:43 um but I can't drink the caffeine because it it didn't

23:45 actually do the thing that it does for so many other people,

23:48 like make me feel more energized and more awake.

23:49 I just got sweaty and jittery and anxious, and I couldn't focus.

23:52 And it happened to marry the same kind of person.

23:53 He also can't drink caffeine, but loves the taste of coffee.

23:56 The interesting thing is that we both have to have coffee

23:59 in the morning to feel like we're ready to go for the day.

24:02 So, it's just part of our routine or whatever to have that taste

24:05 and have that sensation to feel like I'm ready to take on the day,

24:08 even though I mean, yeah, decaf still has some caffeine in it,

24:12 but we're not drinking that much of it

24:13 to probably actually create a caffeinated experience in our body,

24:17 but we're tricking ourselves psychologically into into doing that thing

24:21 that in years past used to work for us both.

24:23 I'd love to uh about other kinds of goals, meaning non-physical goals.

24:28 Is there any example or tactic that people

24:30 could use to um better approach cognitive goals,

24:34 of school, work, but that don't exist in the fitness and sports domain?

24:38 Totally.

24:38 A couple years ago, when when I was writing the book, I I also had a child.

24:43 The same the same month that I had the opportunity to like pull all

24:46 this research together is the same month that that my son came to be.

24:51 And uh and I started to realize like,

24:54 I became a lot less interesting once he was around.

24:57 He was fascinating, but I was changing diapers and feeding him,

25:00 and like that was it.

25:01 People would come over like, "What's up?

25:03 What have you been?

25:03 Like, tell me something that's going on in your life." And like

25:05 all I had to talk about was this what was boring,

25:08 and I just felt like I've lost myself.

25:10 I used to pride myself on the crazy adventures and problems

25:13 I would get myself in, and I was a great storyteller,

25:15 and that all of a sudden disappeared as soon

25:17 as he came into the world because he became my world.

25:20 So, then I started thinking like,

25:21 I need to pull back some coolness in if I ever had it in the first place,

25:25 but I need to be a cooler person than I'm coming across right now.

25:28 So, I decided I want to learn to play drums.

25:30 I'm and I want to be like a a one-hit wonder as a as a rock star drummer.

25:35 So, that's a goal that I set for myself at the same time

25:37 that my son came into this world when I was also trying to think

25:40 about goal setting and how to improve my ability and all of our ability

25:46 to to get a job done when you're faced with some pretty big obstacles.

25:50 So, I got to practice all these techniques that we're talking

25:52 about on myself and see for myself when I tell people,

25:54 "Hey, try this thing, like narrowed focus of attention,

25:56 does that help with something like becoming

25:59 a better drummer?" And the answer is,

26:00 yeah, the tactics at least work for me sometimes under some circumstances,

26:04 and they do for other people who try

26:05 them for other goals that aren't necessarily about exercise.

26:08 One that I found particularly helpful was overcoming my bad memory,

26:13 that everybody's memories are faulty, right?

26:16 Everybody has sort of a warped perception of the past.

26:20 It might be skewed more positively than maybe we deserve,

26:22 or it might be skewed more negatively.

26:24 If you feel that, you know,

26:26 what looms large in your mind as you reflect on something

26:28 from the past are like the mistakes that you've made,

26:31 or the things that the social faux pas that you had, or, you know,

26:35 challenges that you faced at work when you got

26:37 in trouble with a boss or with a colleague,

26:39 if that's what really stands out in your mind,

26:42 or the good side of all of those possibilities,

26:45 we probably aren't getting the world right.

26:47 And and that is something that our brain has evolved to give us a faulty memory,

26:51 to level and sharpen, to not encode and remember and be able

26:55 to recall everything that we've experienced with accuracy and precision.

26:59 And that's a problem when it comes to assessing our own goal progress.

27:04 When we want to be our own accountant and try to determine, how are we doing?

27:09 If I want to become a drummer,

27:10 am I on track for getting there before X, before my time runs out?

27:15 Am I going to make it or not?

27:17 And I think that's an experience, whether they want to be a drummer or not,

27:19 that a lot of people can resonate with, of like trying to determine,

27:22 is this trajectory, is this rate of progress going

27:25 to get the job done by X amount of time?

27:27 Will I have my swimsuit body by summer,

27:29 or will I save enough for retirement by the time I hit 65?

27:33 For these goals where time is involved and there is a deadline,

27:37 uh we do take moments to assess our our trajectory.

27:42 And if we just rely on our memory,

27:44 we're probably going to do a bad job of assessing the the that trajectory,

27:49 of knowing whether we're on pace to meeting our deadline.

27:53 And I found that to be the case as I was thinking about,

27:55 am I actually going to be able to learn this song?

27:57 I mean, I know that it's going a lot

27:58 slower than it probably would for anybody else,

28:01 but to give myself a deadline and a commitment,

28:03 I decided I was going to put on a show.

28:05 I was going to invite everybody I knew, and also people I didn't know,

28:08 and I was going to play my one song for them.

28:11 So, in the process of like figuring out,

28:13 am I going to be able to play this show, I sent out invitations.

28:15 Like, the date is committed.

28:16 Like, people are coming to listen to my one song.

28:20 God bless them.

28:21 Um it how was it going to go?

28:23 And and it felt awful.

28:25 It just felt like I am not making progress here

28:27 because there's a lot more things that actually are pressing, right?

28:30 Like, the kid does need to get fed.

28:33 I do have to go to my day job.

28:34 The editor is asking for the next draft of this book,

28:38 and that is going to take precedence, like it does for so many people,

28:40 that that things command your your bandwidth,

28:44 even when you have this goal that you've committed to and that you've got,

28:46 you know, on the books.

28:48 And so, I just felt this looming anxiety

28:50 about this this goal that would require, you know,

28:53 like didn't have to be daily practice,

28:54 but like you can't you can't cram that kind of a a goal.

28:58 It does take, you know, committed investment for a sustained period of time.

29:04 And so, I had this looming anxiety that I'm not making good enough progress.

29:07 But that's because I was relying on my memory and my brain to to recall like,

29:11 how many times did you practice?

29:12 What was it like the last time you practiced?

29:14 What was it like when you tried to play this bit,

29:16 you know, or this riff like 2 weeks ago?

29:18 Have you gotten any better since then?

29:20 And it just felt like, no.

29:21 I haven't practiced enough.

29:23 I don't remember when the last time I played was,

29:24 but it definitely doesn't feel like I'm getting any better.

29:26 Then I thought, you know what?

29:28 I should stop relying on my brain to tell me where am

29:31 I at, and is is am I on an upward slope here?

29:34 I need to look at the data.

29:36 I love data.

29:36 Scientists love data.

29:37 So, I started to collect data on myself.

29:39 What I did was download this app that a friend

29:42 had told me about called the Reporter app.

29:44 There's lots of these kinds of things out there.

29:46 Basically, it just like sets up your phone to randomly

29:48 ping you with whatever questions you want your phone to ask.

29:52 It records your answers, you can download the data,

29:54 you can make pretty graphs to see am I getting how

29:57 what's my change and how I've answered these questions over time.

30:00 So, I did that for a month.

30:01 I had my phone ask me, you know, a couple times a day,

30:05 "Did you practice since last time I asked you?" My phone says,

30:08 "Did you practice?" If mostly it was no, and if yes,

30:12 then it would funnel a couple other questions like, "How did you do?

30:15 How do you feel?

30:16 Check a couple of different emotion words now about your experience

30:19 when you played." And I did that for a month.

30:21 After a month, went into my office, downloaded the data,

30:24 and first took stock before I looked at the numbers like,

30:27 "How do I think I did over the last month?" And I thought,

30:30 "Same as every other month.

30:32 I like I didn't really get anywhere.

30:33 Yeah, I practiced, but I still feel awful." But what

30:36 I found from the data was my memory was totally wrong.

30:39 I actually had practiced far more times than I remembered.

30:42 And when I looked at like my emotion words that I used,

30:45 it was a clear upward trajectory.

30:47 Yeah, I did cry.

30:48 That part I hadn't misremembered or made up.

30:51 But by the end of that month, like I had gotten a compliment from my husband

30:54 who actually is a drummer and said like,

30:56 "Hey, that that wasn't that bad." All of which is to say,

30:59 I needed to see to collect that data on myself and to look at it objectively,

31:04 accurately, and completely because my brain wasn't doing that for me.

31:09 That visual experience of of downloading that data

31:13 and and looking at like what was my actual experience

31:17 um gave me a better insight as I was

31:19 trying to assess the trajectory of my of my progress.

31:23 I became a more accurate accountant of my own progress,

31:26 which is important for, you know,

31:28 setting goals or resetting them when you need to calibrate in light of of what's

31:32 left to do and how much time do you have to do it in.

31:34 Fantastic.

31:36 Well, you've given us a ton

31:38 of mechanistic and uh conceptual and practical information.

31:43 So, I'm speaking for a lot of people when I say,

31:46 "Thank you for taking the time out of your schedule amidst kids and running

31:50 a lab and teaching at the university." And we hope to have you back again.

31:53 Thank you so much.

31:54 It was a great conversation.

31:55 Thank [music] you.

31:56 Thanks.

32:01 [music]