What to Do & Not Do When Setting Goals | Dr. Emily Balcetis & Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | The simple question is, can I use this finish line strategy to make the start line a goal
00:00:11.880 | and get my system more engaged or motivated?
00:00:15.800 | And is there any physiology or physiological changes I should say to reflect the idea that
00:00:21.720 | maybe just visually focusing on the start line would actually get me more excited as
00:00:26.940 | opposed to make me less excited to engage in effort?
00:00:30.680 | There's certainly vision science that's tied up in that very first stage of goal setting,
00:00:36.060 | like identifying what that goal is in the first place and taking those first steps.
00:00:40.520 | A lot of people's go-to strategies that involve vision are vision boards or dream boards or
00:00:46.520 | post-it notes, right?
00:00:48.000 | They're creating some sort of visual representation of what it is that they want to accomplish.
00:00:53.240 | Where is it that I want to be in five years, 10 days, 10 years, whatever that timeline
00:00:57.680 | is that they're working under.
00:00:59.200 | The idea of vision boards or dream boards is that you, almost like a scrapbook, collect
00:01:04.720 | visual icons that reflect where you want to be to motivate yourself.
00:01:08.200 | It's a really common tactic that people use.
00:01:12.100 | And it's not bad to do that, right?
00:01:13.800 | For some people, just even knowing what they want in life is a major accomplishment, defining
00:01:18.160 | the goal can be really challenging for people, and that's a strategy that works and involves
00:01:22.800 | our visual experience, right?
00:01:24.960 | It's not just, people aren't saying like, "Why don't you just sit around and imagine
00:01:28.120 | what you want your life to be like in 10 years?"
00:01:30.640 | The strategy that people are suggesting is like, "No, cut out the pictures, put it on
00:01:35.120 | a board and stick it by your bathroom mirror so you see it every day."
00:01:38.680 | Or make a list.
00:01:39.680 | Or make a list, yeah.
00:01:40.680 | People are big on these lists.
00:01:41.680 | I have a lot of friends who are like, "Have you made your list?"
00:01:44.320 | Yeah.
00:01:45.320 | The list of things that you insist on having in the context of fitness, relationship, job,
00:01:50.040 | et cetera, et cetera.
00:01:51.400 | This seems more and more common now.
00:01:52.840 | Yeah, totally.
00:01:53.840 | And the idea, like, write it down, right?
00:01:54.840 | They're telling you, "Write it down," or create a visual manifestation of it.
00:02:01.040 | And so, yeah, that's effective for identifying what you want, but it may not actually be
00:02:07.240 | effective for helping you to meet the goal, to get the job done.
00:02:11.200 | So colleagues of mine at New York University have probed, "Well, why?
00:02:15.140 | Why is that?
00:02:16.140 | Why is just thinking about what you want in your life and sort of putting yourself vicariously
00:02:21.780 | into those shoes, imagining what my life will be like if I can accomplish everything on
00:02:26.900 | this list?
00:02:28.700 | Why doesn't that work?"
00:02:29.700 | Well, first of all, does it work?
00:02:30.700 | The answer is no.
00:02:31.700 | And why does it not work?
00:02:34.500 | Because what happens, these colleagues, Gabrielle Oettingen and her research team have found,
00:02:40.500 | is that going through and dreaming about or visualizing how great my life will be when
00:02:46.660 | I get X, Y, and Z done, that is like a goal satisfied.
00:02:53.380 | I have identified what it is that I want.
00:02:55.260 | I have experienced it, even if just in an imaginary way.
00:02:59.540 | I've had that positive experience of thinking about how great my life is going to be when
00:03:05.180 | I get this thing done, and they start to sort of rest on their laurels.
00:03:09.300 | These actually measured systolic blood pressure and heart rate, and they found that people
00:03:13.740 | who do that, who go through that experience of visualizing how great my life will be when
00:03:17.540 | I get X, Y, and Z done, their systolic blood pressure, the bottom number on your blood
00:03:22.740 | pressure reading, decreases.
00:03:25.060 | Okay.
00:03:26.060 | Now, I'm all about finding ways to relax, especially in New York, right?
00:03:29.860 | You're constantly living at a high level of stimulation, and so like, "Cool, great.
00:03:33.620 | So maybe I should just like think about how awesome my life will be when I get my bucket
00:03:37.220 | list done," but motivation scientists know that systolic blood pressure is actually an
00:03:42.500 | indicator of our body's readiness to get up and act, to do something.
00:03:46.540 | Now, that can be the going out for a walk, going out for a run, hitting the gym.
00:03:50.980 | It can also be things like doing math problems, right?
00:03:54.220 | Even if it's something that's just mental, systolic blood pressure actually goes up in
00:03:58.620 | anticipation of your body or your mind needing to do something, taking the first steps on
00:04:04.780 | a goal.
00:04:06.960 | So then, it helps us to understand of like, "Okay.
00:04:10.020 | If I've just created this dream board, this vision board, and put myself psychologically
00:04:13.940 | in that space of a goal satisfied, why is it bad that blood pressure goes down?"
00:04:18.220 | Because it means your body is chilling out.
00:04:19.980 | It's like, "All right.
00:04:21.220 | Cool.
00:04:22.220 | I just accomplished something pretty major."
00:04:23.220 | Right?
00:04:24.220 | I actually now don't have the physiological resources at the ready to take the first step
00:04:29.140 | right now to do something about that.
00:04:32.480 | So that was a pretty monumental finding for motivation scientists to understand that creating
00:04:37.740 | these dream boards, these vision boards, or to-do lists might actually backfire because
00:04:42.100 | it in and of itself is the creation of a goal and the satisfaction of the goal.
00:04:47.620 | And then, people understandably give themselves some time to just enjoy that positive experience.
00:04:53.360 | So much for the secret.
00:04:54.540 | Yeah.
00:04:55.540 | Exactly.
00:04:56.540 | Exactly.
00:04:57.540 | I guess now the secret folks will come after me with pitchforks, but-
00:04:59.660 | I try to never say the name.
00:05:01.180 | Right?
00:05:02.180 | I'm not afraid to say the name.
00:05:03.180 | I mean, I imagine that certain strategies might work for other people, but everything
00:05:07.520 | you're saying, again, is consistent with what we know about the physiology of dopamine circuits
00:05:11.640 | for motivation.
00:05:12.640 | I have a good friend who, perhaps incidentally, perhaps not, is a cardiologist at a major
00:05:18.920 | university, said that one of the major errors that people make with book writing and completion
00:05:25.500 | is they will tell people they're going to write a book, and people will say, "Oh, you
00:05:29.940 | definitely should write a book.
00:05:31.500 | Someone's going to love your book."
00:05:32.500 | And they never end up writing it.
00:05:33.820 | And his theory is that they get so much dopamine reward from that immediate feedback, with
00:05:39.340 | all the protection of never having the book criticized, that they never write the book.
00:05:43.380 | I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but I guess it raises the question, what's the
00:05:47.740 | better strategy?
00:05:48.740 | Yeah.
00:05:49.740 | So, I'm not saying that people who enjoy a dream board creation should stop what they're
00:05:54.060 | doing.
00:05:55.060 | That's not the take-home message here.
00:05:56.060 | Nightmare board?
00:05:57.060 | You can-
00:05:58.060 | Oh, definitely not that.
00:05:59.060 | No.
00:06:00.060 | There's enough anxiety and fear in the world.
00:06:01.060 | You can't encourage more of it.
00:06:02.820 | But the process of goal setting shouldn't stop with articulating what the goal is.
00:06:07.580 | So at that same point that we're trying to figure out what do we want to do?
00:06:11.020 | What is my vision for the future?
00:06:13.320 | In those planning sessions, we need to simultaneously think about a couple other things.
00:06:18.940 | One is, how are we going to get there?
00:06:22.220 | So take it out of the abstract.
00:06:23.940 | Take it out of this idyllic visual iconography, and start thinking about the practical day
00:06:28.740 | to day.
00:06:29.740 | Break it down into more manageable goals, not just my 10-year plan for myself, but my
00:06:33.520 | two-week plan.
00:06:35.180 | What can I accomplish in the next two weeks and the two weeks after that's going to set
00:06:38.620 | me on the right trajectory?
00:06:40.620 | That's probably not surprising to anybody who's been thinking about how do I set goals
00:06:44.140 | better.
00:06:46.380 | Plan big picture.
00:06:47.380 | Think big picture abstractly, but then also break it down more concretely.
00:06:51.100 | That's probably not surprising, but it's an important aspect of the goal setting process.
00:06:55.540 | Then, again, Gabrielle Oettingen in my department has identified a third often overlooked or
00:07:00.940 | underappreciated stage that has to happen in the goal setting process, and that's thinking
00:07:07.420 | about the obstacles that stand in your way of success, and that will actually help improve
00:07:13.540 | motivation in the long run.
00:07:15.580 | And sometimes people think that that is counterintuitive.
00:07:18.340 | You're saying, if I want to increase my motivation, have more motivation than I need to think
00:07:22.260 | about how hard it's going to be, all the ways that I'm going to fail, how is that going
00:07:25.860 | to jazz me up?
00:07:26.860 | How is that going to help me get through when things get hard?
00:07:32.860 | But it does because it's like coming up with a plan B, a plan C, plan D in advance of actually
00:07:39.360 | experiencing that.
00:07:40.980 | If you were on a boat and the boat started to sink, that's not the time you want to start
00:07:44.700 | looking for life jackets.
00:07:46.380 | You already want to know where one is so you can go to it right away.
00:07:49.540 | It's the same thing with goal setting, is that you want to know, what am I working towards?
00:07:53.580 | How am I going to get there?
00:07:54.580 | And if I experience this obstacle, here's what I'm going to do about it.
00:07:58.420 | You may never experience that obstacle, but if you do, you're probably going to be shy
00:08:02.180 | on time, thin on resources, maybe experiencing an anxiety that hijacks your brain so you're
00:08:07.180 | not functioning at that optimal level of judgment and decision making.
00:08:11.940 | You want to already have the snap next step in place so you can just hop to it.
00:08:16.660 | We're not going to do our best thinking when we're in crisis mode, but we don't have to
00:08:21.820 | if we have already used our resources in advance to come up with that plan B or that plan C.
00:08:27.300 | [music]