76__transcript.txt

- Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,
where we discuss science
and science-based tools for everyday life.
[upbeat music]
I'm Andrew Huberman,
and I'm a Professor of
Neurobiology and Ophthalmology
at Stanford School of Medicine.
Today, we're talking all about goals
and the science of goal setting
and achieving your goals.
There's a tremendous amount of information
on the internet and in books and so forth,
about how to set goals
and assess your progress towards goals
and update your goals and so forth.
In fact, there are so
many programs out there,
that includes so many different acronyms
that it can be a little bit overwhelming.
Today's conversation about goals,
is going to be quite a bit different.
Indeed, we are going to
talk about setting goals.
We are also going to talk
about how to assess progress
towards goals.
And we are going to talk
about goal execution.
However, we're going to do all of this
in the context of neuroscience,
because it turns out that there
are not hundreds or dozens
or even several neural
circuits in your brain,
that control goal setting and
movement toward your goals.
There is one
and while it includes many
different brain areas,
that one circuit is the same circuit,
that's responsible for pursuing all goals.
And it relates to some very
basic neurochemical mechanisms
that are understood.
So while there's a wealth
of information out there
about goals and goal setting
and goal achievement and so forth,
there's comparatively little information
that's been available to the public
about the neuroscience of goal
setting and goal achievement.
So that's what we're
going to focus on today.
I promise that we're going
to get into the neuroscience,
we're going to touch on a
little bit of the psychology
and how the neuroscience
relates to what's known
in the psychology literature.
And we are going to
establish several, in fact,
four specific protocols that
you can use for goal setting,
goal assessment and goal
execution in an ongoing basis,
regardless of what your
personal goals happen to be.
Before we dive into our
conversation about goals
and goal setting and goal achievement,
I'd like to highlight some
recent scientific findings,
that I think are going to be interesting
and actionable for many of you out there.
In earlier podcasts, we
talked about neuro-plasticity,
which is the brain's ability to change
in response to experience.
In fact, neuroplasticity
underlies all forms of learning,
whether or not it's language
learning or learning music
or math or a physical skill,
all forms of learning
involve the reorganization
of connections in the nervous system,
the brain and spinal cord and body.
One of the key principles
of neuroplasticity,
is this notion of making
errors as a good thing
toward neuroplasticity.
It is a little bit counterintuitive,
but what the scientific
literature tells us,
is that whenever we're trying
to learn something new,
if we make an error, we
know it feels frustrating,
but that state of frustration,
actually queues up particular
brain areas to be more alert,
so that on subsequent
attempts to learn that thing,
we have a heightened level of focus
and a higher probability
of learning the new skill,
regardless of what that skill is.
And I've talked about this
before in various episodes,
as encouraging people to
embrace errors or pursue errors,
not as their own end goal,
but errors as an entry point
for making the brain more plastic.
And if you think about
it really makes sense,
why would the brain change at all,
if it's performing everything perfectly?
When you make errors, well
in the immediate seconds
and minutes after those errors,
you are in a better position to learn.
A common question I get, however,
is what should be the rate
of errors?
Which is really just a way of saying,
how hard should the given task be
that you're trying to learn or perform?
And it turns out there's an answer.
There's a recent paper that was published
in a great journal,
"Nature Communications".
This is a paper, our last
author, Jonathan Cohen,
and the paper is entitled,
"The Eighty Five Percent
Rule for optimal learning".
This paper, we will
make available by a link
in the show note captions,
but basically what this paper shows,
is that when trying to
learn something new,
you want to make the difficulty
of what you're trying to learn, such that,
you are getting things
right about 85% of the time.
That you're making errors
about 15% of the time.
And the reason I like this paper,
is it really points
specifically to some protocols
that we can implement
because people always say, okay,
you want to set a high goal.
You want to try and achieve
something that's really lofty,
but you don't want to
make the goal so lofty
that you don't make any progress at all.
Other people say, you really want to start
with really small goals
and make things very, very incremental.
Only set out to do things that
you know you can accomplish
and that will feed back on
your self-esteem and all these
positive feedback loops.
And then, you know, layer
by layer, layer by layer,
you'll eventually get
where you want to go.
Well, it turns out that neither is true
you need to set the level of difficulty,
such that you're making
errors about 15% of the time.
And I want to emphasize
about 15% of the time,
because there's no way to
figure protocols for sport
or language or math or anything else,
where you're going to
have exactly 15% errors.
So, anyway, this paper, the
85% rule for optimal learning,
again, we will supply the link,
but it really points to the idea
of making things pretty hard,
but not so hard that you're
failing every attempt
or even half of the attempts.
Failing about 15% of the time
seems optimal for learning.
Hopefully that information
will be useful to any of you
that are trying to learn something.
Hopefully it will also
be useful to those of you
that are teaching kids or other adults.
If you're teaching,
keep in mind that you want
to keep the students reaching
for higher and higher
levels of proficiency
in whatever that is that you're teaching.
And that 15% of the time
they should be failing,
if it gets to 20%, that's probably okay.
If they start failing about half the time,
then probably what they're
trying to learn is too difficult
for them at that point.
Now, of course, this is going
to be controlled by all sorts
of external factors,
like whether or not they
slept well the night before,
whether or not you slept
well the night before
and you're being clear
in your instructions
to them, et cetera.
But I think the 15%
rule as we may call it,
is a good metric to aim for
and it can serve both
students and teachers.
In other words, it can
serve both those teaching
and those that are learning.
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 podcast.
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As I've mentioned before on this podcast
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I sort of discovered this a few years ago,
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Salt isn't just important
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Let's talk about the
science and in particular,
the biology and neuroscience
of setting and achieving goals.
Setting and achieving goals,
is not a uniquely human endeavor.
Other animals set and
attempt to achieve goals,
a honeybee attempts to collect honey
and bring it back to the hive.
A herbivore will go out
and forage for plants
and will also have a need to reproduce
at some point in its life.
So, will need to find a mate
and maybe even raise the young,
depending on what species that is.
Predators will have to hunt
and kill and eat their food
and they have to avoid getting
injured in that process.
They also have to raise young, et cetera.
So humans are among the other animals,
or we could say the animals are among us
in the need to set goals
and to make efforts to
achieve those goals.
Now, why do I emphasize
this commonality of process?
The reason I emphasize this
commonality of process,
is that it turns out that
there is one basic system
by which all animals, including humans,
set and attempt to achieve goals.
Now humans are unique in our
ability to orient our mind
toward immediate goals,
moderately termed goals,
meaning things that might
exist on the scale of a week
or a month or even a year
and very long-term goals,
like a lifetime goal
or a goal that lasts a decade,
or it takes a decade to achieve.
That's what makes us unique.
And of course we don't
have access to the mindset
or the thinking or the
emotions of other animals,
but what we do know is that,
common neural circuits,
meaning brain areas,
that are present in animal
species and in humans,
are responsible for orienting
our thinking and our action
toward particular goals.
Another thing that's really
unique about the human brain,
is that we are able to have
multiple goals interacting
at once.
So, for instance, we probably
all have fitness goals,
goals in relationships of
different kinds, friendships,
and romantic partnerships
as well as maybe scholastic goals.
Maybe you're in school
or you're pursuing some
kind of learning outside
of the school environment
or indoor, you have business
goals or financial goals,
we are able to have
multiple goals at once.
And other animals do this,
but humans are unique in the ability
to juggle a lot of goals.
And actually one of the major
challenges in pursuing goals,
is that goal pursuit often interacts,
meaning if you can spend 100%
of your time chasing one particular goal,
that might be very
effective for that goal,
but then we tend to fall back
on some of our other goals.
You can imagine how this plays out.
If you're working very, very hard,
you're solely focused on business often,
your health will suffer.
If you're solely focused
on your health often,
other things will suffer.
And so we have to juggle
both our goal setting
and our goal pursuits.
And so today, we're going
to talk about a number
of different ways,
to work with what could
very well be called,
these interleaving goals,
by focusing on a common practice
or common set of mechanisms
that are present in all
aspects of goal seeking.
What is that process?
Well, it turns out, it's a neural circuit.
A neural circuit, is simply
a collection of brain areas,
that when active in a
particular sequence give rise
to a particular behavior or perception.
So for instance, when you feel happy,
it's not because you have a brain area,
that's the happy brain area,
that is electrically active.
Rather, it's going to
involve numerous brain areas,
being active in concert
and to different degrees.
In the same way, that the
keys on a piano, together,
played in the appropriate sequence,
represent a particular song.
You would never say that one key
on the piano represents that song,
but that key is necessary.
Similarly, in the brain,
we can say that a brain
area might be necessary,
but not sufficient to give
us a particular experience
or generate a particular behavior.
So when we think about goal
seeking and the pursuit of goals
of any kind in the brain,
it doesn't matter what the goal is.
It involves a common
set of neural circuits
and the neural circuit
that I'd like to orient us
toward today.
And we will return to it a few times,
involves learning a couple of names,
but you don't have to worry so
much about memorizing these.
Just more important is
to understand the logic
of how it's put together
and I will explain that
and make it very clear.
If you want to learn
the names, that's great.
One of the brain areas is
the so-called, amygdala.
The amygdala is most often
associated with fear,
so you might say, wow,
how is that involved in
goal directed behavior?
Well, a lot of our goal directed behavior,
is to avoid punishments,
including things like
embarrassment or financial ruin
or things of that sort.
And so the amygdala and some
sense of anxiety or fear,
is actually built in to the circuits
that generate goal seeking
and our motivation to pursuit goals.
The other areas are the
so-called, ventral striatum.
The striatum is part of what's
called, the basal ganglia.
The basal ganglia, is a neural circuit,
that can very simply be
described as a neural circuit
that helps us generate go,
meaning the initiation of action
and no-go, the prevention
of action type scenarios.
Let me make that even simpler.
The ventral striatum is
part of this thing called,
the basal ganglia.
The basal ganglia has sort
of two circuits within it.
One circuit is involved in
getting us to do things,
like I'm going to get up tomorrow
and I'm going to run five miles
first thing in the morning.
I don't know if I'm
actually going to do that,
but I'm just using that as an example.
Another circuit within the basal ganglia,
is a no-go circuit, it's
the one that says, no,
I'm not going to go for the second cookie
or the third cookie.
I'm not going to eat that.
And then the go circuit would
be the one that's responsible
for instead eating something else.
Okay, so we have go and no-go circuits
within the basal ganglia.
So we've got amygdala,
so what you think of as
kind of fear and anxiety
and avoidance.
We've got, the basal ganglia,
which are for initiating
action and preventing action.
And then there is the so-called, cortex.
The cortex is the outer
shell of the brain,
and there are two sub
regions of the cortex,
that are involved in
goal-directed behavior.
One is the lateral prefrontal cortex,
prefrontal cortex is involved in,
so-called, executive function,
things like planning.
Thinking about things
under different timescales,
so not just what we want
in the immediate term,
but what we might want
tomorrow or the next day
and how our actions currently
are going to relate,
to the future.
And the so-called, orbitofrontal cortex,
orbitofrontal cortex has a
large number of functions,
but one of the key functions
of the orbitofrontal cortex,
it's involved in meshing some emotionality
with our current state of progress
and comparing that emotionality
to where it might be,
when we are closer to a goal.
So, there are basically four areas,
one involved in anxiety,
one involved in emotion,
one involved in planning
and another involved in
this go, no-go action.
So that's a bunch of detail,
but if I wanted to make it
really simple for everyone,
I would say there are four areas.
One is an area associated
with anxiety and fear,
it's the amygdala.
The second is involved
in action and inaction,
remember go, and no-go, so
that's the basal ganglia.
The other one is involved
in planning and thinking
across different timescales,
so that's lateral prefrontal cortex.
And then the fourth one, is
involved in emotionality,
where we sit emotionally present,
compared to where we think
we will be emotionally,
when we reach some particular goal
and that's the orbitofrontal cortex.
Again, you don't need
to know all those names.
You don't need to know all the details,
just understand that those
different elements are involved
in the decision-making
processes that lead us
toward particular goals
and have us update our
goal seeking, et cetera.
One key thing is it doesn't
matter what the goal is,
the same circuits are involved.
So whether or not you're
trying to build a company,
that's a billion dollar company
that's going to go public,
or you're thinking about
planning a craft day at home
with the kids or for yourself,
or you're thinking about
what movie to go see.
Goals, goal seeking and
assessing progress towards goals,
all involve the exact
same neural circuits.
It's really remarkable.
It's also very convenient
for our discussion today.
What's going on in these circuits,
can basically be boiled down
to two particular things.
The first is, value information,
trying to understand whether or not,
something is really worth pursuing or not.
So, placing a value on a particular goal.
The other component of
this neural circuit,
is associated with action,
which actions to take and
which actions not to take,
given the value of a particular goal
in a given moments time.
I want to say that again.
The other component of the
circuit is involved in action,
whether or not you should
act or should not act,
based on your assessment
of the value of a goal
at a particular moment in time.
And you're going to hear
me say over and over again,
in this episode,
the value information
about a goal is so key.
Here's why, there is basically
one neuro-transmitter
or rather neuromodulator system,
that governs our goal
setting, goal assessment
and goal pursuit.
And that is the neuromodulator dopamine.
Dopamine is the common currency
by which we assess our progress
toward particular things
of particular value.
In fact, dopamine, is the
way that we assess value
of our pursuits.
And so, as we take a moment
and we shift our attention,
to the psychology of goal setting.
The things that you've probably
heard a bit more about,
about what sorts of goals
are good and how to set goals
and how to categorize goals.
I want you to think about how dopamine,
could possibly be involved
in these different processes.
And the reason I want you to do this,
is that all of the
psychology of goal setting
and goal pursuit, is wonderful
because it places things
into different categories.
It allows us to parse our thinking
and organize our thinking.
But what's not often seen,
in fact, I'm not aware of
any literature out there,
scientific or literature
in the popular press
or in popular books,
is an understanding of how
the underlying neurobiology,
can be layered on top of the
psychology of goal setting,
to allow us to set and pursue
our goals more effectively.
And that's what we're going to do today.
We are eventually going to arrive
at a set of four practices,
that when performed on a regular basis,
will allow you to assess,
what is the value of this
next particular action step?
How worthwhile is it, to do
behavior A versus behavior B
in order to achieve a particular goal?
If any of this is vague now,
I'm going to make it
all very clear for you.
You're going to come away
with some very specific lists
of takeaways that you can put
down on paper, if you like.
And that you can use to
set goals, assess goals,
and execute goals more effectively,
using the neuroscience of
the circuits I just described
and an understanding of the
neuromodulator dopamine.
Let's take a look at the
psychology of goal setting
and goal pursuit.
This is an enormous literature,
meaning there are tens of thousands,
if not hundreds of thousands
of scientific papers
about the topic of goal
setting and goal pursuit.
There's also a lot of
information on the internet
about goal pursuit.
And in looking over this information,
one comes to appreciate pretty quickly,
that acronyms are a big thing.
Acronyms, seem to dominate
the area of goal setting,
especially as it relates to
things in the business sector,
but also in the relationship sector.
Now, acronyms are wonderful,
they allow us to organize
our thinking into less
and conceptually they can be very useful.
But as I moved through this literature,
I started to see some redundant themes.
And so what I've attempted to do,
is distill out the redundant themes,
that regardless of the person teaching
or the scientific laboratory
that happened to come up
with these acronyms,
that they boil down to
some common features.
So let's talk about that literature
and I think we'll come
away with an understanding
of some basic elements that
are common to all goals.
Now, the modern science or the
modern psychological science
of trying to understand
goal setting and pursuit,
actually dates back to the 1930s.
And we have to be sure that
members of our species,
were focused on goal
setting and goal pursuit,
long before the scientific
literature emerged.
It just stands to reason that,
since the human brain
hasn't evolved that much,
we don't think, in the last 10,000 years,
that people would be
thinking about these things.
They just didn't get
them down into papers,
that we could evaluate
on PubMed and so forth,
but now we can,
so we can look at those papers.
And what you find is
that acronyms are abound
in the psychology literature
about goal setting and goal pursuit.
So for instance, you'll
hear about the work
of Larkin Small, for instance,
these are the last names
of various researchers.
The so-called, ABC method, that
a goal should be achievable,
it should be believable,
and that the person be committed.
It's sort of obvious once you
hear about the ABC method.
Then people came along
and expanded on that,
they talked about the
so-called, SMART method.
SMART being another acronym,
that it be specific,
that the goal be measurable,
that the goal be attainable,
that the goal be realistic
and that it be time-bound,
meaning that you set up
certain period of time
in which a given goal should be performed.
And then people come
along and modify these,
this is the way that
psychology research is done.
I'm not laughing at it.
I'm just chuckling because,
it seems like the acronyms get
longer and longer and longer.
They developed the, SMARTER approach,
adding an ER to the acronym,
SMART, S-M-A-R-T-E-R.
They added ethical and
rewarding, which fortunately,
are good things I believe,
ethical and rewarding.
What does all this mean?
Well, what it means is that
any kind of goal pursuit,
any kind of goal setting,
really has to involve a
number of different states
and neural circuits in the brain and body,
at least that's how I
view this literature.
Why would I do that?
Well, let's think about
the very modern version
of the kind of acronyms that
I talked about a moment ago,
dating back to the 1930s and
extending into the 1990s.
You can find beautiful talks online
from people who have worked
with some of the biggest companies
and greatest high performers out there,
to achieve incredible things.
And they will talk about generating a sort
of objective mindset for goal setting.
They'll talk about goals
needing to be significant.
That it has to be a big goal.
That it has to be concrete,
so you have to be able to
describe what the goal is.
It has to be action-oriented,
has to be inspirational,
has to be time-bound.
You have to have reasonable,
realistic, verifiable measures.
You have to constantly up the ante.
If it's starting to sound repetitive,
it's because it is repetitive.
There are basically only
three or four elements,
to goal setting and goal pursuit.
Basically, an individual
or set of individuals,
has to identify a specific thing
that they're going to attain.
In some communities, they talk about,
knowing what right looks like,
meaning being able to
define a very specific goal.
You can't just say, I want
to be a champion athlete.
You have to say what sport,
and you have to understand
what the path to that is.
So any big goal of course,
is broken up into a
series of smaller goals,
but the whole thing starts with thinking
about the end in mind.
And in a few minutes, we will talk about,
whether or not visualization
of the end in mind,
is actually beneficial or
detrimental to achieving goals.
There's actually great
neuroscience and psychology data
on that now.
So, I mentioned all these acronyms,
not as an attempt to disparage them.
I think they're wonderful.
And I mentioned all that
psychology literature,
not in an attempt to disparage it,
but rather just say that, goal
setting is the first step,
assessment of whether or
not one is making progress
towards those goals is the
second but necessary step.
And then there's the
business of goal execution.
And that brings us back to
the neural circuit components,
remember, this neural circuit,
involving those four things earlier,
the amygdala, striatum,
orbitofrontal cortex
and the prefrontal cortex.
They work together,
to divide the whole process
as I mentioned before,
into two general categories.
The first is, assessing value,
knowing whether or not where
one is at one given moment,
relates to some external thing.
Are things going well
or things going poorly?
And knowing how to gauge that accurately.
And then, action steps, goes and no goes,
do more of this, do less of that,
do this, don't do that, et cetera.
So, now we are going to shift
back to the neuroscience
and we're going to talk about
the practical applications
of the information I just described.
Because I've given you a lot
of kind of academic information.
And as we do this, I'd
like you to keep in mind,
what are some things that
you've either accomplished
or that you'd like to
accomplish going forward?
Because as we do this,
we can build toward a set of protocols,
that at the end, you'll be
able to very quickly plug in,
your particular goals and a
route to those particular goals,
that's grounded in the science.
That I think are going
to be very effective
in allowing you to reach
those goals, more quickly
and with indeed less effort.
In fact, let's start with a tool now
because as we move through
all this information,
I want to make sure that
people are coming away
with some practical things
that they can implement.
And indeed, some things
that you can even do
during the course of listening
to or watching this podcast.
The first thing to do, is
to understand the difference
between peripersonal space
and extra personal space.
Peripersonal space, is
all the space, literally,
that's within inside your body,
the surface of your skin and
in your immediate environment.
Peripersonal space, is a
key concept in neuroscience
because you have
particular neural circuits
and particular chemicals,
that are geared toward,
what are called consummatory
behaviors, meaning,
using things and consuming
things and enjoying things,
that are in your immediate
peripersonal space.
Let me give you an example
of this for myself,
just to make it concrete.
You can imagine similar
examples for yourself right now.
Within my current peripersonal
space, is my interoception,
my understanding or perception
of my internal body.
So, how quickly I'm
breathing, my heart rate,
the feelings on the surface
of my skin, et cetera.
But also, within the confines
of my peripersonal space,
is this coffee mug,
that if you're listening to
this, you can't see this,
but I'm lifting up a coffee mug,
I'm going to take a sip of coffee.
That's a consummatory
behavior, I have the coffee,
I don't have to do much or
motivate much to get it.
I have other things here,
pens and computer, et cetera.
So things in your peripersonal space
and consuming those things,
is generally governed by
a set of neurochemicals,
that center around the
neuromodulator serotonin.
And there are a few others as well,
things like oxytocin,
but mainly serotonin.
Contrast that, with the
so-called, extra personal space.
Extrapersonal space is everything
beyond the confines of my reach.
It would be something in the next room.
It will be something down the street.
It will be something
at some other location,
in space and time.
And the neuromodulators
and neurochemicals,
that are associated with
any kind of thinking about,
anything in the extra personal space,
are distinct from the
neurochemicals and neuromodulators,
that are involved in thinking
about or making actions
towards the peripersonal space.
And the molecule that's most
associated with thinking about
or orienting toward the
extra personal space,
again, things beyond
the confines of my skin
or your skin, is dopamine.
And this is a vitally important
concept to understand,
when you're setting
goals and seeking goals.
If we are to be good at goal seeking,
if we are to be good at setting
goals and assessing goals,
if we are to achieve our goals,
we have to be able to
toggle back and forth
between a clear understanding
of our peripersonal space,
what we have and how we feel
in the immediate present.
And our ability to
understand what's out there
in the extra personal space
and our ability to move into
that extra personal space.
And a simple way to conceive of all this,
is that we evaluate our progress
in the peripersonal space.
We evaluate how we feel,
about some pursuit,
even if we haven't
initiated that pursuit yet.
How we feel about a particular goal,
is truly a feeling that we
experience in the here and now,
even though the goal is in the future.
If we are going to
evaluate whether or not,
we made progress today
or yesterday or not,
that's an evaluation of how we feel
in the immediate peripersonal space.
However, moving toward any goal,
involves orienting our thinking
towards the extra personal space.
And as we go through today's episode,
I'm going to teach you a technique
or rather a neuroscience-based tool,
that will allow you to continually
transition back and forth
between the peripersonal space
and the extra personal space
in a way that will allow
you to update and evaluate
and better execute your goal seeking.
The whole principle behind
this, is that human beings,
like other animals,
have to make evaluations
about whether or not they
are on the right track.
However, the important
thing to understand,
is that humans in particular can do this
over different timescales.
We don't just pursue food
'cause we are hungry,
we pursue food, excuse
me, for a particular meal,
that we might be having
with people tomorrow.
We can modulate the timescale
in a way that other animals don't.
That's how we adjust our goal seeking,
to different timescales.
And in addition to that,
humans are exquisitely good
at biasing our behavior
toward particular goals over
very long periods of time.
But there are a lot of mistakes out there,
in fact, things that are
outright wrong in the literature
and in particular, in the internet,
and then the kind of wellness and fitness
and cognitive fitness space,
that send people down the wrong path
and those things we will
talk about in a few minutes.
But things like visualization,
that visualization
and visualization of this big goal,
is the best way to achieve your goals.
In fact, that's not the case,
there's a much approach to doing all this.
So now I'd like to shift gears
towards talking about a few of the things,
that most people get badly wrong
in setting and assessing
and executing goals.
This is based on peer reviewed research,
so I think it's very solid.
I know it is very solid.
And it runs counter to what
many of us have been taught.
Let's start with a simple one.
We've all heard that multitasking is bad.
We've heard multitasking is
bad, it doesn't allow for focus.
If you want to achieve anything,
if you want to accomplish
anything, you should not multitask.
Well, it turns out, that's wrong.
It turns out that there is
a role for multitasking,
but the multitasking has to
be placed at a particular time
within your goal seeking behavior
in order to be effective.
Really nice studies done at
Carnegie Mellon University,
and the Davis Lab,
evaluated how long
people are able to focus
in different environments.
How long they were able to stay
concentrated on their work.
And it turns out that
number is exceedingly low.
It turns out that most people,
whether or not they're doing computer work
or whether or not they're doing writing
or accounting work or
anything of that sort,
can hold their attention for
about three minutes at a time
before they shift their attention off.
And that's ridiculously
low when you first hear it,
but, that probably reflects a
basic state of brain function.
That hearkens back to a time
when we were hunter gatherers,
I doubt that we were maintaining
focus solidly for hours
and hours and hours,
unless we were under
some particular threat
or in some particular crisis.
Rather, you could imagine
that people collected seeds
and nuts and berries
for about three minutes
and then probably stood up, looked around
and then kept going.
Or that they were hunting animals
or in some sort of pursuit,
fishing, et cetera,
and focused, focused, focused
and every three minutes or
so, they might've looked up
and, you know, take a look at the sky
or looked around to make sure
that other people were there
or not there, et cetera.
It all stands to reason
that that will be the case.
Again, the neural circuits
haven't evolved much.
Now, multitasking, has been shown
to have a very interesting
physiological signature,
when we multitask,
when we jump back and
forth between things,
there is an increase in the
level of the neurotransmitter,
also sometimes called a neuromodulator,
but basically same thing
for sake of this discussion.
There's an increase in the
neurotransmitter epinephrine,
which is adrenaline.
And so, there are really nice studies now,
pointing the fact that doing
a bit of multitasking prior,
to jumping into some focused,
goal directed behavior,
whether or not it's mental
behavior or physical behavior,
can actually be useful
because it gets us into action.
So we've all been told that
multitasking is terrible,
but if you, for instance,
find yourself cleaning up your house
and also checking your phone
and doing a number of things,
right at the point where you
should be sitting down to write
or do some focused work.
It probably reflects
some adaptive mechanism,
where you use action and somewhat
varied multitasking action
in order to generate
adrenaline in your system,
because adrenaline just
gets you in the action.
Now, that's great,
but, you don't want to multitask
throughout any kind of goal seeking
or goal pursuit behavior.
Because, what's also very clear
and we're going to talk about
this in exquisite depth today,
is that visual focus
and in particular contracting
your visual window,
bringing the aperture of what
you see, to a very fine point,
can absolutely increase
your clarity of goal seeking
and the likelihood that
you will pursue your goals.
I've talked about this a little
bit before on the podcast
as a way of increasing focus
for any kind of pursuit.
I've talked about a practice,
whereby you can literally
look at a dot or a line,
placed on a wall or on your
computer in front of you
for 30 to 60 seconds,
and then moving into some dedicated work,
where you need to focus.
And indeed, just looking at a narrow piece
of the visual world, a small
piece of the visual world
for some period of time
and forcing yourself to hold
that gaze on that location
as best you can,
can increase your level
of cognitive attention
and your ability to
focus and stay focused.
And this is not magic.
It is the consequence of the fact,
that most of your cognition
follows your visual perception.
For those of you that are
low vision or no vision,
meaning you're blind, or
you have trouble seeing,
my lab does a lot of work with people,
who are low vision, no vision.
They tend to use their
auditory system, their hearing,
as a way to anchor their
attention to particular things.
But most people out there
can see and see pretty well
and visual focus is the way to do that.
Now, earlier, we were
talking about this notion
of peripersonal space
versus extra personal space.
And I'm just going to seed a little bit
of the later conversation by saying,
that when we focus on an external point.
We are in a process of exteroception,
is the focus on the extra personal space,
not the peripersonal space.
So when we focus on something,
say a line on the wall
for 30 to 60 seconds or at our computer
for 30 to 60 seconds and just look at it
and then move into any kind of action,
whether or not it's work
action or physical action.
We are at its very core.
We are engaging in this pursuit
of extra personal space.
We are placing our focus outside our body
and therefore we are placing the brain
into goal pursuit mode.
Work at NYU, in particular,
in the laboratory
of a phenomenal researcher in
their Psychology Department,
by the name of Emily
Balcetis, B-A-L-C-E-T-I-S.
Emily Balcetis, has done
really nice work on this.
They've done is, they've had,
people focus their visual attention
on a goal line of some sort
and then to engage in
some sort of behavior,
that requires a lot of effort.
And they've done a lot of
different experiments like this,
but I'll just explain one.
They always include a control group,
where people have to go through
the same physical effort
or mental effort,
but they don't focus their
attention just on one location.
The long and short of
these studies is that,
when people have to focus their
attention on one location,
like a goal line,
they are much more effective
in reaching those goals
and they achieve them with the perception,
that they expended less effort.
I'll give you an example of
one particularly nice study
from the Balcetis Lab.
So this particular study
involves, physical exercise.
Although, as I mentioned before,
they've done similar studies
looking at cognitive type work.
And what they did is they
had a group of people,
exercise, wearing 15 pound ankle weights,
and they had to basically
move a certain distance
or run a certain distance
to reach a goal line.
One group was focused on the goal line,
visually focused, on the goal line.
The other group was not
told to visually focus
on the goal line.
And what they found, was
that the group that focused
on the goal line, was able
to achieve reaching that goal
with 17% less effort.
They measured effort and
they got there 23% quicker.
That's a remarkable difference.
So same distance traveled,
with same workload
because everyone's wearing
the same 15 pound weights
on their ankles.
One group is simply
looking at the goal line,
the other group is not told
to look at the goal line,
simply by looking at the goal line,
does something to the psychology
and end physiology of these people,
that allows them to move forward
with less perceived effort
and to do it more quickly.
That's remarkable.
And in this case, they're
focused on the goal line,
but in a few moments,
we'll talk about how one can
use updating of goal line,
so incremental goal line.
Starting with an intermediate goal,
and then extending the goal
line further and further.
But just sit back for a
second and think about that,
just by changing where a person looks,
they changed their perceived effort
and their ability to do
something, more effectively,
more quickly, than a group that
is not deliberately focusing
their visual attention on one location.
That's incredible.
And it's so incredible,
in fact, you might say,
well, how could that possibly be?
Well, it turns out, it
has a very specific,
underlying physiological reason
and that has to do with changes
in our so-called,
autonomic nervous system.
The aspects of our nervous system,
that prepare us for readiness and action,
or that prepare us for
resting and relaxing.
So what is special about
focusing one's visual attention
at a given location?
Well, it turns out that
we have two branches
of our visual system.
So visual information all
comes in through our eyes,
but then it can head down
two different pathways.
One pathway is engaged
when our vision is brought
to a common point,
what we call, a vergence eye movement.
So if we're focusing very
intensely on a given point,
regardless of how far away
from us that point is,
our visual system engages
a certain set of neurons,
neural circuits that are
involved in resolving fine detail
and that can evaluate small changes
over small periods of time.
Just think of it as a very detailed camera
of the visual world.
It tends to be very restricted.
The other pathway through
the visual system,
is the so-called, magnocellular pathway.
And this is a pathway that's involved
in taking in global information
about lots of things,
that are happening around us.
Movement of things to our right,
movement of things to our left,
things are happening down on
the ground and all around us.
And that pathway involves a
sort of relaxation, if you will,
of the neural circuits that are associated
with alertness and attention.
When you walk down the street
and you're not thinking about much,
provided you're not looking at your phone,
you're not focusing on one location,
you're more or less in a relaxed state,
compared to when you're
looking for a particular sign,
you're looking for a bus
or a train that's coming,
or a particular person.
And that should inherently make sense,
when your level of attention
and alertness goes up,
there's sort of a small,
but perceptible increase
in your level of arousal.
It's not really stress necessarily,
but arousal of alertness.
And it turns out that the visual system,
accomplishes this increase
in alertness by communicating
with your circulatory system
and the system that
delivers blood and nutrients
and oxygen to the rest of
the tissues in your body.
So let's talk for a second
about what focusing our vision
on a particular location does
because in this study
from the Balcetis Lab,
what they found was, focusing
on a goal line allows people,
to move more effectively toward that goal.
This is something you can
leverage in all aspects
of all goal pursuits.
What happens when we focus
on a particular location?
Believe it or not,
there's an increase in
a particular feature
of our blood pressure.
Now your body has, of course, arteries,
veins and capillaries,
and your heart pumps blood,
first to the arteries,
and then to the other components
of your vascular system.
And we have so-called, blood pressure.
Blood pressure is just how much,
the fluid volume is
pressing on those arteries,
veins and capillaries.
So you can imagine a pipe
with very little fluid moving
through it, that's low pressure.
You have a pipe with a lot
of fluid moving through it,
that's even more pressure.
You have a pipe with a lot
of very viscous, meaning,
very kind of sticky, thick
stuff, moving forward,
that's even more pressure.
We have blood pressure
and you've probably had your
blood pressure measured.
There's always two numbers.
You have a top number, which
is the systolic blood pressure.
And then there's the bottom
number, below the line,
which is the diastolic pressure.
So the important thing to understand,
is that your blood pressure
will rise when your heart beats,
because there's more fluid
moving through those pipes
that are your arteries or
veins and your capillaries.
And that top number is called the systole
or the systolic blood pressure,
because that's the pressure at the time,
when your heart contracts.
So the top number, which normally,
if you have a healthy blood pressure,
is somewhere in the range
of 90 to 120 millimeters
of mercury. Millimeters of
mercury is just the way,
that pressure is measured.
That top number, your systole,
or your systolic blood pressure,
is what's measured when
the heart contracts.
So, that's the amount of
pressure when there's a heartbeat
and it's moving through your vasculature.
Now, between beats, the
heartbeats, but then it relaxes,
your blood pressure is going
to drop to a lower value
because fluid isn't being
pumped through the system
at those moments.
And that's the bottom,
the diastolic pressure.
And typically for healthy people,
that's going to be 60 to
80 millimeters of mercury.
So you might hear about a normal
blood pressure being about,
again, this is an
approximate, 120 over 80.
What that means is,
at the point where blood was
being pumped through there,
your arteries and veins, boom,
that it's 120 millimeters of mercury,
but then, when the heart
relaxes for a second
before the next beat, then it drops to 80.
So there's high pressure, low pressure,
high pressure, low pressure.
The fluid is being pumped
through the system.
Now, why am I telling you all this?
Well, it turns out, that
there are neural circuits
that link your visual system
and focusing on a particular
point with that top number,
the systolic blood pressure.
And when you focus your eyes
on a particular location,
that systolic blood pressure goes up,
and there are some other systems
that are coordinated with
it in your brain and body,
that start releasing adrenaline,
low amounts of adrenaline in most cases.
And that adrenaline, further
readies your body for action.
So, bringing our visual focus
to a particular location,
does a number of things to the brain
and the whole system of
the body, to prepare it,
to place it into a state of readiness
that makes us more likely
to lean into our goals
into action. And if we step
back and think about this,
this makes perfect sense.
The brain and body need to be coordinated.
We can't just think about a goal.
In fact, a deer or a lion,
can't just think about a goal.
It has to think about a goal
and then has to feel some sort
of activation energy,
some willingness or desire to move forward
in pursuit of that goal.
So imagining a goal, has to be coupled
to the physical pursuit of the goal.
So our visual system in a beautiful way,
brings together a focus, literally,
a visual focus on a
particular point outside us.
Then it recruits an increase
in systolic blood pressure,
which creates a systemic, a body-wide
and brain-wide increase
in fuel utilization,
in oxygen availability,
in our willingness to
move forward as a body,
as a whole coherent system.
And then there are also
neurotransmitter systems,
like epinephrine, as we
will soon see dopamine,
that get recruited as well
to place us into a
continual mode of action.
This to me is a remarkable
feature of our physiology
and it gets right to the point
of some of the psychological phenomenon
that we were talking about earlier.
Let's just recall what some of those are.
I won't list them all,
but, a goal has to be
significant, they say.
All the psychologists, all
the popular stuff online says,
it has to be significant,
has to be inspirational
and has to be action oriented.
So let's say you look
out into the landscape
of what's available to you,
whether or not it's just in your mind,
or you look at a specific point, you say,
I want to go to that
particular restaurant,
to eat that particular food.
And you orient towards it
and you move towards it.
This is the way that your brain and body,
are coordinating their actions together.
Conversely, when our visual system,
is in a mode of looking at everything.
When the aperture of our
visual system is very broad,
we know that there's also a reduction
in our goal directed behavior
and a reduction in the
systolic blood pressure.
It's as if our peripersonal
space is sufficient,
we don't need to get
beyond our current state.
We're not oriented toward
any one thing in particular.
So I've now described
some of the psychology
and some of the underlying physiology.
Now, I'd like to mesh
this within the context
of actual specific goal
setting and goal pursuit.
Because what many of you
are probably thinking is,
well, that's some physiology,
there's some psychology,
but how do you actually apply this
towards setting and achieving goals?
Well, you do that, by understanding
that your mental frame
and your attention are
always either positioned,
to your peripersonal space,
focused on your immediate
possessions and state,
or towards things outside you.
But then you also have the ability,
to dynamically travel back
and forth between those.
And so next, we're going to talk about,
what the literature says about
things like visualization,
immediate and intermediate goals,
long-term goals and how
to best achieve those.
And then we're going to move specifically
into the protocols that you can use.
It's a protocol that I've
specifically developed
for you, the listeners,
in order to incorporate all
the signs into a best practice,
that you can do any time, any place,
to really identify what
it is specifically,
that you want to pursue
and the best route to pursue
and achieve that goal.
Focusing our visual attention
on one particular point,
is incredibly effective for
all types of goal pursuit.
And if you'd like to read
some of the scientific studies
or read a review of
the scientific studies,
that have looked at how,
narrowing one's visual attention,
can really enhance the
effectiveness of pursuing goals,
I'll put a link to this study.
The title of the study is,
keeping the goal in sight,
testing the influence of
narrowed visual attention
on physical activity.
And this is a paper from
Emily Balcetis's Lab,
focuses mainly on physical activities,
but it mentioned some
other things as well.
This is an article published in
Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin in 2020,
so it's recent.
It's an exceptional paper in my opinion,
really gets to the heart
of how all this works
and some of the examples of
where it's been implemented.
So let's apply this visual
tool, in a very simple way,
to any type of goal
that you want to pursue.
If you already know what
goal you want to pursue,
maybe it's a workout,
maybe it's a cognitive work
of some particular sort.
Again, the process is very simple.
You're going to focus your
visual attention on one point
beyond your peripersonal space,
so it could be on your computer.
It could be on the wall,
it could be a horizon.
It could be at a distance
and you're going to focus
your visual attention there.
And with some effort you're going
to hold your visual attention
for 30 to 60 seconds, you
might blink, that's okay,
but you're going to try
and hold your visual attention there.
So no moving your head around.
No diverting your attention
to other locations.
Some people will find it very easy to do.
Other people will find it quite hard.
Your mind may drift
cognitively, that's okay,
but try and bring your visual attention
to that common point.
Several episodes ago, I talked about how,
there are actually studies
looking at developing this kind
of training in students, for ADHD
and the data on that are
actually quite encouraging.
So for people who have ADHD
and focus issues and attentional issues,
this can be effective.
For people who don't, this
can also be effective.
Again, it places your brain and body
into a state of readiness
and then the idea is to move
into the particular actions,
that bring you closer to your goal.
We haven't yet talked
about how to set goals
and how to assess progress.
This is simply how to pursue goals.
But the visual component is important,
in fact, I would argue
that the visual system
and harnessing your visual
attention to a narrow point,
is going to be the most effective way,
to get your brain and body
into a mode of action,
to pursue whatever goal it
is you're trying to pursue.
That practice is in stark
contrast to multitasking,
where by definition
your attention is moving
from place to place to place.
I mentioned that
multitasking can be effective
in getting your system into somewhat
of an increased level of activation,
so that you can pursue
a more focused goal.
But the visual attention
to a particular point,
is going to be the most effective
way to bring your system
into a state of readiness
and action for goal pursuit.
There's another really interesting way,
that you can leverage your visual system
toward long-term goals.
The Balcetis Lab has also done,
some really interesting experiments,
looking at people's ability to set
and stick to long-term goals.
And the long-term goal
that they looked at,
was one related to saving
money for later in life.
This is something that a
lot of people struggle with,
a lot of people have a
hard time investing money
or saving money for later in life.
Simply because as human beings,
we vary in the extent to which we worry
about what's going to happen later.
There's also a phenomenon of
so-called, delay discounting.
Delay discounting, is the fact that goals,
become less rewarding when
they exist further out
in the future.
You may have experienced this
walking past a donut shop.
I love donuts
I'm just going to admit it,
over and over again on the spot.
I love the smell of them.
I love the taste of them.
I try to eat them
'cause I'm told they're
not that good for me
and indeed, I don't think they are.
I occasionally cave and
I'll eat one or many.
But in general,
I try not to cave to the
immediately rewarding properties
of the smell and the taste of the donut.
But, what we know is
that if you smell a donut
or you smell a wonderful piece of food,
in the immediate term, it
brings your level of focus,
your mental focus to the immediate phase.
And it feels very rewarding,
like if you had it now,
it would just be so good.
But if you actually extend
that reward out to tomorrow
or the next thing you think,
today happens to be a
Saturday, that we're recording,
but, on Tuesday morning,
I'm going to get a donut.
It doesn't have the same value
because the reward system,
doesn't work as well for long-term goals.
It's not as salient.
It's not as tangible, a goal,
especially for something like a donut.
Whereas the kinds of goals that work,
when you place them out to the longer term
and can create a heightened
sense of motivation,
tend to be things that are
much more rewarding to us.
So delay discounting simply says that,
the further out in time
that a given goal is,
the less effective that reward will be
in motivating one's behavior.
And indeed you see this with
saving money for retirement,
you see this with all sorts
of long-term investment,
The Balcetis Lab, therefore
did an experiment,
where they looked at people's tendency
to save money for later in life.
But the groups that they
created in this study,
were really interesting.
They had one group,
imagine, what it would be like
to be 30 or 40 years older.
And then to invest a
certain amount of money,
according to whatever it is they thought
that they would need.
And they measured the amount
that they had set aside and saved
for later in life.
The other group, actually
viewed photos of themselves,
so picture, images of themselves
that were artificially, digitally aged,
so that they could see
themselves 30 or 40 years
into the future.
And it turns out
that people in that second group,
simply by perceiving their
own image, in the future,
invested far more money into later life.
They set aside more money.
Somehow it bridged the gap
between their immediate experience of life
and the longer arc
toward what it was going to
be like in 30 or 40 years.
So very powerful result in my opinion,
because what it says again,
is that our visual
perception of the future
or our visual perception of the present,
is what allows us to anchor
our goal directed systems
and our motivation to take on things
that in the immediate term
might not seem that useful.
So, you can imagine all
sorts of variations on this.
You can imagine that
every time I want a donut,
I'd see a vision of myself
or an actual physical picture of myself
as a consequence of having
eaten many donuts every day
for the next 10 years.
I don't know what that
image would look like
'cause I've never seen it.
That's not an experiment
that I necessarily need to do
because I'm not that
motivated to eat donuts,
but I have to confess, I am somebody
who I think I'm pretty
good at managing resources.
But I think if I were to see
an image of myself at 70 or 75,
there's so many things
that are associated with visual images.
Like what our body must feel like,
what our needs are
probably going to be like
in that state or in that age.
What sorts of things we may
or may not still be
able to do at that age.
And that anchors back
to immediate goal-directed behaviors,
such as setting aside
money for retirement.
Such as investing in
one's health practices.
And indeed there's a study
that has looked at how people will invest
in exercise and healthy eating.
If they just think about the future
and what they might be like in the future
versus seeing images of
themselves in the future,
if they were to go down a
healthy or unhealthy route.
So again, the point is
that the visual system, what we see,
is principally important
in defining what we do
in the immediate term.
Even if what we see relates to something
in the far off distance.
I think these are phenomenal studies
and they get right down
to an important issue
that's been kicked around
over and over in the literature
and in the discussion about goal seeking,
which is visualization.
We here keep the big goal in mind,
focus on the big goal.
So now we're going to address,
what does the science say
about visualizing big goals?
If you're somebody who's
interested in business,
or let's say you're
focused on relationship,
is thinking about the perfect relationship
and what that would look like
and the family that you would have
and where you would live.
Is that effective in generating the kinds
of behaviors that will lead you to that?
Is it effective to think
about the big win at the end?
Well, it turns out it is,
but you have to be very, very careful
with when and how you
implement that visualization.
'Cause if you do it correctly,
it can really serve
your goal seeking well.
And if you do it incorrectly,
it can undermine the entire process.
So, does visualization work?
Well, turns out,
that visualization of the
big win, the end goal.
So the Superbowl win
or eight gold medals in the Olympics
or graduation from the
university of your choice
or making a certain amount of money
or finding the partner of
your choice, et cetera.
That visualization is effective
in getting the goal
pursuit process started,
but it actually is a pretty lousy
and maybe even counterproductive way
of maintaining pursuit of that goal.
Meaning continuing to
engage the sort of actions
that are going to get you to
eventually achieve that goal.
I think this is going to be
surprising to people, at first,
but if we think back to our discussion
about the physiology of
the blood pressure system,
it'll make sense.
Good scientific studies have been done
where people are told to imagine,
or even script out
their long-term vision
and goal for themselves.
What is the big goal?
And they're talked to,
or told to imagine it with
a rich amount of detail.
To think about how it's going to feel
in their body and the big win.
And basically what happens is,
if you measure people's blood pressure
or other metrics of physiology,
you see an increase in that
systolic blood pressure.
There's an kind of a
ramping up of the readiness
and excitement for that goal,
but that increase in blood
pressure quickly wanes.
And over time,
that visual of the long-term goal,
becomes a poor thing
to rely on in order to
generate the actions
that are required to reach that goal.
In fact, there's a much better way
to maintain ongoing action toward a goal
that also involves visualization,
but it turns out it's not
about visualizing success.
It's about visualizing failure.
The Balcetis Lab and other labs
have looked at whether or
not people make progress
toward goals of different types.
Whether or not they're
thinking about the goal.
They're thinking about that goal line
and what they want to achieve,
that long-term goal
and all the wonderful
things associated with it,
or whether or not they're thinking
about all the ways in
which they could fail,
en route to that goal.
This is not typically what
we are encouraged to do.
Typically, we are told
don't imagine failure,
push failure out of your mind,
only focus on success.
Fake it till you make it,
or is a phrase that I
absolutely hate, frankly,
because it's not even
clear what that means.
And it's not even clear
what the ethical form of that is.
I think it means continue
despite any anxiety
or fear that things won't work out.
But if you look at the literature,
the scientific literature,
what the Balcetis Lab and
other labs have shown,
is that there's a near
doubling, near doubling
in the probability of reaching one's goal,
if you focus routinely
on foreshadowing failure.
You think about the ways
in which things could fail,
if you take action A or you take action B
and instead, therefore, you take action C.
You're supposed to think
about how things could fail,
if you don't get up and run each morning,
if your goal is, say a fitness goal.
So let's use that as an example,
because even though I realized,
people are in pursuit of many
things, not just fitness.
Fitness goals and physical
goals are a very concrete thing
that we can all get on the same page about
'cause they're related to actions.
Let's say, somebody sets a goal
of running five miles,
four times a week, minimum,
and as many as seven,
four times a week, minimum
before 8:00 AM.
In a previous podcast on habits,
I talked about the benefits
of not necessarily setting specific times
that one will do things,
but setting time blocks
that one we'll do things.
So you say before 8:00 AM,
you're going to run five miles
and that's going to happen
up to seven days a week.
One version of this would be,
okay, sit back in a chair
and think about how great
you're going to feel and look,
if you're doing this every day.
How your health is going to improve.
How everything's going to be,
your blood markers, of lipids, et cetera,
are going to improve, okay, fine.
That's the visualization goal
of visualizing the end point.
It turns out that is far less effective
and maybe even counterproductive,
compared to thinking about
what's going to happen,
if you don't do this.
The negative health outcomes
that are going to occur,
the disappointment you're
going to have in yourself.
The fact that you're
going to wait until 7.30,
that's not long enough
for many people to run five miles.
You got to put on your shoes
as there could be pouring rain
or even hailing or snowing, outside.
And now you're not going
outside unless you're somebody
who's particularly motivated to do that.
So, foreshadowing failure turns out
to be the best way to
motivate toward goal pursuit.
In fact, as I mentioned before,
there's a near doubling in the likelihood
that people will reach goals of any kind.
When they're constantly thinking
about how bad it's going
to be, if they fail.
If we think back to the
neural circuit associated
with assessing value in our goal pursuits,
this makes perfect sense.
The amygdala, that center of the brain
that's involved in anxiety
and fear and worry.
Well, the amygdala, is one
of the four core components
of our goal setting and
goal pursuit circuitry.
And there's no bypassing that.
there is no one listening to this
or watching this who's
amygdala is not involved
in their goal setting and
goal pursuit behavior.
And so, while I'd love
to be able to tell you
that all you should think
about is rainbows and puppies
and all the wonderful, rewarding things
that are going to happen
when you achieve your goals.
The truth is, you should
be thinking mainly
about how bad it's really going to get,
if you don't do it.
How disappointed in yourself,
you're going to feel.
How it will negatively impact you,
if not in the immediate
term, in the long-term,
if indeed your goal is to reach your goal.
So, I want to emphasize
that I'm not interested
in encouraging people
to flagellate themselves.
I'm encouraging people
to achieve their goals.
And it turns out the best way to do that,
is by foreshadowing failure.
And the more specific you can get
by writing down or thinking about
or talking about,
how bad it will be if you
don't achieve your goals,
the more likely you are
to achieve those goals.
Part of the reason for that
almost certainly has to do with increases
in systolic blood pressure
and increases in readiness in your system,
when you imagine failure.
The brain and body are much better
at moving away from fearful things
than towards things we want.
I wish I could tell you
that wasn't the case,
but there is a true asymmetry
in the way we are built.
In fact, the brain and body can engage
in what's called, one trial learning.
When something bad happens,
we eat a food that makes us sick.
We have an interaction
with a person or place
that we really don't like.
It only takes one trial to really...
One event, one time to reorient
or rewire our neural circuitry,
so that we have a bias toward moving away
from that thing in the future.
When things go well, unfortunately,
that doesn't often occur.
If things go really, really well,
it might orient our brain and body
toward wanting more of that thing.
And we'll have neural circuitry changes
that will lead us to engage
in that particular behavior
or interaction again,
but it is never as effective
as these avoidance circuits.
So again, foreshadow failure,
if you're going to
visualize in a positive way,
do that at the very beginning
of some goal pursuit.
Maybe intermittently
every once in a while,
you imagine the big win
of scoring perfect on exam
or winning the championship
or the great relationship.
But most of the time,
if you want to be effective,
you should be focusing on avoiding failure
and you should be really clear
about what those failures would look like
and feel like.
Now, let's talk about goal setting.
Going back to that prominent literature,
the psychology and popular literature,
again, we can hear some of
these themes start to emerge.
The goal should be
significant, we are told.
It should be inspirational.
It should be aggressive, yet realistic.
Well, okay, that's all fine and good,
but let's get semi
quantitative about this.
Let's at least get biological about this.
How inspirational does it need to be?
Does it need to be the kind of thing
that is so inspiring to me
that I can't sleep at all?
Well, that wouldn't be good
because as I believe and I know,
many of you have heard me
say many, many times before,
regular deep sleep, 80%
or more of the nights
that you go to sleep,
is going to be crucial to your cognitive
and mental functioning and your ability
to achieve your goals in the long-term.
That's absolutely clear.
So, it's got to be,
inspirational and exciting,
but what does that really look like
and what does that correspond to
and how do we actually make that happen?
Well, once again, there is a mismatch
between what the real data show
and what we're most often told.
Turns out, that again,
work in Balcetis Lab,
but also other laboratories,
has addressed whether
or not the probability
of achieving a goal, goes up or down,
depending on whether or not one visualizes
or sets a goal that is easy,
moderate or impossible.
An impossible goal would
be, for instance, if I say,
I'm going to jump from my front driveway,
all the way up to the road,
the road's, quite a distance away,
it's more than 20 meters away.
It's just not going to happen.
It's not going to happen in this lifetime,
it's not going to happen
in any other lifetime.
Not unless it involves
some elaborate technology
that I'm not aware of,
a jet pack or something like that.
It's just not going to happen.
An easy goal would be
something like, can you jump?
Or could I jump, two feet in
front of me, obviously, yes.
Now I'm using a trivial example here,
but this could be translated
to any kind of goal,
school goal, physical goal, et cetera.
It turns out that,
when people set goals,
whether or not they are nutritional goals,
eat more of this or eat less of that.
Whether or not they're fitness goals,
run more, lift more.
Some other goals, swim less, swim more,
whatever it is their goal happens to be.
Some learning goal,
some relationship goal,
some attempt to modify their behavior.
It turns out that if the goal is too easy,
it's too within reach,
it doesn't recruit enough
of the autonomic nervous system
to make pursuit of that goal, likely.
Now that might be surprising,
at least it was surprising
to me, you think,
well, something is really, really easy.
there's a very low bar to achieve it.
People are probably more likely to do it.
But turns out that's not the case,
when we hear that a goal
needs to be inspirational,
what do we mean?
When we hear that something's too easy,
to recruit our action, what do we mean?
Well, Balcetis Lab measured,
systolic blood pressure,
and found that,
when goals were too easy
for people to attain,
they didn't get that increase
in systolic blood pressure
and recruitment of the other
neural and vascular systems,
meaning the blood systems
and the nervous system
that would place them into ongoing effort.
And so they quickly gave up.
Also, if a goal was too lofty,
if it was too far from
their current abilities,
it didn't recruit enough
systolic blood pressure.
Even if people could get very excited
about something mentally,
it simply didn't place their
body into a state of readiness
because it wasn't tangible
that they could actually
perhaps really achieve it.
So it turns out that
when goals were moderate,
when they were just outside
of one's immediate abilities
or that one felt that yeah,
that would take a lot of effort.
But it's within range or maybe in range,
like maybe I can do it, maybe I can't.
Then there was a near doubling
of the systolic blood
pressure in the good sense.
It didn't go into the unhealthy range
and a doubling or more of the likelihood
that they would engage
in the ongoing pursuit
of that particular goal.
So here we're talking about goal setting.,
what we're saying is, set
goals that are realistic,
but that aren't so
realistic, that they're easy.
The goals need to be realistic
and truly challenging.
Don't set goals that are
so challenging and so lofty
that they crash that blood pressure system
in the other direction and make you
or anyone feel unmotivated.
In hearing this, it makes sense,
but I don't think I
would have predicted it,
had they not done this
very controlled study.
I would have thought,
the loftier the goal, the bigger the goal,
the more that it recruits
the autonomic system
and the more that people are likely,
to lean into the energy
and effort to pursue and attain that goal.
I also would have thought
that if a goal is really easy to achieve,
that it would engage the systems
of action in the brain and body enough
that people would sort of get into motion
and pursue that goal.
But neither is the case.
Again, set goals that
are difficult to achieve,
but that are not so lofty,
that they collapse your system
and that you feel overwhelmed.
And the important thing here,
is that how we perceive a goal,
whether or not we think
it's within reach or not,
of course will vary,
depending on whether or not we are rested.
Depending on whether or not other aspects
of our life are going well.
I mean, we can think that
we are hot on the heels
of a lifetime goal and
everything's going well,
and then there'll be some
crisis interpersonal crisis,
or there'll be a health crisis
and you'll be shut down.
And then that goal seems
very, very hard to attain.
So we will talk about how to update goals
under different context in a few minutes.
But, of course this is
going to be an averaging,
this isn't something
that you do just once.
But the takeaway again is very simple,
set goals that are
moderately hard to hard,
but not so hard nor so easy
that they don't engage your
brain and body properly.
Moderate goals are best,
if you want to achieve your goals.
Now I'd like to talk about
three particular areas
of scientific study,
that point to goal pursuit,
goal assessment and goal achievement.
Previously I told you,
that it's great to foreshadow failure.
That that's a great way to get your system
into a state of activation.
I also told you
that you want to set goals,
that are challenging but possible.
And again, here, I'm paraphrasing
from the work of Emily Balcetis.
I want to be very clear.
There are a few other
things that one can do
in order to bias the likelihood,
that you will succeed in
trying to achieve your goals.
First of all, limit your options,
trying to pursue too many goals at once,
can definitely be counter productive.
Now I realized that life is complicated.
We all have multiple goals
that we're trying to pursue,
but if we have particular
goals that are important to us,
we have to be careful to not
get distracted by other goals.
And many people run into this problem.
So setting one or two
or maybe three major
goals for a given year,
is going to be more than
enough for most people
and is actually going to be
challenging for most people.
Now, of course we have daily
goals and monthly goals
and yearly goals, but if
we have big lofty goals,
we need to be careful not to
contaminate our mental space
and our visual space with too many goals.
And why do I say visual goals? Well,
what various department stores
and supermarkets have discovered is that,
the greater, the number of
things in our visual attention,
the more that we can draw our attention
and our goals off a line of pursuit.
What does that mean?
Well, let's think about it
in the practical context.
This has actually been done.
Big department stores have figured out
that if they stock their
shelves, chock-a-block
with many, many options of food
or clothing items or objects
or anything like that,
people simply buy more stuff.
People are very prone to
orienting their attention
to whatever's in front of them.
You put a lot of stuff in front of them,
their attention drifts,
you put fewer things in front of them,
their attention is more narrow.
In a later episode, we'll talk
about designing a workspace,
that's optimized on the basis of this.
It doesn't mean being in a room
with nothing except just
your desk and a computer.
Doesn't have to be that sparse,
but visual sparseness,
actually can help us orient
our focus and our behavior.
When we have a lot of things
in our visual environment,
or a lot of things in our
cognitive environment.
It's the same thing.
And so if you're going to try
and pursue a fitness goal,
a relationship goal, an academic goal,
and a longterm life
financial goal all at once,
that's four things.
And you're going to have
to come up with systems
that allow you to isolate those
goals in a very rigid way.
And if you do have
multiple interleaving goals
and overlapping goals
and simultaneous goals,
in a few minutes, we're going to talk
about a process that will allow you
to use your visual system,
to align towards each of
those goals, sequentially,
in a way that makes it much more likely
that you'll achieve them.
So now let's talk about
specificity of goals.
We've all heard that the
more specific a goal is,
and the more specific we are
about when and how we are
going to execute that goal,
the higher probability
that we will actually achieve that goal.
And indeed that's the case,
but there's an additional feature,
that's not often discussed.
That is vitally important.
And in fact, maybe more important
than having a specific time of day
or a specific end point in mind.
There's a really nice study,
that was done looking at recycling.
This is something that a number of groups,
businesses, households,
and individuals are trying to do more of.
They're trying to lower carbon footprint
or contribute to the
world in some general way
by throwing away fewer things
that could potentially be recycled.
So this has been studied
in the context of the work environment,
where a business decides
and lets everybody know,
that there's going to be a greater effort
toward recycling cans or bottles
or bottles and cans, et cetera.
And then, the way these studies were done,
is that the janitorial staff
was swapped out temporarily
for researchers that actually measured
the number of recyclable items
that showed up in the trash
and not in the recycle,
as a function of the
total amount of trash.
Why'd I say, as a function
of the total amount of trash?
What's a way of controlling
for differences in beverage consumption
from one week to the next?
Anyway, the point is they were able
to very carefully measure,
how much people are recycling
before and after this call
to action to recycle more.
And what they found was,
if they said, we are going
to try and recycle more,
try not to put cans and
bottles in the trash.
There of course was an
improvement in recycling,
but it was pretty modest.
Whereas when there was
a very concrete plan
and everyone knew what
that concrete plan was,
for instance, to place all bottles
and cans into the recycle, not the trash
or to limit the amount of trash by 50%,
or to eliminate all recyclable
items from the trash.
So when they made it very concrete,
exactly what the action steps were,
there was a remarkable,
I mean, close to a hundred fold
or more improvement in recycling behavior
that lasted many months
after this call to action was made.
The takeaway from this
is quite straightforward.
It means that having a
concrete plan is essential.
You can't just say,
I'm going to become a better recycler
or I'm going to do things
that are better for the environment
or I'm going to become
more physically fit.
It has to be a specific
set of action steps
that get right down to details
about what success would look like.
I've heard this before described
as what does right look like?
What is the actual outcome
that one would like to achieve
in terms of action steps?
So not necessarily feeling states,
it wasn't that they all
sat around and said,
how great we're all going to feel
about ourselves in the world
when we accomplish this goal?
It was very concrete
statements, very concrete plans
about action steps that would
deliver one to one's goal.
Somewhat straightforward and intuitive,
but nonetheless worthwhile.
What it suggests is that for all of us,
if we have certain goals
that we want to achieve,
we need to be exquisitely detailed
about what the action steps are,
that we are going to take
and to constantly update
those action steps,
so that we have a higher probability
of meeting those action steps.
Some of you may be asking,
how often should one assess progress?
Well, that of course will
depend on the given goal
that you're trying to pursue.
But in the studies
that I've been referring to here,
the assessment of progress
and the updating of concrete
plans was done weekly.
So it seems like weekly
is a good starting place,
to address how well one performed
in the previous week.
And then based on that performance
to update the action plan
for the upcoming week.
So weekly seems like a
good solid rule of thumb
for setting particular action goals
and assessing one's progress
towards the immediate
and longer term goals.
Any discussion about
goals and goal pursuit,
would be incomplete without a discussion
about the molecule, dopamine.
Dopamine is often thought of
as the molecule of pleasure and reward,
but actually it is the
molecule of motivation.
This is best illustrated
by a classic set of studies,
that have been carried out in
both animals and in humans.
The animal study can be
described the following way,
two rats, each in a separate cage.
You can provide those rats
with the opportunity to indulge
in something that they like,
like food or mating.
Or heat, if it's cold in the environment,
or a cool spot in the cage,
if it's warm in the
environment and so forth.
And what you find is that,
rats will very readily
approach the rewarding thing.
They will, mate.
They will eat.
They will pursue something
that is of pleasure.
Now, if you are to take one of those rats
and deplete its dopamine neurons,
you can eliminate it's dopamine neurons
or block dopamine in the brain.
What you find,
is that those animals
will still enjoy pleasure.
They will consume the food,
they will mate, et cetera.
However, their motivation,
to achieve pleasure is vastly reduced.
In fact, if you place
the item of pleasure,
the mate, the food, et cetera,
even just one rat's
length away from that rat,
the rat without dopamine
will not even move one length
of its own body in order
to achieve that pleasure.
And there are naturally
occurring experiments
in humans that mimic that
result, very accurately.
There are certain conditions in humans
where there's a depletion of dopamine.
And what you find is that,
the depletion of dopamine
does not inhibit an ability
to experience pleasure, necessarily.
It inhibits an ability to pursue
or go through the series of action steps
in order to achieve pleasure.
So dopamine, really sits
at the heart of our motivational state,
to seek out goals and to seek pleasure.
And this is true for immediate goals
that take place within
a timeframe of minutes
or a timeframe of a day,
or the timeframe of a week or
the timeframe of a lifetime.
Dopamine, is the common currency
by which we pursue goals.
Now, dopamine does a number of things
that are very interesting.
I'm going to describe a few of them
as they relate to goal seeking behavior.
First of all, there's
a fundamental feature
of how our brain releases
and uses dopamine,
that's called, reward prediction error.
And the simplest way to think
about dopamine reward prediction error,
is that dopamine is released
in the greatest amount
and places us into a
greater state of motivation,
when something happens
that's positive and novel.
Now, an important thing to
understand about dopamine,
is that it's not always released
on the same schedule.
There are a couple of different ways
that dopamine is released.
And when it is released
relative to your anticipation
of a reward, is key.
If you don't expect
something positive to happen,
you're just going about your day
and something positive happens,
dopamine and a lot of
dopamine is released.
I had this happen recently.
I had no idea
that I was going to be
receiving something in the mail,
but I went to the mail.
I looked in the mail and I
got something very positive.
And I was really, really
excited about this.
This is a real event that
happened, just today.
However, if we anticipate
something positive
is going to happen
and then that thing happens,
we experience dopamine as
part of the anticipation.
So even before we get the reward,
there's an increase in dopamine.
It's not as high as it would be,
if something really novel and unexpected
and positive happened,
but we do get an increase in dopamine.
And then, when we actually
experience the reward,
we experience the positive thing,
there's a smaller increase in dopamine.
So again, the biggest increases
in dopamine are response
to things that are
positive and unexpected.
Lesser dopamine is released
when we anticipate
something good will happen
and when that happens,
yes, we get some dopamine.
And we also get some dopamine
when the positive thing happens,
think about anticipating
a great meal with friends.
We have some dopamine churning,
our friends come over,
then we have the meal
and we also get some dopamine from that,
but not nearly as much as we would,
if it had all happened as
a part of a big surprise.
Then, there's also the
case in which we predict
that something good will happen,
when that happens, there's
an increase in dopamine just
as it was before,
but then if that thing doesn't happen,
for instance, our friends
don't show up for dinner,
then there's a drop in dopamine
below our initial baseline.
That drop in dopamine,
is the chemical essence of
what we call, disappointment.
Now, this dopamine reward
prediction error, as it's called,
can be leveraged toward
trying to reach our goals
because it tells us
where we should set our milestones.
We can't be in a mode
of simply being focused
on the finish line.
Very few people can do that
over long periods of time
in a way that's effective.
Now, earlier I talked about a study
where people were focused
on a finish line visually,
and they were moving through space
with these ankle weights on,
but that was a very short-term goal.
So, if a goal is within minutes,
or maybe even within an hour
or as in with our immediate
visuals environment,
maybe we can do that.
But most goals of the sort
that most people are
pursuing, fitness goals,
academic goals, business goals,
relationship goals, et cetera,
involve some milestones.
So, understanding what we know
about reward prediction error,
we can make better choices
about where to place the milestones,
how far out in the future
to place milestones.
So then the question becomes,
how often or at what intervals
should one assess progress?
And it turns out this is very subjective,
but that there's a way
to make it objective.
Now, in a previous episode of
the "Huberman Lab Podcast",
I had a discussion with
the great Robert Sapolsky
and we were talking about,
how the brain can subjectively change
whether or not a given
behavior or experience,
is positive or negative.
And the example that Robert gave,
is a really phenomenal one.
It's a study that's been done in rats
and also in humans
where they took a rat
and they had a rat run on a running wheel.
Rats turns out like to
run them running wheels
and the blood pressure of that animal,
the health metrics for that animal,
the lipid profiles, many,
many things improved.
The rat was exercising
and it got healthier
and presumably happier,
we don't know, we could've asked it,
but we wouldn't know. It
doesn't know how to tell us,
but we can measure blood lipids.
We can measure blood pressure
and all sorts of things.
And indeed, when that rat
exercised or when people exercise,
they generally get healthier.
Except, in that particular experiment,
they had another animal
where every time rat number one, ran,
rat number two was forced to run.
It was on a running wheel
and it was forced to run,
not because it wanted to,
but because it was forced to.
And what was remarkable,
is that the physiological effects
of being forced to do something,
were in the complete opposite
direction as they were
when those same behaviors
were undertaken voluntarily.
In other words, the rat
that was choosing to run,
got healthier
and the rat that was forced
to run became unhealthy,
blood pressure went up in a direction
that wasn't effective and useful.
Blood lipids got worse.
Stress hormones went up,
et cetera, et cetera.
And you see the same thing in humans.
Now, what this says,
is that our subjective understanding
of why we are doing something,
is fundamentally important for the effects
that we will get from that behavior.
And indeed the effects of
that behavior will have on us.
So this has two major implications.
First of all, in terms
of reward schedules,
we can decide to use any
reward schedule that we want
for a given behavior.
We can decide that the milestones for a...
Let's say a plan of getting
in really terrific cardiovascular
shape over the next year.
We can decide to assess every day
and ask ourselves how
good was our progress.
And if we made progress, then
we're going to reward ourselves.
We could do that every third day.
We could do it every week.
We could do it every five minutes,
if we actually had the time to do that.
The reward schedule, the dopamine system,
is highly susceptible to
the subjective effects.
These so-called, top-down effects
of when we decide that something
is going to be good for us,
if we analyze it on a given timeframe,
well, then it's going to be good for us.
So, what I suggest people do
is pick a particular interval
at which they are going
to assess progress.
And if you've been making
regular progress towards a goal
that you reward yourself
and the reward indeed is all cognitive.
It's all mental.
It's telling yourself, yes,
I'm on the right track.
Now, some people will say, wait,
but I want to know exactly
how often I should do that.
You need to do that at an interval
that you can maintain consistently.
So you're not going to
reward yourself every minute
or every step of every jog that you take,
unless you can do it,
every minute of every step
of every jog that you take.
For that reason, I think that daily
or ideally, weekly assessments
are going to be best.
I think that checking
in at the end of a week,
looking back on the previous week
and assessing how well you performed
in pursuit of a given goal.
How many times a week you ran,
or how many times you studied,
or how many times you did
something that you wanted to do
or avoided something that
you didn't want to do.
I think that's a reasonable
and tractable schedule
to assess once a week.
So that's one point,
that pick a milestone that
you can maintain consistently
throughout the pursuit of a goal.
The second thing, is that
the subjective effects
that were described by that Sapolsky study
or that Sapolsky described
rather, are absolutely essential
for all aspects of goal seeking behavior.
We cannot underestimate the extent
to which the dopamine system and our sense
of whether or not we
are on the right track,
is under our cognitive control.
If we constantly place ourselves
into a mode of thinking
that we are failing, well,
then indeed, we are not going
to churn out much dopamine.
Now, earlier, I said, we need to predict
and visualize failure,
but that is not the same thing
as thinking about ourselves as failing.
We need to predict what the
outcome would be if we failed,
but then encountering that
and in behaving in a certain way,
and thinking in a certain way,
in pursuing our goals in an effective way.
Maybe checking in on that each week,
we definitely need to
reward ourselves cognitively
for the correct and successful pursuit.
What this means is that
anticipate and think about failure
as a mechanism of generating motivation
and indeed fear and anxiety,
so that you lean into
the correct behaviors
and you lean away from
the incorrect behaviors
to reach your goal.
But then weekly or so,
whatever you can maintain consistently,
you absolutely want to
reward yourself cognitively
by telling yourself,
I'm on the right track.
I got another week where I accomplish,
whatever it is that I'm
trying to accomplish.
A concrete example that I'm following now,
is this 150 to 200 minutes
of zone two cardio per week,
because that's shown to be very effective
in improving mental and
physical health metrics.
So once a week, I'll check in with myself.
If I reach that 150 to
200 minutes threshold,
then I'll reward myself simply
by checking off a box and
saying, okay, I'm on track.
I'm on track.
I'm on track.
This dopamine system is critical to re-up,
to remind ourselves that we are on track,
if indeed we are on track
because dopamine itself
provides a state of motivation
and readiness to continue
in the regular pursuit of our goals.
Dopamine, the molecule, is actually used
to manufacture epinephrine
and norepinephrine.
Which are other molecules
in our brain and body,
which put us into that
readiness and action state.
There are actually the molecules
that help generate that increase
in systolic blood pressure,
that puts us into a state of readiness.
So you can think about dopamine
as a self amplifying system,
provided that you are
leveraging the dopamine system
on a consistent schedule.
Now, by also following a
consistent schedule of self reward,
you set yourself up for any
positive unanticipated rewards,
that may happen.
So for instance, if you're
checking in with yourself weekly,
telling yourself that you're doing well,
if indeed you are.
And then out of nowhere,
for instance, you're out on a run
or you're doing something,
I'm using fitness as an example.
But you're doing something,
you find yourself performing
particularly well,
that's a unexpected dopamine reward
that will further amplify the system.
Now I know many people out there,
having heard me talk about
dopamine before, worry,
well, can I release too much dopamine
and then the whole system will crash
and then I'll run out of motivation?
In general, that doesn't happen
unless people are using pharmacology,
supplements or prescription
drugs or illicit drugs
to increase dopamine.
This is why I'm a big fan
of things like, cold showers
and cold water exposure,
which has been shown to lead
to long-lasting 2.5 X
increases in dopamine,
or in some cases,
supplementation with
things like L-Tyrosine,
which are precursors to dopamine.
Or in some cases, caffeine,
which can increase the number
of dopamine receptors that we have,
so that whatever dopamine
we have floating around
can be more effective
in activating these motivational states.
But things that really increase dopamine
and then cause it to
crash, can be problematic.
One way to conceive of dopamine,
is as a sort of dopamine wave pool.
You've probably seen these wave pools,
where some pressure is
pushed into the pool
and then you get these waves going.
If those waves are consistent enough,
and they're are of high enough amplitude,
the waves can continue to go
up and down and up and down.
But if it's a giant wave,
if you get a huge blast of dopamine,
well then a bunch of the water
sloshes out of the wave pool
and then you basically
have to take some time off,
reset that dopamine level.
That's what happens in addiction
and when people start
pushing in a lot of drugs
or other things into the system
that increase dopamine too much.
So today we've almost
exclusively been talking
about behavioral tools.
It is possible to incorporate supplements
and things of that sort, that
can increase dopamine as a way
to getting into ongoing
motivational states.
But I caution people about
relying on those too much.
Really what you want,
is you want a situation where
your own positive feedback,
your own understanding,
that you are reaching the milestones
that you've set out for yourself.
That you're achieving those,
and that is what's causing these waves
or these increases in dopamine
that will further amplify
your motivational states.
Another very interesting
aspect of dopamine
that I've not talked about at all
on this podcast before,
is actually how the
dopamine system interacts
with the visual system.
We've talked a lot about
how harnessing your visual attention,
to a particular point is great
and can help serve your
ability to both set
and achieve goals.
Really wonderful work that
was done by Wolfram Schultz,
who's one of the great pioneers
in this area of dopamine
and dopamine reward prediction error,
showed that for people that
have normal levels of dopamine,
their visual search,
meaning how they scanned
visual environments,
tends to be pretty constrained.
They might move their eyes
around a particular visual
environment, searching somewhat.
For people that lack dopamine,
they actually have very
little movement of their eyes.
They don't actually tend to
look very far into the horizon.
They're don't have that
very focused vergence point
that we're talking about that kind of a...
I guess for lack of a better phrase,
that kind of eye of the
tiger, focus on a goal.
Rather, their eye movements are depleted
and they're not actually
evaluating horizons
off in their future,
they're not focused so much
on the extrapersonal space.
And this actually can be restored
and some of these took place
in Parkinson's patients
and other people who
have dopamine depleted,
that when dopamine is
restored pharmacologically,
their visual focus is re-enhanced again.
Now, there are a lot of
details to this study
that don't map perfectly onto everything
that I've talked about.
But the point is this, when we are focused
on a particular point in visual space
or a particular goal or horizon.
All those systems, our
blood pressure, epinephrine
and indeed dopamine, get recruited
to put us into a state of readiness
and willingness to go pursue things
in that extrapersonal space.
When our visual attention is very diffuse,
all of that relaxes,
and we tend to be more comfortable staying
in the place that we are,
in our peripersonal space
and the effect works in
the other direction too.
When dopamine is increased,
our visual attention for
particular things out in space,
increase.
So the way it works is reciprocal.
When we use our visual system
and in a particular way,
bring it to a point of focus,
it recruits chemical and neural systems
in our brain and body
that put us into a state
of readiness and pursuit.
And, when we increase certain chemicals
in our brain and body, like
epinephrine, like dopamine,
then we also allow our visual system
to be in a state of looking
out at particular locations
in our visual world.
So the system works in both directions
and some people leverage this
by using things like caffeine
or taking things like
L-Tyrosine to increase dopamine.
And again, it works both ways,
there's no right or wrong way to do it.
I'm a particular fan of
using behavioral tools,
always prior to using supplementation
or any kinds of other tools
because behavioral tools
have a very unique feature
that supplementation and
other chemical tools don't.
Which is that behavioral
tools used over time,
engage neuroplasticity.
As we start to practice,
using our visual system
to harness our attention
to particular locations
and in that way, move
to our particular goals,
we get better and better
at using those systems.
In fact, the systems for
focus and motivation,
themselves have plasticity,
so we get better at being
motivated and focused
when we place our visual
attention at a given location.
Using chemical assistance of a safe kind,
of course, check with your doctor.
But things like L-Tyrosine or
caffeine or those combined,
yes, it will increase dopamine
and will increase our ability,
to engage in visual focus somewhat.
But those compounds alone,
don't modify the circuitry
in the way that we want.
So I always say, behavioral tools first,
then nutritional tools,
then supplementation tools
and then if it's right for you and safe,
maybe you advance into some
of the other more sophisticated tools.
I'd like to just briefly recap
what I've covered up until now.
And again, emphasize that much
of what I've covered has been based
on the beautiful work of
Emily Balcetis and colleagues.
I do hope to get her as a guest
on the podcast, by the way.
First of all, set goals that
are challenging, but possible,
those moderate goals, not super
easy, not super difficult.
But moderately challenging goals,
seem to be the most effective
in moving people towards their goals
over the short and longterm.
Second, plan concretely,
you need a concrete set of actions
that you're going to follow
in order to reach your goals.
Third, foreshadow failure.
This is a somewhat surprising one to me.
I would have anticipated,
that imagining success is the way to go.
It turns out that imagining
success and visualizing success,
can be useful at the outset of a goal
and maybe every once in a while
in pursuit of that goal.
But that it's not terrific for putting you
in constant pursuit of that goal,
rather, foreshadowing
failure, visualizing failure
and all the terrible things
that it's going to bring,
seems to be more effective.
And that maps very well to what's known
about the neural circuitry
and the involvement of the amygdala.
Focus on particular visual points
as a way to harness your attention
and to remove distractors.
Removing distractors and
getting your body and brain
into a mode of activation.
Getting that healthy increase
in systolic blood pressure,
that puts you into forward motion
towards your goals, is absolutely key.
So that's a brief summary
of what I've covered up until now.
There were other things too,
of course, the dopamine system
and the power of
subjective top-down control
in regulating that dopamine system.
But I want to be sure to include a tool,
that's been especially powerful for me,
that's grounded in the
neuroscience research
and in the psychology research.
And as I describe this tool next,
I think you'll see the ways
in which it measures nicely
with the work that Emily Balcetis
and colleagues have done.
This is something that,
I've personally been doing for many years,
based on my understanding
of the visual system
and the understanding that
indeed we can move our cognition
and our perception from
a place of interoception
and focusing on our peripersonal space.
That space within us and
immediately around us
and on the things that are
immediately accessible to us.
That we can shift from that mode
to this mode of exteroception
of focusing on things outside
the confines of our skin
and that are beyond our reach,
that are literally goal directed behaviors
and goal directed thoughts.
And this is something that in the past,
I have talked about a little bit
and I've talked about something
called, space-time bridging.
And we haven't talked too much
about the time domain of
the visual system today.
But space-time bridging, is simply a way
of using one's visual system
to focus on the peripersonal
space and interoception.
And then gradually in a deliberate way,
stepping one's focus into
the extra personal space
and then back to the peripersonal space
in a way that gives you a lot
of flexibility and control
over that ability in your daily life.
So, I'm going to first describe the tool,
and then I will explain more
about the underlying science
and the underlying mechanism.
Here's how you would do this.
You could do this indoors or outdoors,
although, ideally, you
would do it in a location
where you could view a horizon.
It could be through a window
or ideally outdoors, without a window.
It could be done anytime of day.
At night, it might be a
little more challenging,
but it goes the following way.
What you first do, is you
would close your eyes,
this could be done sitting or standing.
But you would close your eyes
and you would focus as
much of your attention,
including your visual attention
on your inner landscape,
on your interoception.
So that would be your
breathing, your heart rate,
maybe even the surface of your skin,
but really focusing internally.
Now, how can you focus your
visual attention internally,
if your eyes are closed?
Well, you do that by imagining
your inner landscape.
So you don't have to
imagine your heart beating
and so forth.
But what you're trying to
do is eliminate perception
of the outside world.
You're eliminating exteroception
and you're focusing all of
your cognitive attention
and your perceptual attention
on what you're experiencing
within the confines of your skin
or at the level of the
surface of your skin
and inside your body.
And you would do that for a duration
of approximately three slow breaths.
So close your eyes.
You do breath one, breath
two and breath three,
concentrating all your attention
on your internal landscape.
Then you would open your eyes
and you would focus your visual attention
on some area on the surface of your body.
So for me, the way that
I typically do this,
will be to focus on,
say the palm of my hand.
So I'll focus my visual
attention on the palm of my hand.
And I then do three breaths again,
focusing on my internal state,
but now I'm splitting out a little bit
of my attention from
interoception to exteroception.
I'm focusing on something outside me,
the ratio or the split of
attention is about 90, 10,
about 90% of my attention
is focused internally,
but I'm also focusing some
of my attention externally.
Most people can do this pretty easily.
Then, there's a third,
what I call, station.
I now move my visual
attention to outside my body,
to some location in the room,
or if I'm outside in the
external environment,
something in the range
of five to 15 feet away.
And I'm trying to move 90% of my attention
to that external object.
So now I'm really biasing my
perception and my attention
towards exteroception.
As I breathe, I'm paying
attention to those three breaths,
so that's why there's still 10%,
that's focused on my internal landscape
because I want to pay attention
to those three breasts.
But I'm focusing as much of my attention,
outside of myself,
maintaining just a little bit
on my internal state,
so I can measure the cadence
of those three breaths.
Then I move my visual attention
to yet another station,
which is further away,
typically, a horizon
or something as far off in the distance,
as I can possibly see.
Again for the duration of three breaths.
And at that point, I'm trying
my very best to move 99,
if not 100% of my attention
to that external location.
And then, what I typically will do,
is I will try and expand both my vision
and my cognition to a much broader sphere.
This is that, magnocellular vision
that we talked about before,
where I'm not focusing
on a particular location on the horizon.
I'm trying to dilate the
aperture of my field of view,
so I can see as much
of the visual landscape
as I'm in as possible.
If you're in an internal, excuse me,
if you're in indoors,
then that might be the ceiling, the walls
and the floor of the
environment you're in.
If you're outdoors, it would
be to expand your visual focus
as broadly as you possibly can.
Again, for the duration of three breaths,
then I would return immediately
to my internal landscape.
I would close my eyes
and I would do three more
breasts focusing entirely
on my interoception, on
my internal landscape
or what we called before,
my peripersonal space.
And I would then repeat that,
peripersonal space, 100%,
focus on my hand, 90%,
10% on my peripersonal space
or my internal landscape.
Stepping out to another location
where it's mostly exteroception,
maybe a little bit of
recognition of my internal state,
then to the horizon,
then to this broader visual
sphere, then back into my body.
And I would work through
each of those stations,
maybe two or three times.
The entire thing takes about
90 seconds to three minutes,
depending on how many breaths you do.
I said three,
but you could do one or 10.
It doesn't really matter.
Or, it's also going to depend on,
for instance, how slowly your breathing.
'Cause your breathing might be faster
than mine or vice versa.
What is all of this doing?
Why do I call this space-time bridging?
And why is this useful for goal setting?
The reason I call it space-time bridging,
is that the visual system,
is not just about analyzing space.
It's actually how we batch time.
It's how we carve up time.
And the simple way to state this is that,
when we focus our visual attention
on a very narrow point,
that's close to our body
and our immediate experience.
We tend to slice up time, very finely.
We're focused on our breathing.
We're focused on our heartbeats.
In fact, our breathing
and our internal landscape
and our heartbeats
become the sort of
seconds hand, if you will
on our experience.
We are carving up time,
according to our immediate
physiological experience.
Whereas when we focus our visual
attention outside our body,
not only do we engage that exteroceptive,
extra personal space system,
and we start to engage
the dopamine system,
the goal-directed system,
but we also start
batching time differently.
When we focus our visual system
into a broader sphere
of space or into a space
beyond the confines of our skin,
we start carving up time,
our frame rate changes.
Now this is useful in the
context of goal setting,
goal assessment and goal pursuit.
Because with the exception of
a very few isolated examples,
almost all goals, involve
setting some goal,
that's off in the future,
and then carving up the time between now
and the achievement of
that goal into milestones,
that range in duration.
And the rewards, even if we try
and just make them every week,
are going to come at
some unexpected intervals
and that's actually can be helpful
for reinforcing behavior,
intermittent reward.
That's intermittent
and random is the most effective
reward schedule we know,
but the problem is always,
how do we keep our cognition
in line with the long-term goal
while also being focused
on these more immediate goals?
And so this particular practice,
that I call space-time bridging,
but we could give it a different name.
I'm sure there are better names.
Maybe you can suggest some
in the comment section on YouTube,
that are more accurate
or map to it better.
But this behavior or this practice rather,
is teaching us to use our visual system
and thereby our cognitive system
and thereby our reward systems,
to orient to different locations in space
and therefore different locations in time.
And that is the essence
of goal directed behavior.
That is the essence of setting a goal.
It's about thinking about what you want.
Then it's about setting milestones
that are intermediate to that goal.
Then it's about assessing whether
or not you're reaching those milestones.
And then, it's of course
about updating your goals,
if you need to update your goals.
All of that is an enormously
confusing batch of challenges,
if you think about it all at once,
but if you break it down
into these elements,
that the visual system can help you find
and move towards those milestones.
I think there's ample
evidence to support that
and that your control
over your visual system,
is indeed yours,
that you can deliberately set
it to different locations.
And then you make a practice
of stepping through
these different stations
on a regular basis.
Again, I do this each morning.
I do this once a day.
Rarely have I done it twice a day.
Rarely have I missed a day.
But by doing that, you
can be very effective
in teaching the systems of your brain
that are related to
goal setting and reward,
to map to different timeframes.
So, I found this to be a
very effective protocol,
the Balcetis work has mainly focused
on visual tools that
are of a single horizon.
Here I'm talking about multiple
what I called stations or horizons.
But what's very clear, is
that an ability to move
from different visual stations
and to do that in a deliberate way
in a focused and conscious way.
Clearly maps to an ability,
to conceive of different goals
over different periods of time.
And I do believe can be greatly beneficial
in allowing one to set particular goals
and then move through the
milestones to those goals
and to constantly update one's pursuit
and reward in reaching those milestones
and eventually, the overall goal.
Per usual, I covered a
lot of material today.
We talked about some of the neuroscience
and psychology and popular understanding
of goal seeking behavior.
How to assess goals, et cetera.
Talked about the beautiful
work of Emily Balcetis
at New York University
and her work on the use
of the visual system,
to better achieve goals.
And indeed things like visualization
and why forecasting failure
can be more effective
than forecasting success
as counter intuitive as that might seem.
That's what the data point to.
And we talked about the importance
of setting concrete plans
and really what that means.
And what intervals at
which to assess progress.
And what intervals at
which to assess reward
and how the dopamine system is involved.
And in addition, I described this practice
that one can incorporate as a daily
or semi-daily practice of
so-called, space-time bridging
of using the visual system
and your ability to deliberately
step your visual system
from stations that are within your body.
So-called peripersonal or
interoceptive space out
into the world further and further.
And then back again in sequence
as a way to harness and cultivate
and build up these
systems that link vision,
space, time, reward systems and so forth.
Ultimately, as you set out
to accomplish your goals,
there are going to be
a number of basic steps
that everyone will have to follow.
You have to clearly identify,
what the long arching ultimate goal is.
You have to identify what
the milestones will be.
You might not know all
of them at the outset,
but you ought to have some idea
about the intervals at which you are going
to set those milestones
and set your reward schedule
for assessing progress
in route to those milestones
in your ultimate goal.
My hope is that you'll be able
to incorporate these tools,
if not all of them,
perhaps just one of them or two of them
in pursuit of whatever particular goals,
you happen to be focused on at this point
and in the future.
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and in particular, the
neuroscience of goal setting,
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