The science of goal setting & achievement

I am just sharing my notes from The Huberman Lab Podcast episode #55. I am the biggest fan of Dr. Huberman and his podcast.

I originally posted this on Youtube and many people liked it and asked for more. So I decided to make a post here on Medium.

Steps:

• Goal setting
• Assessments
• Goal execution: action steps

Learn faster — 85% rule:

• All forms of learning involve reorganization of connections in the nervous system.
• Making errors is good for neuroplasticity. When we make an error, the state of frustration is key to learn.
• The errors make the brain more plastic.
• Rate of errors? How hard should the task be? 85% rule:
• Make the difficulty like this: you get things right 85% of the time, make errors 15% of time.

Setting and achieving goals

• Humans are unique in our ability to orient our action toward long term goals.
• We have multiple goals interacting at once.
• It doesn’t matter what the goal is… it involves a common set of neural circuits.
• Amygdala: goal is to avoid punishment of any sort through fear and anxiety.
• Basal ganglia: generates action and inaction(Go-no go).
• Lateral pre frontal cortex: planning ant thinking
• Orbital frontal cortex: emotionality

Value of goals

• Given the value of a particular goal, you decide what to do.
• Dopamine is how we assess the value of our goals.

Peri personal space vs extra personal space.

• Peri personal space: things that are immediately available. Serotonin associated.
• We evaluate our progress in this space. Even though the goal is in the future.
• Extra personal space. Everything beyond the confines of my reach, in space & time. Dopamine associated.

Multitasking

• Increases epinephrine (adrenaline). Doing a bit of multitasking, prior to do a focused work is good. Don’t multitask when doing goal-pursuit behaviors.

Visual focus

• Increases clarity of goal seeking.
• When we focus on an external space (placing our focus outside our body), and then move into any kind of action, we are moving to a goal-pursuit mode of the brain. Visual focus puts you in a readiness state.
• Just by changing where we look, we can change the perceived effort and the ability to accomplish the goal.

Tool:

• Focus on a point beyond peri personal space. Hold your attention for 30–60 seconds

For long term goals:

• Delayed gratification problem. Our visual perception of our future-self’s is what allows motivation to increase.

Visualizing big goals:

• It is effective. How to do it?
• Visualization of the BIG win is effective at starting the pursuit, but it is not at maintaining. So it’s good for intensity, not consistency.
• Visualizing failure. Doubles probability of achieving a goal. Think how things would fail and what would happen if you don’t do this or that. Linked to loss aversion. Associated with amygdala. The mind is better at moving away from things we do not want that moving forward to things we want. Predicting what would failure look like is not the same as thinking ourselves of failing (this would lead us to de-motivation and lower dopamine levels)

Setting goals:

• If is too easy, we are not likely to pursue it. We need to make them moderate (that is a lot effort, but it is doable).

Limit your options:

• Too many goals are counterproductive. When there are a lot of things in an environment, we sparse our attention.

Specificity of goals:

• Having a concrete plan is essential. It doesn’t work “I am going to be a great athlete”. We need to be specific about the action steps.

Assessment of progress:

• Do it weekly. Based on performance, update action plan.

Dopamine: molecule of motivation.

• The depletion of dopamine doesn’t inhibit the ability for pleasure, it inhibits our motivation to seek that pleasure.
• Dopamine reward prediction error: tells us where we should set our milestones.
• The subjective understanding of doing something is critical. If you are being forced to do exercise, you are not going to get the same health benefits of someone who chooses to exercise.
• Reward schedules: do it an interval that you can get consistently. The reward can be cognitive “Yeah, another week that I achieved my goals” or checking off a box.

Tool: Space-time bridging:

• Better done Outdoors

1. Close eyes. Focus attention on your inner landscape. For 3 slow breaths.
2. Open eyes. Focus visual attention on some part of the body. Focusing on internal state but also looking to something external.
3. Move attention to something external. Something 5–10 feet away.
4. Move attention to horizon, something really far away.
5. Expand vision and cognition as broadly as possible.

• Return immediately to 1st step and do 3 times.

I’ll keep posting these notes for every episode, and also I will post some of the previous ones.

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“Thanks for your interest in Science”