Dr. Emily Balcetis: Tools for Setting & Achieving Goals
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Welcome to the huberman lab podcast, where we discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman and i'm a professor of neutral logy and open ology at stanford school of medicine today. My guest is doctor Emily bell chatz doctor bet chatz is a professor psychology at new york university, her laboratory study's motivation, goal setting and tools for successful goal completion.

I learned about doctor about chastises work some years ago because i'm a vision scientist, that is, I studied the visual system. And I heard about this incredible psychologist at new york university who was studying how vision, that is, how we visualized problems can predict, whether not we successfully overcome chAllenges, and how we strategize in order to set and meet goals. And in twenty twenty, I learned of dbl chatz book, which was written for the general public, entitled clear, closer, Better, how successful people see the world.

And I read both the hard copy of the book and listen to the audio book, and I absolutely loved the material, as you will learn directly from dr. Tor belchatow today, how people visualize a problem, that is, whether not they think of a goal, a problem, as residing at the top of a very steep hill or on the top of a follower hill, or whether not they visualize a goal or a problem as far off in the distance or closer to them in the distance, visually in their mind, strongly dict ates. Whether not they will arrive at the chAllenge of meeting a goal or overcoming a problem with more energy or less energy, indeed, IT dictates whether not they can push to immediate milestones, or whether or not they will think they have to overcome the entire task all at once.

Basically, doctor bell chatsea work has discovered that how we visualize a problem or a goal in our mind has everything to do with how we lean into that goal, whether not we think of IT is overwhelming or tractable, whether or not we think that we can overcome that goal, and then I will lead to yet more possible rewards and goals, or whether not we feel that we are going to arrive at the finish line and then just be overwhelmed with fatigue. In other words, how you visualize things in your mind. And when I say visualize, I mean, literally how you visualize them as a visual problem or a visual goal has everything to do with whether or not you will be able to meet those goals and whether not they will lead to steal greater goals that you will be able to achieve.

Today's episode is, is, is especially important when I believe, because you're going to learn about quality, pure, reviewed science from the expert in this field of goal setting, motivation and pursuit, and you're also going to learn an immense number of practical tools that you can apply toward educational goals, your career goals, relationship goals, goals of any sort. By the end of today's episode, you will be Better equipped to set and achieve your goals. Talk about that also shares with us her own experiences of how to set, visualize and achieve goals.

And SHE does that within the context of hero as a parent, as somebody, navigating relationships of various kinds and a demanding career. So again, I think that you'll find the information today to be both extremely academically grounded in terms of research, extremely practical and realistic in terms of how you might apply IT in your own life. 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 desired 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. Our first sponsor is element.

Element is an electro light drink with everything you need and nothing you don't. That means plenty of salt magnesium in patache um this so called electronic and no sugar. Now salt, magnesium and potash are critical to the function of all the cells in your body, in particular to the function of your nerve cells, also called neurons.

In fact, in order for your neurons to function properly, all three electronics need to be present in the proper ratios. And we now know that even slight reductions in electronic light concentrations or dehydration of the body can lead to deficits and cognitive and physical performance element contains a science back to electronic ratio of one thousand milligrams, that one gram of sodium, two hundred milligrams of plastic um and sixty milligrams of magnesium. I typically drink element first thing in the morning when I wake up in order to hydrates my body and make sure I have enough electroliers.

And while I do any kind of physical training and after physical training as well, especially if i've been sweating a lot, if you'd like to try element, you can go to drink element that's element dot com slash huberman to claim a free element sample pack with your purchase. Again, that drink element L M T dot com slash huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by waking up, waking up as a meditation APP that includes hundreds of meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga eja sessions and n sdr non sleep depressed protocols.

I started using the waking up up a few years ago because even though i've been doing regular meditation since my teens and I started doing yoga eja about a decade ago, my dad mentioned to me that he had found an APP, turned out to be the waking up APP, which could teach you meditations of different durations, and that had a lot of different types of meditations to place, to bring your body into different states, and that he liked IT very much. So I gave the waking up up a try, and I too found IT to be extremely useful, because sometimes I only have a few minutes to meditate, other times have longer to meditate. And indeed, I love the fact that I can explore different types of meditation to bring about different levels of understanding about consciousness, but also to place my brain body into lots of different kinds of states, depending on which meditation I do.

I also love that the waking up up has lots of different types of yogananda sessions. Those you don't know. Yoga eja is a process of line very still, but keeping an active mind is very different than most meditations.

And there is excEllent scientific data to show that yogananda and something similar to IT called non sleeps, deep breath or nsd r can greatly restore levels of cognitive and physical energy, even which is a short ten minute session. If you'd like to try the waking up up, you can go to waking up dot com slash huberman and access a free thirty day trial. Again, that's waking up that com slash huberman to access a free thirty day trial. And now for my discussion with doctor Emily belt chatz, well, thanks for being here.

That's my pleasure.

Yeah, i've been looking forward to a long time because as a vision scientist who is also very interested in real life tools and goal setting and motivation, your work land squarely in the middle of those interests. So just to kick things off, could tell us just a little bit about the relationship between perception and in partial, how we see the world and goal setting and gold retrieval. It's a vast landscape, but you're the expert, so i'll turn that over to you. And then as time goes on, I may have some additional questions as IT relates to different kinds of vision, but what's the deal with vision and motivation?

How do those two things link psychology? Ask you, boy, how are you? What are you doing to help make progress on your goals? They say all kinds of things, a couple of things always pop to the top, which is try to shock myself in encouraging ways in self, self pep talks.

Or I remind myself of how important that is to do this job. Or i'll put up posted notes around to like constantly be maggi y about what I need to do. So those are common tactics that people use.

What will notice is that those are really effort for having to constantly remind yourself, having to constantly talk yourself, having to create those posted notes, where to look at them. All of that takes a lot of time and effort and commitment. And so what a surprise that people burn out, right? It's exciting to work on a goal.

When you first to set IT, you might make some initial progress, but then eventually we get, you know not even to the half way point, but before things get real, things are are chAllenging and we ve fall by the wayside. And that I think because of tactics that are are go to strategies are themselves a goal to maintain. So it's like, you know, double side, we're putting so much on ourselves to try to advance the thing that we originally set out to accomplish.

So with my team is trying to think of like what are strategies I don't require as much effort that we can automate, that we can take advantage what's already happening within ourselves, within our body, within our mind, that might overcome one of those chAllenges that will be easier, more automated. And that's when we started to land on the idea of vision, right? We look at the world without you even thinking of IT, for those of us are cited and and we thought, you know what there there are strategies that we can use to look at the world in a different way and that we can automate that might help us to overcome some obstacles to make progress on our goals, to maybe literally see opportunities that we had been able to see before.

So we started playing around with the idea of visual illusions to see, do people even know that there's other ways of seeing things around them? Can we tweet that there is a room for intervention? Can we encourage people to take a new way of looking to to see things that they hadn't seen before? And that's what really opened us up to trying to look at that intersection between vision science and motivation science.

It's great, I always say. And here i'm strongly biased as a vision scientist, that vision is the dominant sense by which we navigate the world and survive. I love this idea of real world, real time access division.

And i'm certainly familiar with how goal settings or post its and you know, magnets on refrigerators can have an immediate impact with them over time. And they become so part of the visual landscape that you overlooked them. And we know as vision scientists is something is stability in the environment. Eventually you're blind to IT. So that makes good sense.

So you've publish a number of studies in this area, but maybe you could highlight some of the more uh, what you would consider important findings in the area of how people can adjust their vision in order to meet goals more quickly and more efficiently and perhaps also how we come. We all arrive at goals with different visual perceptions and that in some way may divide us into highly motivated and less motivated people. Other words, what's the links between vision and motivation? And how can we leverage that in order to Better reach?

So we started thinking about what are the goals that the most important people that they struggle with the most. So we asked hundreds, thousands of people with their new year's resolutions.

Are we look to all the other polls that, that do the same kind of work? And regardless of where you look or who you ask for, when you ask, people's number one goal is something related to their health, right? To lose weight, to exercise more, to to get out, get more steps for mental well being, physical well being.

And and that's like the number one goal every january first. So if if we were able to accomplish that goal, you think IT would drop a little bit in the rankings, but IT doesn't because it's really hard. So we thought I wonder there's a way for us to make some progress on that and helping people to exercise Better, more often, stick to IT longer and and make some progress there.

We know diets don't work. Why don't diet? right? For the same reason that that self talk doesn't work is that, you know, we go in IT all board, hard core and IT requires a major commitment and effort to a lifestyle change.

So again, we were looking for something that might be easier than that, that could produce big, big payoff, right? That's that's the golden ticket, something that requires less effort for a bigger payoff. So one of the first things that he did was go over to bricklin, to this old armory building used to to be a military armory space.

Yes, I know that thing. Yeah, it's a beautiful building now that houses a lot of businesses with plants .

on the walls businesses. There's a couple of armories all around the balls here around new york city and and the one in brooklin particular is now ymca, right? So it's a family ymca that's within a beautiful old red brick building that you be a military, establish men long, long ago.

And what's really cool is that no one winter after afternoon, somebody had invited me, a physical therapist said, you should come out and check out what's happening here with your interest and exercise and trying to find new ways of helping people, new tactics that they to their tool bill, um I think you're going to fend some interesting people that are working out there. So I showed up. I look around, know there's families, there's new moms.

There's kids that you know mom trying to get kids to burn off some winter new energy that they have. There's people look like they're just there for their you every couple of days going out for a run. There's some people that looked like they're training with a team and that's who this fiscal al therapies induce.

Introduce me too is was the coach of this team. There's a lot of people that we're sitting down on the ground, and I would be hard pressed to know who's the high school student that's in this group and then who, as IT turns out, are some of the fastest runners in the world. Like one of the people that was in the the last olympics before I showed up on the gold medal for the four hundred meter.

And and from the looks of them, I mean, of course, their bodies are in Better shape than mine, but there is nothing so course are not wearing their medals. There's nothing pretentious about how they're walking around or anything like that, that what would never need to know like this person's amazing. And they're probably have some insight that I don't have. So once I got introduced to them and knew who are these people that we're part of this um pretty a elite training team that happened to work out at this family gym, uh, I had a chance to talk with them about what strategies do you use.

Now I am not in a weet runner and having recently how a baby, i'm not really a running right now at all but I thought when these people are running, I bet they are like hyper aware of everything that's going on in their surroundings where are they relative to the competition, what's happening in their perform vision, what's going on on the side, who's behind them, who's in front of them? They probably have this like master sense, this master visual plan at any point in time. And that's what probably makes them a eat so on to say that asking them is that case, do you do you really pay attention to what's in your surroundings, what's behind you, what on the side? They said no, like all of them said no.

And sometimes when I do do that, it's a mistake that doesn't work for me. So that was surprising, but totally went against my intuition about what they do. That likely contributes to their success.

What they said instead was that they are hyper focused. They assume this narrowed focus of attention, almost like a spotlight is is shining on a target. Now when they are running a short distance, that target might literally be the finished line in the line they're trying to cross.

But the longer distance, they set some goals like in the person, the shorts on the person up ahead that they're trying to beat or they choose some sort of stable landmark, like a sign that that they would pass by and like a spotlight is shining just on that or like they have blinders on the size of their face. That's all they're paying attention to. It's really narrows scope of attention.

And that was a strategy that they that all of these the athletes said that they used and those that were Better rather than um you know than slower. We're ones that used IT more. And I thought that something we can play with, right, like they are a litten, they are accomplished. But that visual strategy isn't necessarily something that you have to be in the perfect physical condition to be able to adopt.

And so I wonder, can that help the rest of us who aren't competing for an olympic gold and who have no chance of ever getting one, but who want to exercise Better, have a Better, have a Better time doing IT and maintain a commitment to that exercise, go that they might have, that they might otherwise, by february, I are march, be giving up button they had set at the begin of of january. So that's really where the work started was what you might call ee focus groups and case studies of these incredible and um and then we did other studies looking people who are in olympic athletes but who are competitive and new york road runners runners and how are they running in races. And what we found is that those people have Better pace, fast pace, Better time.

Um they use that narrowed strategy more often. They are this more experience or you know open scope of attention. And there seems to be a coalition between that Better performance among a wider swath of hundreds of of runners who are doing IT competitively.

But still, you know could be like the person that you're sitting next to in the office or yourself, right? And the more often that they did in the and the more consistently they had adopted that, that technique of the narrow focus of attention assumes that they were doing Better in their runs. So then we started thinking, like, okay, what about people who who aren't competitive runners? What about like my mom? Can he do that? Or me when i'm trying to get back on the bandwagon? Exercise more.

Is this the tactics we can teach people? The answer is yes. You can tell people about what these olympic athletes are doing. You can tell them about what the new york road runners runners are doing. And just using the same language that I just use with you, right, imagine that there is a spotlight shining just on a target.

Choose choose something up ahead, the stop sign two blocks up that you can you can just see and you know imagine that you have blinders on so that you're not really paying attention to the people that are passing by, or the buildings, or the garbage kings or the truck set on the road, you know, tune those out and focus in on that target until you hit IT, and then choose another one, right? So to retaliate ate, choose the next goal. And so we would test like, can people do that?

I mean, if you're listening right now, you probable imagining that experience to and the answer is yes. Like I can imagine that I know what those words mean, and I can do that. And I work found that too.

If people can do that, we have them say out loud what is that, that's captured your attention. And of course, sometimes something in the proof, like movement, captures our gaze and and we are pulled there for for an incident. But then we can refocus up again and adopt.

That narrows attention. Now one of the first studies that we did was was teach that strategy and jackpots are compare IT against a group that we said, just look around naturally. You know, you might see that finish line line up ahead.

And there's things on the proof. Y whatever your eyes want to do, whatever you think is going to work best, feel free to do that and tell us what you're looking at. Then we gave them a finished line.

We created sort of you and exercise that's moderately chAllenging, but possible. We put ankle weight on that. That accounted for about fifteen percent of their body weight, told them to lift their knees up sort of high, stepping to a finish line.

So this would be chAllenging for them to do. But we said, you know, it's an indicator of overall health and fitness. Some of these people had narrower their focus attention, and some were just looking more expensively or naturally.

And what we found is that those people that we trained to everyday, Normal people doing this, this moderately chAllenging exercise, they were able to move twenty seven percent faster. They could do the exercise more quickly. And they said IT hurt seventeen percent less.

The exercise was exactly the same for all the people. We said we set the weight and we set the distance. IT was in our lab space.

So who was like constrained environment? Everybody was in the same sort of the stands, but yet their experience was really different. We help them to move faster, burn calories at a higher rate, right? Exercise more efficiently at the amount of time they put in.

Is gonna ce a Better physical outcome? And I also, I didn't hurt them. They're saying IT doesn't hurt as much.

So we were really excited about that, right? Because that meant that this strategy, we can use them in people who are not at the athletes. IT can be easily adopted a quick training session.

I can teach people to look at the world in a different way. Again, this narrow attention was different than whatever they do, naturally, the comparison group. But I had a big outcome. IT had a big difference on the way that they were engaged in the exercise, like some of the first work that we did and then since, and we've done, you know that dozens more studies to look at, well, what happens of that and and and what else can we do with playing around with this?

But those are impressive differences as a consequence of narrowing visual attention. Couple of questions about the actual practice of narrow ing attention. Is there any indication of whether or not subjects um are constantly updating their visual attention sufferance if let's say the goal line is in view literally from the beginning, I could imagine just holding visual attention on the on the goal line but um if it's a oval track or it's a trajectory along a trailer through a city, how often do you think they are updating their um their visual appeared and setting a visual goal? And I could imagine that there are some energetic expense to that. So that um meaning how you know you wouldn't want to do every crack on the sidewalk unless those cracks on the sidewalk were very far apart because I think at some point that self would be exhAusting. Um so is there uh an optimal strategy or a semi optimal strategy?

Yeah so you know those olympic athletes that we that we started by interviewing the intended to be sprinters, they were more often sprinters, short, distant sprinters. So when they say like yes, I nara win more than I assume an expensive focus. That's because you're not going that far, right? They have to do IT as fast as humanly possible, but they are not going that far.

And so we said that I was saying that question to about what went that be tiring and the answer is yes. So when we started to look at what people who aren't sprinters who are accomplished but who are in more long distance runners, that's what we find that they do is that they um you know they're using that narrows attention strategy strategically and IT increases in use. They use IT more often as the race progresses.

And they really started to do this no major switch about the halfway point of, say, like a ten kilometer run. So people who are seasoned runners, they really start making a switch with what they're looking at about halfway through. And that's where they more often, more frequently and are more intentionally adopting a narrowed focus of attention when they're in the last couple miles of a run, when maybe their resources are starting to get more thin, maybe their motivation is starting to fade.

That tipping point in the middle is with any kind of goal where people strugling the most, and that's when they're like doubling down on a strategy that they know to be effective. So you know at first, longer distance runners are not using that narrowed strategy there. They're looking more expensively um because I think that that first of all, distraction is a thing is useful, not necessarily that they're distracting themselves because people are still trying to hold peace and jostle among probably a more concentrated group of runners um but IT is a strategy that they use and then sort of wean off of um as the race goes through.

And it's particularly effective when we're looking for that last push, right, the last push to get over the finish line when like you might be literally neck neck with somebody that you you're trying to just beat out or when you're most tired. But you know, like that last push, you don't want you don't want to drop off um know you want to want to push through hard through that finish line. That's when people are using a at its peak level of intensity.

I see yeah I to me this makes total sense why IT would work um without going down the rabbit hole of visual neuroscience of something for another time. The when we do these virgins eye movements, when we bring our eyes to a visual target, it's clear that some of the brain cem circuitry for alert inss gets engaged to a greater degree.

The other thing is that we know that when we focus on an object, that the yet the optics of the eye change in a narrow the visual field. So that brings about this is a very detailed question, but i'm sure the audience is wondering if, let's say, i'm focused on a goal line or or a intermediate goal. Are they focused on a specific point to is that kind of the entire horizon of that goal? Because the finish line is indeed a line.

So and of course, this is it's impossible to know what someone is actually doing in their minds eye, but how do people report this? Do they see IT literally as a spotlight? And if so, how broad is that spot?

yeah. So you know, what is the the link of of their appeal? Or rather than maybe the diameter, the fear fear size of IT. Um you in our interviews with people are sort of focus group studies. Um IT seems like it's more like a circular point and that's in fact what we're teaching people, what we're training them to do.

So rather than going broadly looking across A A line from left to right, we are encouraging them til they imagine a circle of light that's shining on some target. Now of course, the finish line is a line, but if you're staying in, there are lane. If you're on a track, right, you can imagine that there is that there is a circle shining just on where in their lane, no cross that finish line or if it's a stop sign, you could imagine a circle of light illuminating that.

So that's what we're teaching people to use, and that's what seems to be effective to maintain that focus rather than are being polled to engage with preferred vision. And there's some amazing people, some runners and history like john ban w. Samuelson.

She's one of the first female marathon competitors who has has one multiple marathons. She's canadian and I think she's one. Feel free to correct me, like ten marathon's in her life.

And he talks about sort of not assuming this like this, wide, but but narrow. why? Wide but not deeper, tall, attentional focus. SHE talks about like finding the shorts on somebody ahead of me and focusing on on those shorts until he passes them, resetting that goal. So you know her interviews that she's done with runners magazines and he talks about IT in terms of this the circle of attention thing.

I've experienced this a little bit um because we're using new york not to do this interview and runners here are seeing more competitive recreational. Runners here see more competitive walk. People walking on the street seem competitive.

You're walking at near pace to somebody. They're quickly speed up. You speed up theyll speed up. I think they're been some studies about walking speed in different cities in new york racks among the fastest Walkers around. I won't mention the slowest walking cities because we don't want to cast any judgements.

But fascinating and again, makes total sense based on the way that the visual system measures both space and time. Something maybe will get into a little bit later, but i'm curious whether not this, the whole thing works in reverse as well. Meaning I do. People who are very motivated to exercise, do they think this way naturally? People who are averse to exercise, or who find IT hard to get motivated to exercise, do they view the world differently?

literally? Yeah, I have so much that I can say about this. So if you humor me, i'll give you a couple different stories about how we can answer that.

So you don't have to do a deep dive and division science, which, of course, you are capable of doing. But but what I can share with you is some like animal studies where this work kind of first started. This is in the one thousand nine hundred, four thousand nine hundred and fifties, rat labs, mice labs, and they were looking.

Those were the first models of of human behavior, or that people were were trying to understand motivation, motivation science within, so they would, you know, deprive these poor rats and mice of food or water so that they were motivated to to get IT. They were are hungry and they were thirsty, and they had practice running, amazed so they knew where they could find that food or water, whatever that they were looking for. And what these researchers were studying was the peace of of movement through the maize.

So as these, as the rats were, like going through the maze, they found that even though these rats were hungry and they're having to expand limited chloric energy to make IT to the finish line, they actually ran faster the closer they got to that finish line. So once that finish line became neuer to them, they actually know use their resources probably, you know, sub optimally to make sure that they cross the finish line and got their reward. So that was like some of the first early work that was showing that, you know, proximity to a goal increases the investment in in resources that people that animals use to meet that goal, even when they don't have that much despair.

And with the mice, the same kind of thing, you know, they were actually had these little harney sons on them. They are looking at how hard do the my poll to try to make IT to the food or the water that they were trying to get. And the same deal, the closer they got to to getting their reward harder, they were pulling, even though they didn't have that that much energy to spare.

And they had r to use some up getting to that finish line. So that was, that was that early animal research from the one thousand four hundred and one thousand hundred and fifties, and spurred a whole wave of a work in humans. Do humans to do the same thing, you know, even when they are tired.

But they can, they can see, or they can feel that their goal is close. Do they double down and work even harder to cross that finish line, either like a literal finish line of for talking about exercising, or a metaphor finish line talking about any other kind of goal that people might have? And the answer is yes.

They called that the goal gradient hypothesis. The closer you get to the goal, generally the harder people and animals work to to finish that goal. That's what LED us them to think.

Okay, you know, those rats, those might, those people are seeing a finish line, me, and it's been there, maybe seeing that finish line, seeing that reward, seeing the goal there, hope you accomplish that is what's leading them to, you know, try harder to invest more so that they can finish IT off. What if we induce the illusion of proximity? What if we can induce the visual illusion, a visual experience um that approximates what the real rats and mice were were actually experiencing as I got closer.

So that is what is happening. That's what's happening visually when we create that narrowed focus of attention. When we tell people imagine there's a spotlight on the shorts of the person ahead.

Stop saying that you're seeing IT induces an illusion of proxim ity that then is responsible for people trying harder, walking faster, feeling that I define their expectations. And then IT wasn't as bad as I thought I would be. So we do things like measure, like measure their visual experience.

How far away is that finish line course? We can ask them to report in feet. My feet is IT.

But that's chAllenging, right? Like nobody really knows what what three feet versus four feet really looks like, but but they do. So we can ask them how many feet is.

We also use these other measures of, like visual matching measures to know like that distance of the finished line looks about as far away as as as this other target. They're matching up their visual experiences. So what we know is that inducing, that narrowed focus of attention is creating an illusion. Approximate that goal looks closer to them. And then there's all kinds of downstream motivational psychological effects that happen from feeling like your closer by by by visually misperceived that yes, IT can have a really positive consequence.

So your first question was, you know which way is a go? Does IT go both ways that people who are Better runners like happened to do this thing? Yes, some of our research shows that that if they know, for whatever reason happened upon this strategy and continue to practice IT, they tend to to be the Better runners.

But we also know from our experiments in the lab where we take people who don't know about these strategies by a flip of the coin, we randomly assign them to either learn the strategy and use IT or do whatever comes naturally to them. We can create that illusional proxim ity that has a direct and causal impact on improving the performance um when they're exercising. So yes, IT IT goes both ways that you can also teach your self that you don't have to just rely on the luck luck of the draw for being a person who happens to be Better exercising or whose eyes happen to do this on their own.

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The most pressing question I have in my mind is, can we I all of us use this strategy to make the starting line a goal point because for a lot of people, it's not about going from start to finish. It's about getting to start. And you I would say here i'm estimating but fifteen percent of the content on social media is about motivation and how to get motivated to do things.

Um no chemicals like top course being at the heart of motivation. I in my mind making strong links between some of these visual capital effects and go lines, and dooming that we could also dive into. But the simple question is, can I use this finish line strategy to make the start line a goal and get my system more engaged and motivated? And is there any physiology or physical ological changes, I should say, to reflect the idea that maybe just visually focusing on the start line would actually get me more excited as supposed to make me less excited to engage an effort.

There are certainly vision science that's tied up in the very first stage of of goal setting, like identifying what that goal is in the first place and taking those first steps. Uh, a lot of people to go to strategies that involve vision our our vision boards or dream boards or you know posted note s right.

They're creating some sort of visual representation of what IT is that they want to accomplish, where's that that I want to be in five years, ten years, ten years, whatever whatever that timeline is that they're working under idea of vision boards or dream boards is that you like, you know almost like a scrap, but could collect visual icons that reflect where you, anna, be to motivate yourself. The really common tactic that people use, and it's not bad to do that, right? For some people, just even knowing what they want in life is a major accomplishment.

Defining the goal can be really chAllenging for people, and that's a strategy that works and involves our visual experience. It's not just people aren't saying like why not you just sit around and imagine what you want your life to be like ten years? The strategy that people are suggesting as like, no, cut out the pictures, put him on a board and stick by your bathroom mirrors so day, make a little .

people are big on this list of friends. Have you made your list in the list of things that you insist on having in the context of fitness relationship job at that, at that? This seems more and more common .

yeah totally in the idea like right IT down right there's like you write IT down like or or create a visual manifestation of IT. And so yeah, that's effective for identifying what you want, but you may not actually be effective for helping you to meet the goal to get the job done.

So colleagues of mind at new ork university um have probed why? Why is that? Why is just, you know thinking about what you want in your life and and out of putting yourself vicariously into those shoes, imagining what my life will be like if I can accomplish everything on this list? Why doesn't that welfare, as of all, does IT work? The answer is no.

And why does IT not work? Uh, because what happens, these colleague, gril otann a and her and her research team have found, is that you going through and dreaming about of or visualizing how great my life will be when I get X, Y and z done um that that is like a goal satisfied. I have identified what IT is that I want.

I have experienced IT even if just in an imaginary way, I ve had that positive experience of thinking, well, how great my life is gonna be when I get this thing done. And I started a sort of rest on their law, als. She's actually measured systolic LED pressure and heart rate.

And they found that people who do that, who goes through that experience of visualizing, how great my life will be when I get x enz done there. There, systolic blood pressure, the bottom number on your blood pressure, reading decreases. Okay, now i'm all about finding ways to relax, especially in new york, right? You're constantly living at a high level of stimulation.

And so I cool. agree. So maybe I should just like think about how awesome my life will be when I get my buck, my bucket less done. But motivation scientists know that systolic blood pressure is actually an indicator of our body's readers to get up and act to do something.

Now there can be the going out for a walk, going out for a run, hitting the gym, IT can also be things like doing math problems, right? Even if it's it's something that's just mental. The stock gay pressure actually goes up in anticipation of your body or your mind needing to do something, taking the first steps on a goal.

So when IT is IT helps us to understand and like, okay, if I ve just created this dream board, this vision board, and put myself psychologically in that space of a goal satisfied, why is that bad up? Like pressure goes down because that means your body is chilling out. It's like, alright, cool.

I just complied something pretty major. I D, actually now don't have the physiological resources at the ready to take the first step right now to do something about that. So so that was a pretty monumental um finding for motivation scientists to understand that like creating these dream boards, these vision boards are to do this might actually backfire because in and of itself is the creation of the goal. I am the satisfaction of the goal. And then people understandably give themselves some time to just that positive experience.

So much for the secret.

Yeah, exactly what I guess.

Now the secret folks will come after me.

pitch for you and never say the name.

Well, i'm not afraid to say that. I mean, I imagine that certain strategies might work for the people. But I everything you're saying again, is consisting what we know about the physiology of dopamine circuits for motivation. I have A A good friend who perhaps, incidentally, perhaps not, is a cardiologist, a in a major university said that one of the major errors that people make uh with book writing in completion, as they will tell people they are gonna write a book and people will say, oh, you definitely should write a book. Everyone's gona love your book and they never end up writing IT and his theory is that they get so much dopamine reward from that immediate feedback with all the protection of never having the book criticized, that they never write the book. I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but um I guess IT raises the question, what's the Better strategy?

Yeah so i'm not saying the people who enjoy a dream board creation should stop what they're doing. That's not to take home message here. Definite not that. No, there's nothing anxiety and fear in the world.

We don't need to encourage more of IT, but the process of goal setting shouldn't stop with articulating with the goal is so at that same point that we're trying to figure out what we want to do, what what is my vision for the future in those planning sessions? We need to simultaneously, I think about a couple other things. One is, um how are we onna get there.

So take IT out of the abstract, take IT out of this I of visual iconography, and start thinking about the practical day to day. We need to break IT down into more manageable goals, not just my ten year plan for myself, but my two week plan. What what can I accomplish in the next two weeks? In the two weeks after that's onna set me on the right trajectory.

That's probably not surprising to anybody who's been thinking about how do I set goals Better? You plan, plan big picture, think big picture abstractly, but then also break IT down more completely. That's probably not surprising, but it's an important aspect of the goal setting process.

Then again, Gabrielle oin genome department has identified a third often overlook or under appreciated stage that has to happen. At that goal in the goal setting process and that thinking about the obstacles that stand in your way of success and that IT will actually help improve motivation in the long run. And sometimes we'll think that, that like is counter intuitive. You're saying like for if I want to increase my motivation and have more motivation than I need to think about how hard it's gonna all the ways that i'm gonna fail. How is that going jazz?

How is that going to help me get through when I actually you when things get hard, but IT does because it's like coming up with a plan B, A, plan c, plan d in advanced actually experiencing that if you were on a boat and the boat started to sink, that's not the time you are going to start looking for life jackets. You really want to know where one is so you can go to IT right away. And the same thing with goal setting is that you wanted know what am I working towards? How going to get there? Nfa experienced obstacle.

Here's what i'm going to do about IT. You may never experience that obstacle, but if you do, you're probably going to be shy on time then on resources, maybe experience in anxiety that hijack your brain so you're not functioning at that optimal level of judgement decision making. You want to early have like the snap next step in place so you can just pop to IT.

We are not going to do our best thinking when we're in crisis mode um but we don't have to if we have used if we have ready used our resources in advance to come up with that plan beer, that plan. See Michael phelps like incredible athlete, right? This is a mean that he and his coach have routinely incorporated into their into their training.

So I love this story that like back in two thousand eight, he was hot, hot for the first time on the international stage was the beijing olympics. Michael palpi was on the brink of doing something that no one else in the history of the olympic games has ever done, which is win a gold medals in a single olympia. At the time of this story, he had already one seven, and he had just the two hundred fly in front of him before he could do what no one else has ever done when the eighth gold metal, and like the fly is his thing, right? This should be, have been easy, like no brain.

He's going to win this. He's going to break olympic history as soon as he dove in to the pool his gargle started to leak and by the time he had done three length of the pool, he just had to flip around and and come back to the to the starting line slash finish line back to the edge. Um by the time that happened, his gog's were completely filled with water, and he was swiming blind.

I would have be an act. I would have sunk to the bottom of the pool. I wouldn't going to be in the pool, to be honest, like i'm not a swimmer, definitely not gna be in the olympics.

But but for him, he didn't IT wasn't a moment of panic like he probably would have been for nearly every other person in that situation because he had for shadowed that kind of possible failure. He had imagined that obstacle hitting him in advance, and not even to imagine that, but practice that. What will we do? He routinely practiced swiming with his gog's not fully secured on his face.

Coach notoriously would rip the goggles off of his heads, smashing on the ground for maybe dramatic effect or something, so that he didn't even have any goggles possible to grab as his as in practice. So because he had for shadow that possibility in the solution, if my goggle start to league, then I will do, in his case, start counting my strokes. Then i'll make IT through.

He knew exactly how many strokes that would take from him to get from one end of the pool to the other. I started counting the strokes. He won that.

He won that race to two hundred five. One has eight gold metal, and you'd go on to win fifteen more in his career. So we might not all be switchers. We might not all aspire to olympic level performance. But I love that example because I think IT IT helps sort of d modify or give us an alternative perspective on the importance um and the motivational reasons why thinking about obstacles in advance, thinking about the ways the two, three, four ways that your plan might go right is actually effective at helping us to overcome the obstacle that might otherwise lead us to throw in the towel.

That's a beautiful example. Um i'm going to spring word off that example to ask a question that uh has also been on my mind which is, is there really anything special about vision because in the example you just gave, IT was indeed vision that Michael false was deprived of and IT was counting strokes, counting as another form of incremental measurement, the nervous system, obviously.

Um there are others that could be the sensation of the of the hands smacking the water, breaking the surface of the water. So there any number of different variables are metrics that one could use. I could imagine that setting out on a, let's say, a three mile run, which for me is a decent, decent run.

It's when I do a few times, we can also not a runner. But I try to complete some run a few times a week at very slow pace, just for my health. I could count every step that would be kind of exhAusting.

But if I knew that three miles was, i'm going to estimate here, I would know a couple thousand steps. I could count backward. I could count forward. I count every ten um I confessed I spend every morning trying to find sunlight to get sunrise to set my circling rythm and I do a one hundred jumping jacks so i'm the guy that people are looking at strange on the street. But sometimes I count return, sometimes I count backwards so I count forward.

Is there any indication that IT matters or is IT simply that we attach some sort of meaning to that increment and the mode of, uh, reaching that incremental? Because he does seem like there something special about vision. We can maybe dive into a little bit more or why that is.

But at a very basic level, how broadly or or finally should once set the increments and does not matter if you're counting steps or counting strokes, if you're uh maybe it's every other song you can listen to an entire album and something that I don't know if people do anymore or you going to listen to a whole play list and then listen to IT again and you're gna run as long as the play list is a complete twice. You can obviously see what i'm getting at, but I know people are going to want to implement these tools. And I have to guess that the nervous system is is somewhat in discriminate when IT comes these things, but that there might also be some specificity.

I think vision is special and I think you do too um so in for a variety of reasons. When you start, you can really nerd out on how cool the brain is and how cool vision is within the brain. And when you do, then you start to find some things that make vision unique.

More, more real estate, more neurological cortex, real state is taken up by the visual sense than any other sense, more than taste, touch, smell, right? Vision gets more. Real state gets more neurological processing space than any other sense. Why is that? Well, because evolution has let us to prioritize that visual, the visual experience.

There are some cool illusions where, like, may be somebody y's mouth is doing something different than what you're hearing when people to create these like we are tricks that might go on youtube and go viral um and and people are trying to figure what did I hear? What did I see his mouth doing? And what comes up is that people people prioritize what they see over what they're hearing when the two are incompatible or are kind of like out of sink every time, yeah, every time, right?

If you have to bet on IT, bet on, bet on what IT is that you're looking at rather than what you're seeing? And why is that? I guess a couple other things too, right? Like we can see you super far.

You can see like a flickering candle on our horizon if IT was a totally you know clear sky um several miles away you can see the international space station floating up in the in the night sky hundreds of miles away. Our eyes are amazing. And um and we prioritize what we see that.

And I think that's because we never we rarely get the experience of having our visual experience second guest. You know often sometimes is we're having a conversation maybe in a lot restaurant and we know that we didn't hear the person right. And so we say, like, did you say that? Like, oh, I thought you said this and like, no, I didn't say that right.

People will correct us when our ears get IT wrong or we're tasting something amazing and we can't quite figure out what spaces were in here. And so we know that our tung isn't quite picking up the the teeth of the right way, and that's why we read the menu to see what are the ingredient. So we asked the chef, what did you put in this at this? amazing.

So we know that our tongue getting IT wrong, or you might be touching something, and you look at the tag to see what sort of textile was using this really amazing piece of clothing that you're looking. So we know that our sense of touch isn't quite getting IT right, but rarely do we have the experience of having our eyes get updated. Well, we are looking at something.

I think i'm looking at my mom. Oh, no, actually he was actually my husband. Okay, like that never happens.

And right, that we have gotten vision as wrong as we might get. Any other thing that we are experiencing through any other sense. We trust our visual experience.

We have a sort of a night realism. M that what we see reflects the world the way that actually is because it's never really fully tested. We'd never get the input or the feedback that you've seen.

Something wrong intellivision al illusion pops up on social media, right? Like the dress example or the last week or so, there's been that horsell line drive that's been all over social media to what do you see I see a horse as I see a seal and then like, you know chaos rubs or I thought the dress was blue and I thought I was go I don't member the options because I see that is blue so right and and it's like dividing up families and friendships because you've like seen something that the other percent just literally cannot see. And that's why we love those examples when they pop up in social media.

When they do is because that defies all of our previous expectations. There is a really amazing, if this interests you, there's a really amazing visual artists in each kaor who plays with these ideas too. And his installations are are just fascinating.

I saw one in a museum once where I walked on the long hall, and it's just a big black eec CT tangle that's painted on the wall. Like, this guy is super famous with the hell. Just a big black record angle painted on the wall.

What is this about? Like, but hok do you know this museum paid how much? whatever. But then as you get closer, you get closer in your eyes start to settle in and adapt the different visual lighting, realized it's not a black square painted on the wall, a huge hole his carve's into the wall. And there is a whole other world that's back behind her that you can see right away until your eyes adapt to the different lighting conditions is amazing.

Big science. I have to see where is this exhibit?

Um it's not up right now. I've i've seen there was a retrospective several years ago that was done in sydney, but his work is all over the place. So a nih poor definite, definitely worth looking up because because like the dress example of the horsell line drawing or artist like an nik POS work, that is a moment that that gives us a different unexpected in, say, about the world that IT chAllenges us to to see something that we hadn't seen before or IT induces or tricks us and to seeing something that we win of others SE i've seen um and so with those rare moments that I think are actually really important for understanding, what do our eyes Normally do because we wouldn't find into these examples so surprising, so engaging, so shocking if we had routinely gotten the experience of realizing we're not seeing the world the way that IT is.

So that is why I think vision is a special and why IT can be thought of as a tool that we can add to our tool kit, uh, for how to Better accomplish our goals. I'm not saying that we should just only focus on imagining the world through A A an attentional spotlight, but maybe that's something that we can employ strategic ally on occasion when we think it's going to best to help us when we need an extra little push to cross that literal or metaphorical finish line. But IT doesn't have to be the only tactic that we use, just like it's not bad to use vision boards, but let's use something else also.

It's it's not bad to talk to ourselves in encouraging ways, but let's try adding another tool to our tool belt um in case that's not enough to get the job done. So I do think that there's a great power and thinking about our visual experience alongside other tactics that we might use for meeting our goals. And another one of those tactics might be like the the numeric that you're talking about.

Do I think about my jumping Jackson terms of groups of ten, or as a set of one hundred, you do IT routinely, so you might be able to set a goal of a hundred and have that sixteen you through number sixteen, number seventy, and maybe starting to get harder. But for somebody who's just starting out and wants to be able to make IT to one hundred, that's probably not going to work. That's going to be maybe really that could be quite chAllenging for them if it's the first time that they're trying IT.

And so instead, setting those microbes of groups of ten is gna be useful because as we started to get to number eight or nine or a number eighty eight or eighty nine, and it's really getting hard, we need that extra little hedonic hit, a pleasure of accomplishment mico dopamine. E rushed that you might get by hitting another ten, another decade, miles stone, another group of ten miles stone. And once we get that little hit of pleasure, excitement or self congratulations, that might be enough to sustain us through the next chAllenging physical obstacle, the next group of ten that we might.

So there isn't any like prescription that I would give and say every person should decide that twenty five jumping jack is the goal. No, we have to be idiosyncratic and and introspect about where we at with this goal, this thing that i'm trying to accomplish and set those goals realistically, but inspirationally as well. We want to set a goal that will chAllenge us but isn't impossible.

We don't want to set goals that are too easy because we're not onna trick yourselves into like feeling so great about doing one jumping jack. Okay, great. Like pretty sure most people, if that's a goal, they can do one.

So we're gonna feel so great when you hit that all. No, because I was too easy. You didn't have any doubt that you could do that one.

But what about twenty five? Okay, yeah, that I made feel pretty good about that. Or what about the next group of twenty five? And now I met fifty. Those are goals that might seem just beyond the brink of what's possible, but I will feel good when I hit that. And that's gonna give me the next sort of boost of energy that i'm going to need to go a little bit further, either that time or the next time.

Yeah, I think vision is special. Again, i'm strongly bias here you know the reason I I initially learned about your work was, well now you have this amazing book but at the time there wasn't the book there were just the scientific papers and of course upon which the book arrests um and those papers are really important but was the relationship between vision and our obviously is our sense of space, but how their sense of space and time are related to make the idea quite simple for those listening.

You know, when you narrow your visual window, you're measuring the time being also get smaller, right, which makes sense when you hear IT, whether if you take on a huge visual cape, you're actually carving up time differently. It's sort like moving from a slow frame rate to a fine frame rate. You know slow motion camera is actually taking a lot more snapshots, right? So you measuring distance over time more finally.

And so where a strobe would be, the other example, which is strobe is very low frequency. So you're going here, here, here as opposed to, know, slow motion, right? Stroke gives a course the course view into the time domain and high speed photography gives a fine view in the time domain. So i'm almost certain without any knowledge of underlying data um um but knowledge of the mechanism. I am almost certain, if not certain, that by placing a narrow visual appeal we change the way we perceive time.

No, I have a question and to be, as I know, the answer in advance, but i'd love for you to tell us a bit about how some of this works still further in reverse, meaning how unfit people view the world versus how fit people view the world, or how unmotivated people visually see the world, as opposed to highly motivated people. You talk about the easily runners, you give the Michael phelps example, but maybe could describe that study. I think it's a particularly important one, mostly because, yes, IT identifies a perhaps a physiological or psychological differences between motivated and unmotivated ted or or fit and unfit people but IT also provides A A path to to remedy that.

Yeah so you know there's out of my lab but also out of several other labs has been work looking looking at that relation between states of the body and visual experiences um they haven't necessarily tried to to integrate the motivation science element um to IT, but they were looking to see individual experiences is change as a function of different states of our body.

So they looked at people who experience chronic fatigue um the elderly people who are overweight um those that are you wearing wearing heavy backpacks and so who are sort of put into that experience of being overweight, what happens to their perceptions of the environment? Well, what they find is that distances look further to those that are over way, chronically tired, older rather than Younger, waited down with with extra baggage. Distance is look further and hills look steeped.

We've we've done some of those studies too, where we try to give people more energy or or deprive them of of energy. And he does that change their perception of space? And we did that by so of a classic technique of a double blind study where the participant doesn't really know what they're experiencing.

I thought you can .

say a double less pressure that is also a good psychological experience gift. People, ah yeah so you know double blind experiment where the parties that doesn't really know the full extent of what what they're doing, the a third experiencing and and the researcher whose interacting with them also doesn't know you do this a lot of medical studies, you give somebody a drug and you give somebody a placebo, a sugar pill, and then importantly, nobody really knows who's got what until you've analyzed all the data.

And the results are revealed that that these are the people that that had the drug, the active agent. Same idea in the psychological research. In this case, what we did was give people cool ID to drink.

And for some people, that cool ID was sweetened with sugar and actual kloran entity IT could give them energy. Other people have drink cool ID sweetened with splendid. So yeah, it's sweet.

But IT actually doesn't have any chloric value. You're not giving people energy. You're just giving them that that experience of of sweetness. Now some people, of course, are really good at identifying like what's real sugar and what's splenda. But when you put IT in a cool, laid a pretty noxious powder, IT actually masked IT for everybody.

And nobody had any idea because it's like.

garbage.

Everybody garbage. sorry. I mean, i'm sure there are many people that love cool aid. I guess the sales of cool will reveal the data.

Yes, I grew up in the asa actually, who from IT originated in nevada. So I do feel like i'm betraying my roots slightly by by casting some shade uncool um but but that's how IT worked is know we asked them to guess what they got.

We tested them afterwards and they were wrong so nobody to guess with accuracy what was your drink sweetened with, which is important because they were blind that the way that scientists use that, they didn't know what IT was that they were drinking. We give IT you. We give them about ten to fifteen minutes for that sugar to metabolite.

And we measured they're circulating blood glucose levels to make sure that we had in fact to give in their body irc circulating glue cose energy that they might use in the next um activity. And um and the researcher again didn't know whether they had just served sugar or splendid. Then we asked people to estimate distance.

So we gave some people more energy or we kept others sort of that like whatever their Normal level was. And what we found is that those people who didn't even know IT, but who had been given more energy by drinking cool, they sweetened with sugar, perceived their space as as more constricted. That visual illusion approximate was induced.

They felt at their finish line again in the context of an exercise task was closer to them. So in just the same way that these other visio logy labs, vision science visio logy labs found that people who are chronically tired who don't don't feel like they have as much energy or that was that are physically waited down and for whom moving within an environment is more costly. Um we could create that experience for people.

We did an experimental version of that, that if you have more energy, the world looks easier. That distances to a finished line don't look as far. So that was some experimental evidence that we had to show that people states their body do impact the visual experience.

Now i'm a motivation research, cher. So for me, the big question is, well, what's the point of that study of them besides just showing this connection between the body and the eyes and the visual experience? We think that that's fundamental to one of the reasons that people experience difficulty when they're exercising, when it's really harder for your body because of its YSL state to move within a space.

Why don't what you might say, like why don't they just go exercise because the world looks harder to them? Because that distance that that they're supposed to walk because a doctor tells them to or that a partner encourages them to, or a hill that they should hike up because someone told them that would be good for their health. IT looks more chAllenging to them than that does to somebody who isn't, isn't who's in Better physical health.

Now, if IT looks that way, if IT looks harder, if IT feels like IT might be harder, then psychologically, we know that IT is when you have set yourself up psychologically, mentally, for that kind of failure experience. Like, I don't know that I have the resources that to get this job done. This looks really hard.

You're already motivational ally in a place for this task to be closer to impossible for you. So to put IT all together than what we know is that people whose bodies might make IT more chAllenging thing for them to exercise are seeing the world in a more chAllenging way. And that is having these downstream motivational and psychological effects that makes IT less likely for them to try to take on the task in the first place, or to experience IT as harder than than other .

people would or do. Is the solution the same? However, meaning, if these people are taught to adjust their visual goal line or to set a visual spotlight on an immediate goal, can they overcome some of this, this chAllenge that they face simply by virtue of their rescued perception?

yes. So in all of the studies that we have done looking at that connection between this narrower focus of attention and improvements and exercise, we do not find that IT only works for the people who are in shape, or that a backfires for people who are out of shape. IT works for everybody.

This is a strategy that everybody can adopt because it's just simply about like what do you allocate attentional resources to? What do you sort of ignore and what do you focus on and that in that visually induces the same kind of solution for everybody regardless of whether you're overweg or you or you're at your target weight. Um if you're struggling to get there, if you already accomplished where you want to be, that visual illusion can be induced for everybody, and IT has the same kinds .

of consequences. terrific. Earlier I made a joke about double of spray, so but now make a serious statement about double spray sl, which is that IT contains caffeine and caine as a stimulant, like all other stimulants, cause a change in our visual world.

The most salient one is the one that police officers look for parents, suspecting that their kids have injustice substances of any kind look for, which is, if somebody's pupils are unusually large for a given visual environment, that is an indication of high level of automation ic arousal, uh, in the street drug translation of the people who take ef minor cocaine. We have very big pupils, people very relaxed, small pupils. However, everyone should know that people size also is dynamically regulate by how bright to visual environment.

So there are multiple things controlling people. Ze, however, we know that when we are very stressed or very aroused in any way positive or negative, the people's get big. But within the visual system, what that equates to is a narrowing of the visual appeal or so, rather than ingesting sugar, which I am guessing most of the world, certainly the U.

S. Needs to just like sugar, please. That's what we're hearing. I'm sure there are a few shuter super ias out there, sucrose, who will also come after me with pitch forks. But let's face that, most people probably be Better off ingesting less simple sugar. But caffeine is a great motivator because of the internal sense of our, but is also nara survival window.

I could imagine using healthy amounts of caffeine, combined with maybe even blinders of the sort that horses were, maybe like a hoody in a hat, maybe in blinders, in order to get over some of those more chAllenging milestones? And is there any evidence that people are doing this without? Well, obviously, people are doing IT without knowledge of how IT works. But are there any studies looking at how a drill in or a an ein or any other stimulants impact motivation?

I don't know, honestly. Yeah.

I mean, energy drinks are a big thing now.

Yeah yeah, for sure they are. And you know if if you actually are more physiologically aroused or jazz or whatever I empt up or you just think you are a in our studies, we have found that they work in the same way that I can produce the same kinds of consequences. So, and I like that because IT tells us that you can actually change the state of your body to induce these kinds of experiences, or are you can trade, you can just sink that, and you can trick yourself, you can place sea bo, affect yourself out and produce the same kinds of effects. I had to give up coffee like twelve years ago.

not because.

not for any. Sorry, I love the taste. And so d caffe is my jam, but I can drink the caffeine because IT IT didn't actually do the thing that IT does for so many other people like make me feel more energize them, more awake. I just got well and gently and anxious.

and I couldn't focus yeah some people who already have a fairly high baseline level of attention and motivation, they find that puts their economic season too far in the synthetic tone yeah, yeah. And I happened.

Marry the same kind of person. He also can drink caffy, but loves the taste of coffee. The interesting thing is that we both have to have coffee in the morning to feel like we're ready to go for the day.

So it's just part of our routine or whatever to have that taste and have that sensation to feel like i'm ready to take on the day even though I mean, yeah decaf still has some caffeine in IT, but we're not drinking out much of IT to probably actually create a caffeinated experience in our body. But we're tricking ourselves like ological ally into into doing that thing that in years past used to work for us both. So I think that something to keep in mind, like, you know, you might have a hoody that you can wear to undo that visual illusion, or you can take advantage of the power of your mind. At the end of the day, i'm a psychologist and I believe that we have some non zero power over what our mind is doing, what we're thinking about, what we allocate our attention to. That can do the same kind of thing that a hood e might do, or that a cup of caffeine might do.

I completely agree, the visual appeal is under conscious control. That's an amazing future of our visual system. We can narrow, expand IT takes a little bit practice I thing for people to learn how to do this without moving their head around to expand their visual appeal or and how to narrow IT.

But what I always tell people is just imagine a really troubling text message, or really exciting text messages coming in all, and you forget about the world around you. So IT can be triggered by these outside events, and we can learn how to anchor of visual attention. I'd love to ask about other kinds of goals, meaning non physical goals because many people are trying to read more, I would hope um or learn music or a language or things that really involve cognitive goal lines or internal goal lines.

You know reading one chapter out of a book each night is a tangible goal. Um the other that i've often wondered about are these systems that allow you to highlight individual lines, even words on a page that's very visual obviously and everything else has ruled out except that word. I've always wished for books that would naturally highlight each patients.

I say that someone would put in the comments has probably existed for ten years, and i'm just showing how a lood I am. But is there any example that we're tactic that people could use to Better approach cognition of goals of school work? Recreational too, but that don't exist in the in the kind of fitness and sports domain?

Yeah so just to shout out to my brother in law who has done some of that research where IT does highlight different parts of words and paragraphs and he found that to be an effective way for english as a second language learners ers to pick IT up that that is that tying that vision to the process of learning language is effective and um so there's you a whole cool body of of work and researchers looking at that. So you're right about that.

If you want to mention what he does like, uh, is a place that people can learn more about that we can provide links.

Ah yeah, me, okay.

We will provide links to those resources because I want those resources. I've been trying to learn a second language for a long time. Yeah, I I speak spanish prety weekly, but I would love to get Better at OK OK later.

My five old son speak spanish. Ed.

Better than I do at this point. So I too, thank you.

Um yeah, so, you know, I was talking that you know we started this work within the context of exercise, but of course, that's some people's only goal that they have in life. IT isn't mine and either you know I have interest outside of improving my exercise game a couple years ago when when I was writing the book, I I also had a child the same, the same month that I had the opportunity to I pull all this research together is the same month that that my son came to be.

And and I started to realize, like, I became a lot less interesting once he was around, he was fascinating, but I was changing, dies and feeding him. And like, that was IT. People will come over like, what's up? What have you been like? Tell me something that's going on in your life.

And like all I had to talk about with this, what was boring, and I just felt i've lost myself, and you surprised myself on the crazy adventures and problems I would get myself in. And I was a great story teller, and that all the sudden disappeared as soon as he came into the world, because he became my world. So then I started a thing like, I need to pull back some coolness.

And if I ever had IT in the first place, but I need to be a cooler person, then i'm coming across right now. So I decided I wanted learn to play drums and I want to be like a one hit wonder. As as a rockstar drummer, I only want one song because I know i'm not be able to do more than that.

I'm not coordinated at all you like from the beginning of time in fitt grade to have this really vivid like flash ball memory of playing baseball. For the very first time, I lost my footing. I knocked into my own teammate, pushed out bounds where he had the ball.

We lost the game, and I was not invited back on the team for the next season. And so that formatted myself definition of uncoordinated ated. I am a musician, but I am not a drama. In the idea of coordinating four limbs in real time was like, if I could do that, I would be so proud.

So that's a goal that I set for myself at the same time that my son came into this world when I was also trying to think about goal setting and how to improve my ability and all of our ability to to get a job done when you're faced with some pretty big obstacles. So I got to practice all these techniques that we're talking about on myself and see for myself when I told people hate, try this thing like their focus, attention. Does that help with something like becoming a Better drummer? And the answer is, yeah, these tactics at least work for me sometimes under some circumstances, and they do for other people who try them for other goals that aren't necessarily about exercise.

Um one that I found particularly helpful was overcoming my bad memory, that everybody's memories are faulty. Everybody has sort of a warped perception of the past IT might be skewed more positively than maybe we deserve or might be good more negatively if you feel that you know what loomed large in your mind as you reflect on something from the past are the mistakes that you made of, the things that the social full pause that you had, or, you know, chAllenges that you face at work when you ve got in trouble with a boss or a colleague. That's what really stands out in your mind.

Or the good side of all of those possibilities. We probably aren't getting the world right. And and that is something that our brain has evolved to give us a faulty memory, to level and sharpen, to not encode and remember and be able to recall everything that we've experienced with accuracy and precision.

And that's a problem when IT comes to assessing our own goal progress, when we want to be our own account and try to determine how are we doing. If I want to become a drummer and my on track for getting there before x, before my time runs out, am I onna make IT or not? And I think that's an experience, whether they won't be a drama or not, that a lot of people can resonate with.

Have, like trying to determine, is this trajectory, is this rate of progress? Gna get the job done by x monte time. Well, I have my swimsuit body by summer or well, I save enough for retirement by the time I hit sixty five.

For these goals where time is involved and there is a deadline, uh, we do take moments to assess our our trajectory. And if we just rely on our memory, we're probably going to do a bad job of assessing the the that trajectory of knowing whether we're on peace to meeting our deadline. And I found that to be the cases I was thinking about, I actually going to be able to learn this song.

I mean, I know that it's going a lot slower than IT, probably good for anybody else. But to give myself a deadline and commitment, I decided I was going to put on a show. I was going to invite everybody I knew and also people I didn't know, and I was going to play my one song for them.

This is a book and had a child yeah.

So when you read the book, you're you'll see my story and it's the real truth of IT. You know, I mean, I did play that show and IT was fine. And then I because I read about IT in the book, then some other opportunities to play publicly have come up.

And it's like, right? I told people I can play drums s like, really like, show them that I actually still can play this song. Yes, so that's been fine.

I have become a one hit wonder if you asked me to play the songs. And again, like on core, it's just gna get that same song the second time. So like literally one hit wonder.

But so in the process of like figuring out am I going be able to play this show, I send out invitations like the date is committed, like people are coming to listen to my one song, god bless them. How's gonna go and and I felt awful. I just felt I am not making progress here because there's a lot more things that actually are pressing, right, like the kid does need to get fed.

I do have to go to my day job. The editor is asking for the next draft of this book and that is going to take precedence like IT does for so many people that that things command your you're band with even when you have this school that you've committed to and that you've got, you know, on the books. And so I just felt this looming anxiety about this this goal that would require, you know, I didn't have daily practice, but like you can't you can't cram that kind of a goal.

IT does take, you know, committed investment for a sustained period of time. And so I had this looming anxiety that i'm not making good enough progress, but that's because I was relying on my memory and my brain to recall IT. How many times did you practice? What was that like the last time you practice? What was that like when you try to play this bit, this riff like two weeks ago? Have you gotten any Better since then? And I just felt like, no, haven't practice enough.

I don't remember when the last time I played was, but I definitely doesn't feel like i'm getting any Better. Then I thought, you know what, I should stop lying in my brain to tell me where my a and is is in my on an upward slope. Er, I need to look at the data.

I love scientists love data. So I started to collect data on myself. What I did was download this APP that a friend had told me about called the reporter up.

There's lots of these kinds of things out there. Basically, I just like sets up your phone to randomly u whatever questions you want your phone to ask IT records your answers, you can download data. You can make pretty graphs to see, am I getting how, what's my change and how i've answered these questions over time.

So I did that for a month. For a month I had my phone asked me, you know, a couple times a day, maybe twice a day, really, did you practice since last time I asked you, my phone says, did you practice if mostly IT was no. And if yes, then I would fun all a couple other questions, like, how did you do? How do you feel? Check a couple different emotion words now about your experience when you played.

So when I and I do that for a month, after a month went into my office download of the data and first took stock before I looked at the numbers, like, how do White think I did over the last month? And I thought, same as every other month, I I didn't really get anywhere. Yeah, I practice, but I still feel awful.

And I cried, I cried having a practice I I like was upset with myself setting this school and feeling like so anxious about all I remembers that I cried, cried too much about this personal conquest. That wouldn't matter to anybody else, honestly, really does not matter in in the scope of things. anyway.

I'm not going to become A A drummer professionally. So who cares if I embarrass myself publicly? But what I found from the data was my memory was totally wrong, actually had practiced far more times, and I remembered. And when I looked at, like, my emotion words that I used, IT was a clear upward trajectory.

Yeah, I didn't cry that party hadn't misremembered her made up but by the end of that month, like, I had gotten a compliment from my husband, who actually is a drama and said, like, hey, up, I wasn't that bad and then there was like, one explosive. You were everything amazing at that. One thing you've been practicing at, but like OK fine is my husband rally is just, you know, so at the moment, I didn't really feel that great and I downplayed IT.

And as a result, I didn't stick in my brain, right? I remember how stupid I felt that I cried because can't do this, I can't make progress. And I downplayed in my mind the thing that actually should have been a legitimate indicator that progress is being made.

So all of which is to say I needed to see, to collect data on myself and to look at IT objectively, accurately and completely because my brain wasn't doing that for me. That visual experience of of downloading that data and and looking at like what was my actual experience um gave me a Better insight as I was trying to assess the trajectory of my of my progress. I became a more accurate accountant of my own progress. Which is important for you setting goals or resetting them when you need to calibrate in light of of what's left to do and how much time you have to do IT in well IT.

So basically, if I understand correctly, when the, when the intermediate goals have, say, daily practice or twice a day practice, or reading or math, I said a or not a visual goal line IT really does help to visualize some aspect related to that non visual goal line. In this case, the reporter APP was a useful tool. I've never heard of IT.

I plan to use IT. I'm sure number people will be interested in IT. There others out there, but that's the one that .

you found most useful. Yeah and yeah, there's another one too that is even more visual than that in the reporter APP, although that has visual components and is really effective if you like data and want to collect numbers on yourself for your experience. There's another one called the one second everyday APP.

Um this is really awesome because the APP is a mechanism um to to to record one second of your life. The golf there is such an awesome community of people that just live by this and love having these experiences. A and the creator of IT, I got to a chance to talk with, and he has done that. He's taken one second video of some aspect of his life every day for twelve years.

Thirteen years. One second.

Yeah, one second and and then what the APP does is like smash together and give you like a chino logy of what your year or your month or your last decade of life has been like and presented as like a streamlined video for you. So you just see these flashes of your life over however long you tell the APP to to create a montage for you.

And so when you see these videos that people have made, especially those that have been doing IT for early, long time, it's fascinating. I did that for myself too. I tried at one second of today's drummer performance, and another second is not enough to capture IT.

And I actually doing a good job of dream, or what's metrosexual drumming. But the guy who made IT says one of the most like, awesome one second videos that he ever made is of a brick wall. Like, we didn't need a video of that.

Like, what's the wall doing? IT isn't. It's not crumbling. It's not like an earthquakes under something like that. It's just like, you know, slightly jittery one second of a brick wall. And I like, how is that motivating or exciting to you? Why is that you've been doing this for thirteen years every day, one second.

Why is that the one second that matters to most? And he says, because when IT comes up in my montage, IT reminds me um of like a really horrific moment in my family that was the first wall that I saw when I walked out the room, having heard that my sister in law had this awful, awful uh experience her interest and started to twist up on themselves and not up and he was on the brink of death and we had just found this out. We had just gotten into the hospital.

They diagnosed this issue that required like immediate surgery, and our family was already here about this and we were all stand that he might die, like right now he might die and that's the first thing that I saw. And IT reminds me of how precious life is, how important family is, and how the rest of whatever we were doing that they didn't matter, because we all needed to be here together right now. And that was, like all of this emotion and like purpose in life is conjured up, are reminded when he looks at one second of a brick wall as IT pops into his video feed. So if you're visually oriented and you do one way till I remember, what was life like, what has my ear and review what what does that look like? That's an awesome APP once second every day that that can help you do that.

These are great recommendations and a couple of reflections. First of all, the brick wall example is a beautiful way of highlighting the other future, the visual system, which is that the brain largely thinks in symbols, is very efficient IT IT batches entire experiences into symbols. In this case, the brick wall can be attach whole set of experiences that are very meaningful to this individual that brick walls don't mean that or didn't mean that um to me until hearing that.

So I think that the IT highlights the fact that the actual symbol is less relevant than what we attached to that symbol but that symbols air so efficient that even in a one second view of something we can attach to IT for Better or for worse. Um the other is that I am a absolute um almost rabid proponent of people getting morning sunlight in their eyes as the fundamental layer of setting their circuiting rhymes and sleep and health as a zero cost practice that believe not can be done any of year, anywhere. And but he does take a little bit of effort.

You have to get outside. You can do IT through a window or when shield to for IT to be efficient. But IT has huge outsize effects on human health. This is now demonstrate again and again and again. And so I am going to just do a sort of call to action if people are not already doing this.

I'm going to start using the one second after record my morning sunlight viewing and prove that even through cloud cover, you're getting more photons than you are indoors and then it's worthwhile else. We love to do this for my next dog to go from puppy to a to four sized dg, and maybe even to the end. He knows.

great. These are wonderful tools. You given us a huge number of of practical tools, which Frankly, isn't always the case on this part cast.

We always start to do science, and science space tools are kind of montreal, but you given a rich set of tools here to apply. I just want a briefly backtrack to something. And then and then a final question earlier.

We are talking about how unfit people see the world is more chAllenging, maybe hills as deeper, distances as further, and how shifting people into a state of energy. I they're cognitive ly or through the congestion of real glue cos to get an energetic lift, or maybe through caffeine, if that's within their practice and span of healthy behaviors, they could do that. You there are so many people are suffering from depression, which is one of the you know key features of depression is a lack of energy even though there can be anxious associated depression.

Um I have to wonder whether or not some of these tools are being deployed or will be deployed in the context of mental health because depression is this vicious loop, right? People feel the lack of energy and hopelessness and then things just look harder. And so then I just verifies their negative world view IT and it's a downward spiral.

That's why medication in some cases, and social supports that are can be helpful because they feel more energized. The side effects off in our problem, however, have have there been any efforts to implement some of these visual tools to create this increasing systole lic blood pressure and a kind of readiness and willingness to lean into what people perceive as immense chAllenge. And if not for anyone listening, I know we have a lot of listeners in the mental health space and in the helping space, so to speak.

Um I can imagine these are zero cost, right? They we all provide with people are excited. I have the apparate thi to do IT.

Um are you aware of any studies like this? Is your laboratory involved in any studies? Because I have just see an immense ve value of implementing the sorts of tls you develop.

Yeah you know we haven't explored that those ideas directly. So call to all the scientists that are out there. There is a great opportunity to start looking at these tools within the mental health space. You're right. Other researchers though have um you know not this use of narrowed uh like inducing a narrows attentional focus and can they now feel more energize to go for a run but they have looked at their relationship between anxiety, depression and visual experience and found you know over decades um evidence that people with depression or with aniele what their attention is captured by within the bigger global surrounding world are those things that are negative or reinforcing of their world view.

Now that happens, everybody that things that are on our mind tend to like pop out that if whatever we're thinking about, we might start seeing some version of IT showing up in the world around us that captures our attention, an idea called primming. What we're thinking about might then the us. To to, to attend to the world to see things in a way that allies is ready thinking about.

It's just that what we're thinking about are those depressive rumination, anxiety, fearful thoughts, when that is what is cogniac accessible. And that's what's going through our mind, then that also what captures our visual gaze. So when we think, like, the world is hard, the world is full of sadness.

And that's the thought in our mind. And then we start seeing the people with friends on their faces or who experiencing anxiety. And that's what captures our attention, even when there's other people around that might not be seeing the world, experiencing the world that way IT becomes reinforcing when I think that the world is is threatening.

And then I noticed the threats that around me. Ms, what I am thinking, which heightens my anxiety or my fear. Uh, and then that further leads me to to narrow focus on those elements of the environment that are aligned with that word view.

It's really hard to get out of that like that's where the vicious cycle can come from. So that has been you really well established within the medical community, this this selective attention relating to states of mental unsellable that's that's been pretty well established. And um and so there's been some interventions done with people that have depressions or anxiety trying you know singly you know here's an array of photograph of a bunch of different faces.

Yes, its artificial. Kind of looks like a page from a year book, a high school year book. But look for the faces that are smiling. Look at the faces that are smiling.

The try right now spent ten minutes having your eyes focus on those and and look at those people that IT is an effective intervention and trying at improving people sense of self efficacy. What can I accomplish next to feel a little bit more energize? IT doesn't cure depression. IT doesn't cure anxiety. And these are literal physical um afflictions that we have so that's not a quick fix but IT can produce a temporary change that might be a way to start getting out of that rat yeah I .

think nowaday there is an increasing attention on tools that will help people or in as they are starting to veer towards suicide, depression or fear back into a depressive episode or xiety episode. I mean, are they trying to reverse an entire syndrome or set of syndromes is far more complicated, likewise in the health space, just trying to get people to deploy real time tools to adjust their idea to exercise more often and so on.

As a kind of a final but also a high level question, I am managing ing that. And I I plan to use this visual goal setting of spotlighting. I've been using an, actually, for some time on runs. IT works really well. Yesterday I took a run near the waterfront here, and the entire, I think I did IT somewhat incorrect.

The entire run I was seeing about getting back to the statue, which I started, but I did find that I ran fastest in the final twenty meters, which I admittedly wasn't fast at all, but IT was faster than what proceeded IT. So IT works, and IT makes perfect sense to how IT works. You've done other studies expLoring some of the other features of vision, like the luminosity y, how bright something is and how people perceive that that was in a completely different context.

But is there a kind of a higher level, a kind of a black belt version of what we're talking about here, where not only my focusing on a specific visual location as an intermediate or a long term goal, or am using an APP to ask me a question and tap into how i'm feeling, create a visual representation of my motivational state, but that I am also making my phone as bright as possible? I'm also trying to take that visual window and and actually pay attention to more of the details at that location. Or is this simply a matter of kind of in in geek speak visual neuroscience? We would just call this like a low spac frequency just out of grabbing black and White snap shot of something here. Are there in my mind, if I attach more detail and effort to the specific thing that i'm focused on, is there any evidence that that's more effective and IT certainly.

you know changes what our brains are doing. So know how do we define effectiveness. That's a question for philosophers .

and that scientists, me running IT will.

when you use IT, turns the end of your run just like you have picked up on um yeah so you know there's cool studies that neuroscientists, not not I not coming from my lab that neo scientists have done looking at that what what is IT doing to your brain when you've decided that you're gonna focus your attention on on this element of the world and not pay attention to something else? Is that just sort of like tricking your thoughts? Or is there doing something different to something more basic, more low level? And the answer is yes.

So there is an area of the brain, brain, the useful form face area, part of our brain that's really specialized for for making sense of is important as a social species to to pay attention to other people, pay attention their faces with a trin, communicate through their face. So our brain has developed really specialized um central area for doing that then. And so so these neuroscientists will present like a face to somebody, but superimposed over that uh is uh hews or something else that is less special to us as a social human species.

And so both of those things, because that sort of like both images are sort of transparent over late, over one another. Um uh you know our eyes are getting both of those images in and our brain is getting both of those images in. But we can will ourselves to focus on the house, just really pay attention of the features of the house even though everything about that face is still there to or paid tension of the face.

And just tell me, like what is that that you are deciding that you want to hold onto, that you want to look at right now, and you can see that the responding to that. So when people are saying like i'm really i'm really seen that face, the details of the face, i'm paying attention to the face, even though we know their eyes are also looking at engaged with the contents of the house that's right there smacked on top the views of form face area lights up and when they are saying, like now i'm really focused on the house now we see activation. The views of from a face area decline and in other areas of the brain's neurological really real state start to engage so um yeah I think you know there's something to IT.

We can at a high level, our brains are responding to our psychology as well. And we have that great power to really, with intention, with practice, decide how do I want to engage with the world and can IT produce real change in our in our bodies and in the way that we experience the world. The answer is, yes.

fantastic. Well, you've given us a time of mechanism and conception and practical information. So speaking for a lot of people, and I say, thank you for taking the time out of your schedule with kids and running a lab and teaching at the university and your book, which we will point people to and provide a link to as a wonderful resource, and we hoped have you back again.

Thank you so much. A great conversation.

Thank you. thanks. Thank you for joining me today for our discussion about motivation, goal seeking and research supported tools for achieving your goals with dr.

Emily bell chatz. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribed to our youtube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.

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