“The Secret To Reach ANY Of Your Goals” – Andrew Huberman

we are going to talk about setting goalswe can build toward a set of protocolsthat at the end you'll be able to veryquickly plug in your particular goalsand a route to those particular goalsthat's grounded in the science and Ithink are going to be very effective inallowing you to reach those goals morequickly and with indeed less effort weare also going to talk about how toassess progress towards goals and we aregoing to talk about goal execution itturns out that there are not hundreds ordozens or even several neural circuitsin your brain that control goal settingand movement toward your goals there isone and while it includes many differentbrain areas that one circuit is the samecircuit that's responsible for pursuingall goals let's take a look at thepsychology of goal setting and goalPursuit there are tens of thousands ifnot hundreds of thousands of scientificpapers about the topic of goal settingand goal Pursuit acronyms seem todominate the area of goal settingespecially as it relates to things inthe business faster but also in therelationship sector now acronyms arewonderful they allow us to organize ourthinking into lists and conceptuallythey can be very useful any kind of goalPursuit any kind of goal setting reallyhas to involve a number of differentstates and neural circuits in the brainand body you can find beautiful talksonline from people who have worked withsome of the biggest companies andgreatest High performers out there toachieve incredible things and they willtalk about generating a sort ofobjective mindset for goal settingthey'll talk about goals needing to besignificant there has to be a big goalthat it has to be concrete so you haveto be able to describe what the goal isit has to be action oriented has to beinspirational has to be time bound youhave to have reasonable realisticverifiable measures you have toconstantly up the ante if it's trying tosound repetitive it's because it isrepetitive there are basically onlythree or four elements to goal settingin goal Pursuit basically an individualor set of individuals has to identify aspecific thing that they're going toattain goal setting is the first stepassessment of what whether or not one ismaking progress towards those goals is asecond but necessary step and thenthere's the business of goal executionwe've all heard that multitasking is badokay we've here multitasking is bad itdoesn't allow for Focus if you want toachieve anything you want to accomplishanything you should not multitask Wellturns out that's wrong turns out thatthere is a role for multitasking but themultitasking has to be placed at aparticular time within your goal-seekingbehavior in order to be effective reallynice studies done at Carnegie MellonUniversity in the dabish lab evaluatedhow long people are able to focus indifferent environments turns out thatmost people whether or not they're doingcomputer work or whether or not they'redoing writing or accounting work oranything of that sort can hold theirattention for about three minutes at atime before they shift their attentionoff that's ridiculously low when youfirst hear it but that probably reflectsa basic state of brain function thatHarkens back to a time when we wereHunter gather others I doubt that wewere maintaining Focus solidly for hoursand hours and hours unless we were undersome particular threat or some in someparticular crisis multitasking has beenshown to have a very interestingphysiological signature when wemultitask when we jump back and forthbetween things there is an increase inthe level of the neurotransmitter alsosometimes called a neuromodulatorthere's an increase in theneurotransmitter epinephrine which isadrenaline and so there are really nicestudies now point to the fact that doinga bit of multitasking prior to jumpinginto some focused goal-directed Behaviorwhether or not it's mental Behavior orphysical Behavior can actually be usefulbecause it gets us into action if you'resomebody who's interested in business orlet's say you're focused on relationshipis thinking about the perfectrelationship and what that would looklike and the family that you would haveand where you would live is thateffective in generating the kinds ofbehaviors that will lead you to that isit effective to think about the big winat the end well it turns out it is butyou have to be very very careful withwhen and how you implement thatvisualization because if you do itcorrectly it can really serve your goalseeking well and if you do itincorrectly it can undermine the entireprocess so does visualization Work Wellturns out that visualization of the bigwin the end goal so the Super Bowl winor eight gold medals in the Olympics orgraduation from the University of yourchoice or making a certain amount ofmoney or finding the partner of yourchoice Etc that visualization iseffective in getting the goal Pursuitprocess started but it actually is apretty lousy and maybe evencounterproductive way of maintainingpursuit of that goal the amygdala thatcenter of the brain that's involved inanxiety and fear and worry well theamygdala is one of the four corecomponents of our goal setting and goalPursuit circuitry and there's nobypassing that there is no one listeningto this or watching this whose amygdalais not involved in their goal settingand goal Pursuit behavior and so whileI'd love to be able to tell you that allyou should think about is rainbows andpuppies and all the wonderful rewardingthings that are going to happen when youachieve your goals the truth is youshould be thinking mainly about how badit's really going to get if you don't doit how disappointing yourself you'regoing to feel how it will negativelyimpact you if not in the immediate termin the long term I'm encouraging peopleto achieve their goals and it turns outthe best way to do that is byforeshadowing failure and the morespecific you can get by writing down orthinking about or talking about how badit will be if you don't achieve yourgoals the more likely you are to achievethose goals part of the reason for thatalmost certainly has to do withincreases in systolic blood pressure andincreases in Readiness in your systemwhen you imagine failure the brain andbody are much better at moving away fromfearful things than towards things wewant I wish I could tell you that wasn'tthe case but there is a true asymmetryin the way we are built in fact thebrain and body can engage in what'scalled one trial learning when somethingbad happens we eat a food that makes ussick we have an interaction with aperson replaced that really don't likeone event one time to reorient or rewireour neural circuitry so that we have abias toward moving away from that thingin the future if you're going tovisualize in a positive way do that atthe very beginning of some goal Pursuitmaybe intermittently every once in awhile you imagine the big win of youknow scoring perfect John exam orwinning the championship or the greatrelationship but most of the time if youwant to be effective you should befocusing on avoiding failure and youshould be really clear about what thosefailures would look like and feel likethe work in balsetis lab but also otherLaboratories has us addressed whether ornot the probability of achieving a goalgoes up or down depending on whether ornot one visualizes or sets a goal thatis easy moderate or impossible okay animpossible goal would be for instance ifI say you know I'm going to jump from myfront driveway all the way up to theroad the roads quite a distance awayit's more than 20 meters away it's justnot going to happen what we're saying isset goals that are realistic but thataren't so realistic that they're easy togo goals need to be realistic and trulychallenging don't set goals that are sochallenging and so lofty that they crashthat blood pressure system in the otherdirection and make you or anyone feelunmotivated we cannot underestimate theextent to which the dopamine system andour sense of whether or not we are onthe right track is under our cognitivecontrol if we constantly Place ourselvesinto a mode of thinking that we arefailing well then indeed we are notgoing to churn out much dopamine nowearlier I said we need to predict andvisualize failure but that is not thesame thing as thinking about ourselvesas failing we need to predict what theoutcome would be if we failed but thenencountering that and in behaving in acertain way and thinking in a certainway and pursuing our goals in aneffective way maybe checking in on thateach week we definitely need to rewardourselves cognitively for the correctand successful Pursuit what this meansis that anticipate and think aboutfailure as a mechanism of generatingmotivation and indeed fear and anxietyso that you lean into the correctbehaviors and you lean away from theincorrect behaviors to reach your goalbut then weekly or so whatever you canmaintain consistently you absolutelywant to reward Yourself cognitively bytelling yourself I'm on the right trackI got another week where I accomplishedwhatever it is that I'm trying toaccomplish a concrete example that I'mfollowing now is this 150 to 200 minutesof Zone 2 cardio per week because that'sshown to be very effective in improvingmental and physical health metrics soonce a week I'll check in with myself ifI reach that 150 to hunt to 200 minutethreshold then I'll reward myself simplyby checking off a box and saying okayI'm on track I'm on track I'm on trackthis dopamine system is critical tore-up to remind ourselves that we are ontrack if indeed we are on track becausedopamine itself provides a state ofmotivation and Readiness to continue inthe regular pursuit of our goals anothervery interesting aspect of dopamine thatI've not talked about at all is actuallyhow the dopamine system interacts withthe visual system system reallywonderful work that was done by WolframSchultz who's one of the great pioneersin this area of dopamine and dopaminereward prediction error showed that forpeople that have normal levels ofdopamine their visual search meaning howthey scanned visual environments tendsto be pretty constrained they might movetheir eyes around a particular visualenvironment searching somewhat forpeople that lack dopamine they actuallyhave very little movement of their eyesthey don't actually tend to look veryfar into the Horizon they don't havethat very focused virgin's Point rathertheir eye movements are depleted andthey're not actually evaluating Horizonsoff in their future they're not focusedso much on the extra extra personalspace when we are focused on aparticular point in visual space or aparticular goal or Horizon all thosesystems are blood pressure epinephrineand indeed dopamine get recruited to putus into a state of Readiness andwillingness to go pursue things in thatextra personal space ultimately as youset out to accomplish your goals thereare going to be a number of basic stepsthat everyone will have to follow youhave to clearly identify with the longarching ultimate goal is you have toidentify what the Milestones will be youmight not know all of them at the outsetbut you ought to have some idea aboutthe intervals at which you are going toset those milestones and set your rewardschedule for assessing progress in routeto those milestones and your ultimategoal My Hope Is that you'll be able toincorporate these tools if not all ofthem perhaps just one of them or two ofthem in pursuit of whatever particulargoals you happen to be focused on atthis point and in the future