Essentials: Tools for Setting & Achieving Goals | Dr. Emily Balcetis
3/19/202636 mincomplete
0:00Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and
0:05actionable science -based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance.
0:11I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of
0:16Medicine. And now for my discussion with Dr.
0:19Emily Belchettis. Well, thanks for being here.
0:22It's my pleasure. Yeah. I've been looking forward to this for a long time because
0:26as a vision scientist who is also very interested in real life tools and goal
0:31setting and motivation, your work lands squarely in the middle of those interests.
0:36Just to kick things off, could you tell us just a little bit about goal
0:41setting and goal retrieval? What's the deal with vision and motivation?
0:45How do those two things link up?
0:47Yeah, totally. When psychologists ask people, like, how are you, what are you doing to
0:50help make progress on your goals?
0:51They say all kinds of things.
0:53A couple of things always pop to the top, which is, you know, self -pep
0:55talks, or I remind myself of how important it is to do this job or
1:00put up post -it notes around to like constantly be nagging me about what I
1:04need to do. All of that takes a lot of time and effort and commitment.
1:08And so what a surprise that people burn out, right?
1:11It's exciting to work on a goal.
1:12When you've, when you first set it, you might make some initial progress, but then
1:16eventually we get, you know, not even to the halfway point, but before things get
1:21real, things are challenging and we fall by the wayside.
1:24So then I, you know, with my team, I was trying to think of like,
1:27well, what are strategies that don't require as much effort that we can automate, that
1:30we can take advantage of what's already happening within ourselves, within our body, within our
1:34mind that might overcome one of those challenges.
1:38And that's when we started to land on the idea of vision.
1:40And we thought, you know what, there are strategies that we can use to look
1:43at the world in a different way and that we can automate that might help
1:48us to overcome some obstacles, to make progress on our goals, to maybe literally see
1:53opportunities that we hadn't been able to see before.
1:56You've published a number of studies in this area, but maybe you could highlight some
2:00of the more important findings in the area of how people can adjust their vision
2:06in order to meet goals more quickly and more efficiently.
2:08So You know, we started thinking about what are the goals that are most important
2:12to people that they struggle with the most.
2:15And regardless of where you look or who you ask or when you ask it,
2:18people's number one goal is something related to their health, right?
2:21So one of the first things that I did was go over to Brooklyn.
2:25There's a couple of armories all around the boroughs here around New York City.
2:29And the one in Brooklyn in particular is now YMCA.
2:33You know, somebody had invited me, a physical therapist, said, hey, you should come out
2:36and check out what's happening here with your interest in exercise and trying to find
2:40new ways of helping people, new tactics that they can add to their tool belt.
2:43I think you're going to find some interesting people that are working out there who,
2:46as it turns out, are some of the fastest runners in the world.
2:49Like, you know, one of the people that was in the last Olympics before I
2:53showed up won the gold medal for the 400 meter.
2:55I thought when these people are running, I bet they are like hyper aware of
3:00everything that's going on in their surroundings.
3:02Where are they relative to the competition?
3:04What's happening in their peripheral vision?
3:06What's going on on the side?
3:08Who's behind them? Who's in front of them?
3:09They probably have this like master sense, this master visual plan at any point in
3:14time. And that's what probably makes them elite.
3:17So when I started asking them, is that the case?
3:20Do you really pay attention to what's in your surroundings?
3:22What's behind you? What's on the side?
3:24They said no. Like all of them said no.
3:26And sometimes when I do do that, it's a mistake.
3:28So that was surprising. I totally went against my intuition about what they do that
3:33likely contributes to their success.
3:35What they said instead was that they are hyper focused.
3:38They assume this narrowed focus of attention, almost like a spotlight is shining on a
3:43target. Now, when they're running a short distance, that target might literally be the finish
3:47line, the line that they're trying to cross.
3:49If it's a longer distance, they set sub goals like, you know, the person, the
3:53shorts on the person up ahead that they're trying to beat, or they choose some
3:56sort of stable landmark, like a sign that they would pass by.
4:00It's like a spotlight is shining just on that, or like they have blinders on
4:03the sides of their face.
4:04That's all they're paying attention to.
4:05And I thought, oh, that's something we can play with, right?
4:08Like they are elite and they are accomplished.
4:10So then we started thinking like, okay, what about people who aren't competitive runners?
4:16Is this a tactic we can teach people?
4:17The answer is yes. You can tell people about.
4:20What these Olympic athletes are doing, imagine that there's a spotlight shining just on a
4:24target. Choose something up ahead, the stop sign two blocks up that you can just
4:29see. And, you know, imagine that you have blinders on so that you're not really
4:34paying attention to the people that are passing by or the buildings or the garbage
4:37cans or the trucks that are on the road.
4:39You know, tune those out and focus in on that target until you hit it
4:44and then choose another one, right?
4:45Sort of recalibrate, choose the next goal.
4:47Now, one of the first studies that we did was teach that strategy and juxtapose
4:52or compare it against a group that we said, just look around naturally.
4:56You know, you might see that finish line up ahead and there's things on the
4:59periphery. Whatever your eyes want to do, whatever you think is going to work best,
5:02feel free to do that and tell us what you're looking at.
5:04Then we gave them a finish line.
5:05We created sort of, you know, an exercise that's moderately challenging but possible.
5:10We put ankle weights on that accounted for about 15 % of their body weight,
5:14told them to lift their knees up, sort of high stepping to a finish line.
5:17So this would be challenging for them to do.
5:21But we said, you know, it's an indicator of overall health and fitness.
5:24Some of these people had narrowed their focus of attention and some were just looking
5:27more expansively or naturally. And what we found is that those people that we trained,
5:32just everyday normal people doing this moderately challenging exercise, they were able to move 27
5:38% faster. They could do the exercise more quickly and they said it hurt 17
5:42% less. Everybody was in the same sort of circumstance, but yet their experience was
5:47really different. So we were really excited about that, right?
5:50Because it meant that this strategy, we could use it on people who are not
5:53elite athletes. It could be easily adopted.
5:56A quick training session can teach people to look at the world in a different
6:00way. Again, this narrowed attention was different than whatever they do naturally, the comparison group.
6:06But it had a big outcome.
6:08It had a big difference on the way that they were engaged in the exercise.
6:11Are they focusing on a specific point or is it kind of the entire horizon
6:15of that goal? Because the finish line is indeed a line.
6:18In our interviews with people, our sort of focus group studies, it seems like it's
6:24more like a circular point.
6:26And that's, in fact, what we're teaching people, what we're training them to do.
6:30So rather than going broadly.
6:31looking across a line from left to right, we are encouraging them to imagine a
6:37circle of light that's shining on some target.
6:40Now, of course, a finish line is a line, but if they're staying in their
6:42lane, if they're on a track, right, you can imagine that there is a circle
6:46shining just on where in their lane they'll cross that finish line.
6:49Or if it's a stop sign, you could imagine a circle of light illuminating that.
6:53So that's what we're teaching people to use, and that's what seems to be effective
6:56to maintain that focus rather than sort of being pulled to engage with peripheral vision.
7:03And there's some amazing people, some runners in history like Joan Benoit Samuelson.
7:07She's one of the first female marathon competitors who has won multiple marathons.
7:14She's Canadian. I think she's won, feel free to correct me, like 10 marathons in
7:19her life. And she talks about sort of not assuming this wide, but narrow, wide,
7:28but not deep or tall, attentional focus.
7:31She talks about like finding the shorts on somebody ahead of me and focusing on
7:35those shorts until she passes them and then resetting that goal.
7:39I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Eight Sleep.
7:43Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.
7:47One of the best ways to ensure you get a great night's sleep is to
7:50make sure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct.
7:53And that's because in order to fall asleep and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature
7:57actually has to drop by about one to three degrees.
8:00And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has
8:04to increase by about one to three degrees.
8:07Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your
8:11unique needs. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly five years
8:15now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep.
8:19The latest Eight Sleep model is the Pod 5.
8:21This is what I'm now sleeping on, and I absolutely love it.
8:24It has so many incredible features.
8:26For instance, the Pod 5 has a feature called Autopilot, which is an AI engine
8:31that learns your sleep patterns and then adjusts the temperature of your sleeping environment across
8:35different sleep stages. It'll even elevate your head if you're snoring, and it makes other
8:39shifts to optimize your sleep.
8:40If you'd like to try Eight Sleep, go to eightsleep .com.
8:43dot com slash Huberman to get up to $350 off the new pod five eight
8:47sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE.
8:51Again, that's eight sleep dot com slash Huberman to save up to $350.
8:56The most pressing question I have in my mind is, can we, I, uh, all
9:03of us use this strategy to make the starting line a goal point?
9:08Because for a lot of people, it's not about going from start to finish.
9:11It's about getting to start.
9:13And is there any physiology or physiological changes, I should say, to reflect the idea
9:19that maybe just visually focusing on the start line would actually get me more excited
9:24as opposed to make me less excited to engage in effort?
9:28There's certainly vision science that's tied up in that very first stage of goal setting,
9:34like identifying what that goal is in the first place and taking those first steps.
9:38A lot of people's go to strategies that involve vision are our vision boards or
9:42dream boards or, you know, post -it notes, right?
9:45They're creating some sort of visual representation of what it is that they want to
9:49accomplish, you know, almost like a scrapbook could collect visual icons that reflect where you
9:54want to be to motivate yourself.
9:56It's a really common tactic that's effective for identifying what you want, but it may
10:01not actually be effective for helping you to meet the goal to get the job
10:05done. So colleagues of mine at New York University have probed, well, why?
10:10Why is that? Why is just, you know, thinking about what you want in your
10:13life and sort of putting yourself vicariously into those shoes, imagining what my life will
10:20be like if I can accomplish everything on this list?
10:23Why doesn't that work? Well, first of all, does it work?
10:25The answer is no. And why does it not work?
10:29Because what happens, these colleagues, Gabrielle Oettingen and her research team have found, is that,
10:36you know, going through and dreaming about or visualizing how great my life will be
10:41when I get X, Y, and Z done, that is like a goal satisfied.
10:48I have identified what it is that I want.
10:50I have experienced it, even if just in an imaginary way.
10:54I've had that positive experience of thinking about how great my life is going to
10:59be when I get this thing done.
11:01And they start to sort of rest on their laurels.
11:04She's actually measured systolic blood pressure and heart rate.
11:07And they found that people who do that, who go through that experience of visualizing
11:11how great my life will be when I get X, Y, and Z done, their
11:15systolic blood pressure, the bottom number on your blood pressure reading, decreases.
11:20Now I'm all about finding ways to relax, but motivation scientists know that systolic blood
11:25pressure is actually an indicator of our body's readiness to get up and act, to
11:29do something. Now that can be the going out for a walk, going out for
11:32a run, hitting the gym.
11:34It can also be things like doing math problems, right?
11:37Even if it's something that's just mental, systolic blood pressure actually goes up in anticipation
11:42of your body or your mind needing to do something, taking the first steps on
11:48a goal. So then it helps us to understand of like, okay, if I've just
11:52created this dream board, this vision board, and put myself psychologically in that space of
11:56a goal satisfied, why is it bad that blood pressure goes down?
11:59Because it means your body is chilling out.
12:01It's like, all right, cool.
12:03I just accomplished something pretty major.
12:05I'd actually now don't have the physiological resources at the ready to take the first
12:10step right now to do something about that.
12:12So, so that was a pretty monumental, um, uh, finding for motivation scientists to understand
12:18that like creating these dream boards, these vision boards or to -do lists might actually
12:22backfire because it in and of itself is the creation of a goal and the
12:27satisfaction of the goal. And then people understandably give themselves some time to just enjoy
12:32that positive experience. Everything you're saying again is consistent with what we know about the
12:37physiology of dopamine circuits for motivation.
12:39I have a good friend who perhaps incidentally, perhaps not is a cardiologist at a
12:46major university, said that, uh, one of the major errors that people make, uh, with
12:51book writing and completion is they will tell people they're going to write a book
12:55and people will say, oh, you definitely should write a book.
12:58Everyone's going to love your book.
13:00And they never end up writing it.
13:01And his theory is that they get so much dopamine reward.
13:05from that immediate feedback, with all the protection of never having the book criticized, that
13:09they never write the book.
13:10I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but I guess it raises the question, what's
13:15the better strategy? Yeah. So I'm not saying that people who enjoy a dream board
13:20creation should stop what they're doing, but the process of goal setting shouldn't stop with
13:24articulating what the goal is.
13:25So at that same point that we're trying to figure out what do we want
13:28to do? What is my vision for the future?
13:31In those planning sessions, we need to simultaneously think about a couple other things.
13:36One is how are we going to get there?
13:40So take it out of the abstract, take it out of this idyllic visual iconography
13:45and start thinking about the practical day to day.
13:47We need to break it down into more manageable goals, not just my 10 -year
13:50plan for myself, but my two -week plan.
13:52What can I accomplish in the next two weeks and the two weeks after that's
13:56going to set me on the right trajectory?
13:58Plan big picture, think big picture abstractly, but then also break it down more concretely.
14:02That's probably not surprising, but it's an important aspect of the goal setting process.
14:07Then again, Gabrielle Otengen in my department has identified a third often overlooked or underappreciated
14:13stage that has to happen at that goal in the goal setting process.
14:18And that's thinking about the obstacles that stand in your way of success.
14:22And that it will actually help improve motivation in the long run.
14:26And sometimes people think that that like is counterintuitive.
14:29You're saying like for, if I want to increase my motivation, have more motivation than
14:33I need to think about how hard it's going to be all the ways that
14:35I'm going to fail, because it's like coming up with a plan B, a plan
14:39C, plan D in advance of actually experiencing that.
14:42If you were on a boat and the boat started to sink, that's not the
14:46time you want to start looking for life jackets.
14:48You already want to know where one is so you can go to it right
14:50away. And it's the same thing with goal setting is that you want to know
14:54what am I working towards how I'm going to get there.
14:56And if I experience this obstacle, here's what I'm going to do about it.
15:00You may never experience that obstacle, but if you do, you're probably going to be
15:04shy on time, thin on resources, maybe experiencing an anxiety that hijacks your brain.
15:09So you're not functioning at that optimal level of judgment and decision -making.
15:13You want to already have like the snap next.
15:16step in place so you can just hop to it, right?
15:19We're not going to do our best thinking when we're in crisis mode, but we
15:23don't have to if we have used, if we have already used our resources in
15:27advance to come up with that plan B or that plan C.
15:29Michael Phelps, like incredible athlete, right?
15:32This is something that he and his coach have routinely incorporated into their, into their
15:36training. Back in 2008, he was hot for the first time on the international stage.
15:41It was the Beijing Olympics.
15:42Michael Phelps was on the brink of doing something that no one else in the
15:45history of the Olympic Games has ever done, which is win eight gold medals in
15:49a single Olympiad. At the time of this story, he had already won seven and
15:54he had just the 200 fly in front of him before he could do what
15:57no one else has ever done, win the eighth gold medal.
15:59And the fly is his thing, right?
16:01This should have been, this should have been easy, like a no brainer.
16:03He's going to win this.
16:04He's going to break Olympic history.
16:06As soon as he dove into the pool, his goggles started to leak.
16:10And by the time he had done three lengths of the pool, he just had
16:14to flip around and come back to the, to the starting line slash finish line
16:18back to the edge. Um, by the time that happened, his goggles were completely filled
16:22with water and he was swimming blind.
16:24I would have panicked. I would have sunk to the bottom of the pool.
16:27I wouldn't have even been in the pool, to be honest.
16:28Like I'm not a swimmer, definitely not going to be in the Olympics, but, uh,
16:31but for him, he didn't, it wasn't a moment of panic.
16:34Like it probably would have been for nearly every other person in that situation because
16:37he had foreshadowed that kind of possible failure.
16:41He had imagined that obstacle hitting him in advance and not even just imagined it,
16:45but practiced it. What will we do?
16:47He routinely practiced swimming with his goggles, not fully secured on his face.
16:51His coach notoriously would, uh, rip the goggles off of his head, smash them on
16:55the ground for maybe dramatic effect or something so that he didn't even have any
16:58goggles possible to grab as he's, as he's in practice.
17:02So because he had foreshadowed that possibility and the solution, if my goggles start to
17:07leak, then I will do in his case, start counting my strokes, then I'll make
17:12it through. He knew exactly how many strokes it would take from him to get
17:15from one end of the pool to the other.
17:16He started counting his strokes.
17:18He won that, he won that race, the 200 fly, won his eighth gold medal
17:21and he'd go on to win 15 more in his career.
17:24So we might not all be swimmers.
17:26We might not all aspire.
17:27to Olympic level performance, but I love that example because I think it helps sort
17:32of demystify or give us an alternative perspective on the importance and the motivational reasons
17:38why thinking about obstacles in advance, thinking about the ways, the two, three, four ways
17:43that your plan might go awry is actually effective at helping us to overcome the
17:48obstacle that might otherwise lead us to throw in the towel.
17:50So I do think that there's great power in thinking about our visual experience alongside
17:55other tactics that we might use for meeting our goals.
17:58As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 for nearly 15 years now.
18:03I discovered it way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast, and
18:07I've been taking it every day since.
18:09The reason I started taking it and the reason I still take it is because
18:13AG1 is, to my knowledge, the highest quality and most comprehensive of the foundational nutritional
18:17supplements on the market. It combines vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, probiotics, and adaptogens into a single
18:24scoop that's easy to drink and it tastes great.
18:27It's designed to support things like gut health, immune health, and overall energy.
18:31And it does so by helping to fill any gaps you might have in your
18:35daily nutrition. Now, of course, everyone should strive to eat nutritious whole foods.
18:39I certainly do that every day, but I'm often asked if you could take just
18:42one supplement, what would that supplement be?
18:45And my answer is always AG1, because it has just been oh so critical to
18:49supporting all aspects of my physical health, mental health, and performance.
18:53I know this from my own experience with AG1, and I continually hear this from
18:57other people who use AG1 daily.
18:59If you would like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1 .com slash Huberman
19:04to get a special offer.
19:05For a limited time, AG1 is giving away six free travel packs of AG1 and
19:10a bottle of vitamin D3K2 with your subscription.
19:13Again, that's drinkag1 with the numeral 1 .com slash Huberman to get six free travel
19:18packs and a bottle of vitamin D3K2 with your subscription.
19:22I have a question, and to be honest, I know the answer in advance, but
19:25I'd love for you to tell us a bit about how unfit people view the
19:30world versus how fit people view the world or how unmotivated people visually see the
19:36world as opposed to highly motivated.
19:38people. Maybe you could describe that study.
19:40I think it's a particularly important one, mostly because, yes, it identifies perhaps a physiological
19:46or psychological differences between motivated and unmotivated or fit and unfit people, but it also
19:52provides a path to remedy that.
19:56Yeah. So out of my lab, but also out of several other labs, there's been
19:59work looking at that relation between states of the body and visual experiences.
20:03They haven't necessarily tried to integrate the motivation science element to it, but they were
20:09looking to see the visual experiences change as a function of different states of our
20:14body. So they've looked at people who experience chronic fatigue, the elderly, people who are
20:18overweight, those that are wearing heavy backpacks and so who are sort of put into
20:25that experience of being overweight.
20:27What happens to their perceptions of the environment?
20:29Well, what they find is that distances look further to those that are overweight, chronically
20:34tired, older rather than younger, weighted down with extra baggage.
20:38Distances look farther and hills look steeper.
20:41We've done some of those studies too, where we try to like give people more
20:44energy or deprive them of energy and see, does that change their perception of space?
20:50They do this a lot in medical studies.
20:52You give somebody a drug and you give somebody a placebo, a sugar pill.
20:56And then importantly, nobody really knows who's got what until you've analyzed all the data
21:01and the results are revealed that these are the people that had the drug, the
21:05active agent. Same idea in the psychological research.
21:08In this case, what we did was give people Kool -Aid to drink.
21:11And for some people, that Kool -Aid was sweetened with sugar, an actual caloric entity.
21:16It could give them energy.
21:18Other people drank Kool -Aid sweetened with Splenda.
21:22So yeah, it's sweet, but it actually doesn't have any caloric value.
21:25You're not giving people energy.
21:26You're just giving them that experience of sweetness.
21:30Now, some people, of course, are really good at identifying like what's real sugar and
21:34what's Splenda. But when you put it in a Kool -Aid, a pretty noxious powder,
21:38it actually masked it for everybody and nobody had any idea.
21:41We asked them to guess what they got.
21:43We tested them afterwards and they were wrong.
21:45So nobody is able to guess with accuracy.
21:48What was your drink? So sweetened with, which is important because they were blind the
21:52way that scientists use it.
21:54They didn't know what it was that they were drinking.
21:56We give them about 10 to 15 minutes for that sugar to metabolize.
21:59And we measured their circulating blood glucose levels to make sure that we had, in
22:04fact, given their body a circulating glucose energy that they might use in the next
22:11activity. And the researcher, again, didn't know whether they had just served sugar or Splenda.
22:17Then we asked people to estimate distance.
22:20So we gave some people more energy or we kept others sort of at like
22:23whatever their normal level was.
22:25And what we found is that those people who didn't even know it, but who
22:28had been given more energy by drinking Kool -Aid sweetened with sugar, perceived their space
22:33as more constricted. That visual illusion of proximity was induced.
22:38They felt that their finish line, again, in the context of an exercise task, was
22:42closer to them. So in just the same way that these other physiology labs, vision
22:46science physiology labs found that people who are chronically tired, who don't feel like they
22:52have as much energy, or those that are physically weighted down and for whom moving
22:56within an environment is more costly, we could create that experience for people.
23:01We did an experimental version of that, that if you have more energy, the world
23:04looks easier. The distances to a finish line don't look as far.
23:10So that was some of the experimental evidence that we had to show that people's
23:14states their body do impact their visual experience.
23:17Now I'm a motivation researcher.
23:19So for me, the big question is, well, what's the point of that study then,
23:23besides just showing this connection between the body and the eyes and the visual experience?
23:27We think that that's fundamental to one of the reasons that people experience difficulty when
23:32they're exercising. When it's really harder for your body because of its physical state to
23:37move within a space, you might say like, well, why don't they just go exercise?
23:40Because the world looks harder to them.
23:43Because that distance that they're supposed to walk because a doctor tells them to, or
23:47that a partner encourages them to, or a hill that they should hike up because
23:51someone told them that would be good for their health, it looks more challenging to
23:55them than it does to somebody who isn't, who isn't, who's in, who's in better
23:59physical health. Now, if it looks that way, if it looks harder, if it feels
24:04like it might be harder, then psychologically we know that it is.
24:08When you have set yourself up psychologically, mentally for that kind of failure experience, like
24:13I don't know that I have the resources to get this job done, this looks
24:17really hard, you're already motivationally in a place for this task to be closer to
24:23impossible for you. So to put it all together then, what we know is that
24:26people whose bodies might make it more challenging for them to exercise are seeing the
24:31world in a more challenging way and that is having these downstream motivational and psychological
24:35effects that makes it less likely for them to try to take on the task
24:40in the first place or to experience it as harder than other people would or
24:44do. Is the solution the same, however?
24:48Meaning if these people are taught to adjust their visual goal line or to set
24:53a visual spotlight on an intermediate goal, can they overcome some of this challenge that
25:00they face simply by virtue of their skewed perception?
25:02Yes. So in all of the studies that we have done, looking at that connection
25:07between this narrowed focus of attention and improvements in exercise, we do not find that
25:13it only works for the people who are in shape or that it backfires for
25:16people who are out of shape.
25:17It works for everybody. This is a strategy that everybody can adopt because it's just
25:21simply about like, what do you allocate attentional resources to?
25:24What do you sort of ignore and what do you focus on?
25:27And that visually induces the same kind of illusion for everybody, regardless of whether you're
25:33overweight or you're at your target weight, or if you're struggling to get there or
25:37you've already accomplished where you want to be, that visual illusion can be induced for
25:41everybody and it has the same kinds of consequences.
25:44Are there any studies looking at how adrenaline or epinephrine or any other stimulants impact
25:50motivation? If you actually are more physiologically aroused or jazzed or whatever, you know, amped
25:56up, or you just think you are, in our studies, we have found that they
26:01work in the same way, that it can produce the same kinds of consequences.
26:04So, and I like that because it tells us like you can actually change the
26:07state of your body to induce these kinds of experiences, or you can...
26:11try to, you can just think that you can trick yourself.
26:14You can placebo affect yourself out and produce the same kinds of effects.
26:18I had to give up coffee like 12 years ago, not because not for any,
26:21sorry, I love the taste.
26:23And so decaf is my jam.
26:25Um, but I can't drink the caffeine because it didn't actually do the thing that
26:28it does for so many other people, like make me feel more energized and more
26:31awake. I just got sweaty and jittery and anxious and I couldn't focus.
26:34And I happened to marry the same kind of person.
26:36He also can't drink caffeine, but loves the taste of coffee.
26:38The interesting thing is that we both have to have coffee in the morning to
26:42feel like we're ready to go for the day.
26:44So it's just part of our routine or whatever, to have that taste and have
26:48that sensation to feel like I'm ready to take on the day, even though, I
26:51mean, yeah, decaf still has some caffeine in it, but we're not drinking that much
26:55of it to probably actually create a caffeinated experience in our body, but we're tricking
27:00ourselves psychologically into, into doing that thing that in years past used to work for
27:05us both. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor better help.
27:09Better help offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online.
27:14Now I've been doing therapy for a very long time and I can tell you
27:18that it's a lot like physical workouts.
27:20There are days when I want to do it and there are days when I
27:22don't want to do it.
27:23But when I finish a therapy session, every single time I come away feeling better
27:26and knowing that the time was well spent.
27:29And typically when I finish a therapy session, I come away with a valuable insight
27:33or some new perspective on something that I've been working through, whether or not that's
27:36with work, with relationships, my personal life, or simply my relationship with myself.
27:41There's just so much benefit that comes through effective therapy.
27:44And that's not just my personal experience.
27:45There are loads and loads of clinical studies to support that.
27:48With better help, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist who can
27:52help provide the benefits that come through effective therapy.
27:54And it works. Better help has an average rating of 4 .9 out of five
27:58for its live sessions based on over 1 .7 million client reviews.
28:03Also, because better help is done entirely online, it's extremely time efficient.
28:07You simply log on and have your session.
28:09If you would like to try better help, go to betterhelp .com slash Huberman to
28:14get 10 % off your first month.
28:16Again, that's betterhelp .com slash Huberman.
28:20I'd love to ask about other.
28:22kinds of goals, meaning non -physical goals.
28:25Is there any example or tactic that people could use to better approach cognitive goals
28:30of school, work, but that don't exist in the fitness and sports domain?
28:35Totally. A couple years ago, when I was writing the book, I also had a
28:39child. The same month that I had the opportunity to pull all this research together
28:44is the same month that my son came to be.
28:49I started to realize I became a lot less interesting once he was around.
28:53He was fascinating, but I was changing diapers and feeding him.
28:57That was it. People would come over like, what's up?
28:59How have you been? Tell me something that's going on in your life.
29:02All I had to talk about was what was boring.
29:05I just felt like I've lost myself.
29:06I used to pride myself on the crazy adventures and problems I would get myself
29:10in. I was a great storyteller.
29:12That all of a sudden disappeared as soon as he came into the world because
29:15he became my world. So then I started thinking like, I need to pull back
29:19some coolness if I ever had it in the first place, but I need to
29:22be a cooler person than I'm coming across right now.
29:24So I decided I want to learn to play drums and I want to be
29:28like a one hit wonder as a rock star drummer.
29:31So that's a goal that I set for myself at the same time that my
29:34son came into this world when I was also trying to think about goal setting
29:38and how to improve my ability and all of our ability to get a job
29:43done when you're faced with some pretty big obstacles.
29:46So I got to practice all these techniques that we're talking about on myself and
29:49see for myself when I tell people, hey, try this thing like narrowed focus of
29:52attention. Does that help with something like becoming a better drummer?
29:56And the answer is, yeah, these tactics at least work for me sometimes under some
30:00circumstances and they do for other people who try them for other goals that aren't
30:03necessarily about exercise. One that I found particularly helpful was overcoming my bad memory, that
30:10everybody's memories are faulty, right?
30:13Everybody has sort of a warped perception of the past.
30:16It might be skewed more positively than maybe we deserve, or it might be skewed
30:19more negatively if you feel that, you know, what looms large in your mind as
30:24you reflect on something from the past or the mistakes that you've made or the
30:27things that the social faux pas that you had or, you know, challenges that you
30:33faced at work. you got in trouble with a boss or with a colleague, if
30:36that's what really stands out in your mind or the good side of all of
30:40those possibilities, we probably aren't getting the world right.
30:43And that is something that our brain has evolved to give us a faulty memory,
30:48to level and sharpen, to not encode and remember and be able to recall everything
30:52that we've experienced with accuracy and precision.
30:55And that's a problem when it comes to assessing our own goal progress, when we
31:01want to be our own accountant and try to determine how are we doing?
31:05If I want to become a drummer, am I on track for getting there before
31:09X, before my time runs out?
31:12Am I going to make it or not?
31:13And I think that's an experience, whether they want to be a drummer or not,
31:15that a lot of people can resonate with, like trying to determine is this trajectory,
31:20is this rate of progress going to get the job done by X amount of
31:23time? Will I have my swimsuit body by summer or will I save enough for
31:27retirement? By the time I hit 65?
31:30For these goals where time is involved and there is a deadline, we do take
31:35moments to assess our trajectory.
31:38And if we just rely on our memory, we're probably going to do a bad
31:42job of assessing that trajectory, of knowing whether we're on pace to meeting our deadline.
31:49And I found that to be the case as I was thinking about, am I
31:52actually going to be able to learn this song?
31:53I mean, I know that it's going a lot slower than it probably would for
31:56anybody else. But to give myself a deadline and a commitment, I decided I was
32:00going to put on a show.
32:01I was going to invite everybody I knew and also people I didn't know.
32:04And I was going to play my one song for them.
32:07So in the process of like figuring out, am I going to be able to
32:10play this show? I sent out invitations.
32:12Like the date is committed.
32:13Like people are coming to listen to my one song.
32:16God bless them. Um, how's it going to go?
32:20And, and it felt awful.
32:21It just felt like I am not making progress here because there's a lot more
32:25things that actually are pressing, right?
32:27Like the kid does need to get fed.
32:29I do have to go to my day job.
32:31The editor is asking for the next draft of this book.
32:34And that is going to take precedence like it does for so many people that,
32:37that things command your, your bandwidth, even when you have this goal that you've committed
32:42to and that you've got, you know, on the books.
32:44And so I just felt this looming anxiety about this, this goal that would require,
32:49you know, like didn't have to be daily practice, but like you can't, you can't
32:53cram that kind of a goal.
32:55It does take, you know, committed investment for a sustained period of time.
33:00And so I had this looming anxiety that I'm not making good enough progress, but
33:04that's because I was relying on my memory and my brain to, to recall, like,
33:07how many times did you practice?
33:09What was it like the last time you practiced?
33:10What was it like when you tried to play this bit, you know, or this
33:13riff like two weeks ago, have you gotten any better since then?
33:16And it just felt like, no, I haven't practiced enough.
33:19I don't remember when the last time I played was, but it definitely doesn't feel
33:22like I'm getting any better.
33:23Then I thought, you know what?
33:24I should stop relying on my brain to tell me where am I at?
33:28And is, is, am I on an upward slope here?
33:31I need to look at the data.
33:32I love data. Scientists love data.
33:34So I started to collect data on myself.
33:36What I did was download this app that a friend had told me about called
33:39the reporter app. There's lots of these kinds of things out there.
33:42Basically, it just like sets up your phone to randomly ping you with whatever questions
33:46you want your phone to ask.
33:48It records your answers. You can download the data.
33:50You can make pretty graphs to see, am I getting, how, what's my change and
33:54how I've answered these questions over time.
33:57So I did that for a month.
33:58I had my phone ask me, you know, a couple of times a day, did
34:01you practice? Since last time I asked you, my phone says, did you practice?
34:06If mostly it was no.
34:07And if yes, then it would funnel a couple other questions.
34:10Like how did you do?
34:11How do you feel? Check a couple of different emotion words now about your experience
34:15when you played. And I did that for a month after a month, went into
34:19my office, downloaded the data and first took stock before I looked at the numbers
34:23of like, how do I think I did over the last month?
34:26And I thought same as every other month.
34:28I like, I didn't really get anywhere.
34:30Yeah. I practiced, but I still feel awful.
34:32But what I found from the data was my memory was totally wrong.
34:35I actually had practiced far more times than I remembered.
34:38And when I looked at like my emotion words that I used, it was a
34:42clear upward trajectory. Yeah, I did cry that part.
34:45I hadn't misremembered or made up.
34:47But by the end of that month, like I had gotten a compliment from my
34:50husband who actually is a drummer and said like, Hey, that wasn't that bad.
34:54All of which is to say, I in the same time, but by the end
34:55of this month, it's a bright and bright and terrifying.
34:55You needed to see, to collect that data on myself and to look at it
34:59objectively, accurately and completely because my brain wasn't doing that for me.
35:05That visual experience of downloading that data and looking at like what was my actual
35:12experience gave me a better insight as I was trying to assess the trajectory of
35:18my progress. I became a more accurate accountant of my own progress, which is important
35:23for, you know, setting goals or resetting them when you need to calibrate in light
35:27of what's left to do and how much time do you have to do it
35:30in. Fantastic. Well, you've given us a ton of mechanistic and conceptual and practical information.
35:40So I'm speaking for a lot of people when I say thank you for taking
35:44the time out of your schedule amidst kids and running a lab and teaching at
35:48the university. And we hope to have you back again.
35:50Thank you so much. It was a great conversation.
35:52Thank you. Thanks. So you want to start a business.
35:59You might think you need a team of people and fancy tech skills, but you
36:03don't. You just need GoDaddy Arrow.
36:06I'm Walton Goggins. And as an actor, I'm an expert in looking like I know
36:09what I'm doing. GoDaddy Arrow uses AI to create everything you need to grow a
36:14business. It'll make you a unique logo.
36:16It'll create a custom website.
36:17It'll write social posts for you and even set you up with a social media
36:21calendar. Get started at GoDaddy .com slash arrow.
36:25That's GoDaddy .com slash A -I -R -O.