Dr. Emily Balcetis: Tools for Setting & Achieving Goals

Huberman Lab

Scicomm Media

Science, Health & Fitness, Life Sciences

4.8 • 26.2K Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2022

⏱️ 97 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

My guest this episode is Dr. Emily Balcetis, PhD, Professor of Psychology at New York University (NYU). Dr. Balcetis’ research focuses on how our perception of the world, particularly our visual perceptions, influences our level and persistence of motivation, how we conceptualize goals, actual goal achievement, and our emotional state as we pursue goals. Dr. Balcetis explains how to best visualize and overcome challenges in pursuit of larger, complex goals. We also discuss the science of how to define goals and intermediate milestones, overcome obstacles, and effectively track progress. This episode highlights science-based, immediately actionable tools that anyone can use to set and achieve physical and/or cognitive goals more effectively. For the full show notes, visit hubermanlab.com Thank you to our sponsors AG1 (Athletic Greens): https://athleticgreens.com/huberman InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/huberman Thesis: https://takethesis.com/huberman Supplements from Momentous https://www.livemomentous.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Dr. Emily Balcetis, Visualization of Goals & Motivation (00:03:24) Momentous Supplements (00:04:38) AG1 (Athletic Greens), InsideTracker, Thesis (00:08:08) Vision & Motivation (00:11:37) Tool: Narrowing Visual Focus & Improving Exercise (00:21:39) Adjusting Visual Attention & Perceived Fatigue (00:25:14) Tool: Visual Focus “Spotlight” (00:27:57) Tool: Goal Gradient Hypothesis, Visual Spotlight to Increase Effort (00:33:38) AG1 (Athletic Greens) (00:35:00) Defining Goals vs. Accomplishing Goals, Dream Boards & Goal Lists (00:41:28) Tool: How to Setting Better Goals & Identify Obstacles (00:46:38) Vision is Unique, Challenging the Visual System, Realistic Goals & Micro-Goals (00:57:12) Do Fit People View the World Differently?, States of Body & Visual Experiences (01:05:54) Caffeine, Stimulants, Visual Windows & Motivation (01:10:13) Tools: Goal Setting & Cognitive (Non-Physical) Goals, Data Collection (01:21:54) Year in Review & Memory (01:26:32) Visual Tools & Mental Health, Depression & Visual Priming (01:31:33) Focusing Attention & Increasing Visual Detail/Resolution (01:36:12) Zero-Cost Support, YouTube Feedback, Spotify & Apple Reviews, Sponsors, Neural Network Newsletter, Instagram, Twitter, Momentous Supplements Title Card Photo Credit: Mike Blabac Disclaimer

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Uberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
0:08.7	I'm Andrew Uberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and
0:12.4	Ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today my guest is Dr. Emily Bouchettis.
0:17.8	Dr. Bouchettis is a professor of psychology at New York University. Her laboratory studies motivation,
0:24.0	goal setting, and tools for successful goal completion.
0:27.2	I learned about Dr. Bouchettis's work some years ago because I'm a vision scientist. That is,
0:33.2	I study the visual system and I heard about this incredible psychologist at New York University
0:38.4	who was studying how vision, that is how we visualize problems, can predict whether or not we will
0:44.3	successfully overcome challenges and how we strategize in order to set and meet goals.
0:50.9	And in 2020, I learned of Dr. Bouchettis's book, which was written for the general public,
0:55.9	entitled, Clear Closer Better, How Successful People See the World. And I read both the hard copy of
1:01.9	the book and listened to the audio book. And I absolutely loved the material. As you'll learn
1:07.4	directly from Dr. Bouchettis today, how people visualize a problem. That is, whether or not they
1:13.2	think of a goal or a problem as residing at the top of a very steep hill or on the top of a
1:20.1	shallower hill or whether or not they visualize a goal or a problem as far off in the distance or
1:26.1	closer to them in the distance visually in their mind, strongly dictates whether or not they will arrive
1:33.3	at the challenge of meeting a goal or overcoming a problem with more energy or less energy.
1:38.5	Indeed, it dictates whether or not they can push to immediate milestones or whether or not they will
1:43.8	think they have to overcome the entire task all at once. Basically, Dr. Bouchettis's work has
1:49.8	discovered that how we visualize a problem or a goal in our mind has everything to do with how
1:56.8	we lean into that goal, whether or not we think of it as overwhelming or tractable, whether or not
2:01.9	we think that we can overcome that goal and then it will lead to yet more possible rewards and goals
	...

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