When it comes down to it, getting what you want out of life is just about setting and achieving goals. What you want to be able to do is call your shots: to pick a pocket on the pool table and sink the ball.
So why is that so hard and confusing?
Well, there are a lot of facets to actually achieving your goals. It’s hard to set goal difficulty. It’s hard to balance between competing goals. It’s hard to know whether to stick with a goal or to change it. It’s hard to stay focused. It’s hard to follow through. It’s hard to stay motivated. It’s hard to know which goal-setting advice to listen to.
We’re in desperate need of some cheat codes here. And that’s why living in the age of modern neuroscience is such a blessing. The best way to become a master shot caller is to understand your brain. Or, more specifically, the neuroscience of goal pursuit.
That’s why we were so excited to see that one of our all-time favorite shows, the Huberman Lab podcast, covered this exact topic. In a recent episode called The Science of Setting and Achieving Goals Professor Andrew Huberman—neurobiologist and ophthalmologist at Stanford University—spent two hours breaking down goal pursuit strategies from the latest and most advanced scientific studies available.
It’s packed with both interesting science and actionable takeaways to help you understand the neuroscience of goals—and how to achieve them. It’s the kind of thing that you wish was written down somewhere, so that you could refer back to it over and over again.
Well, that’s exactly what we did. We listened to it over and over again, tracked down all of the papers that were referenced, and turned the entire episode into this essay.
In the rest of this piece we’ll go through Dr. Huberman's thoughts on the neuroscience of goals—the mechanisms that underlie all goal-related activity. And then we’ll show you how he boils the science down into actionable strategies that you can use to set and achieve your goals.
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### Summary
- Regardless of who you are and the goals you're pursuing, your actions are controlled by the same brain circuit.
- Goal settings should be achievable 85% of the time to attain the best motivation, focus, and growth.
- In the process of achieving your goals, thinking about what failure will feel like is more motivating than thinking about what success will feel like.
- Outsmarting your distractions and pre-planning how you will deal with them will make you more productive.
- Multitasking before a focused work session can get your adrenaline going and help you focus.
- Focusing your eyes on a single point for 30-60 seconds is a simple and powerful way to get yourself in the mood to achieve a goal.
- The neurochemical dopamine, which is linked to progress, helps to sustain motivation over the long term.
- Celebrating progress and focusing on the process are more important than perfection. Gaining a deeper understanding of the neuroscience behind goals can help you achieve them more effectively and learn how to set appropriate levels of difficulty, manage multiple goals, and adhere to the path you've set for yourself.
#### By Lewis Kallow / Superorganizers
