Tools for Setting & Achieving Goals | Dr. Emily Balcetis

1. 0:00 – 3:24

   Dr. Emily Balcetis, Visualization of Goals & Motivation

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:00

      (soft rock music) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, my guest is Dr. Emily Balcetis. Dr. Balcetis is a professor of psychology at New York University. Her laboratory studies motivation, goal setting, and tools for successful goal completion. I learned about Dr. Balcetis' work some years ago, because I'm a vision scientist, that is, I study the visual system, and I heard about this incredible psychologist at New York University who was studying how vision, that is, how we visualize problems, can predict whether or not we will successfully overcome challenges, and how we strategize in order to set and meet goals. And in 2020, I learned of Dr. Balcetis' book, which was written for the general public, entitled Clearer, Closer, Better: How Successful People See the World. And I read both the hard copy of the book and listened to the audiobook, and I absolutely loved the material. As you'll learn directly from Dr. Balcetis today, how people visualize a problem, that is whether or not they think of a goal or a problem as residing at the top of a very steep hill, or on the top of a shallower hill, or whether or 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 dictates whether or 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 or 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, Dr. Balcetis' 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 or not we think of it as overwhelming or tractable, whether or not we think that we can overcome that goal and then it will lead to yet more possible rewards and goals, or whether or not we feel that we're 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 or not they will lead to still greater goals that you'll be able to achieve. Today's episode is an especially important one, I believe, because you're going to learn about quality peer-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 your 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. Dr. Balcetis also shares with us her own experiences of how to set, visualize, and achieve goals, and she does that within the context of her role 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

2. 3:24 – 4:38

   Momentous Supplements

   1. AHAndrew Huberman3:24

      own life. I'm pleased to announce that the Huberman Lab Podcast is now partnered with Momentous supplements. We partnered with Momentous for several important reasons. First of all, they ship internationally, because, uh, we know that many of you are located outside of the United States. That's valuable. Second of all, and perhaps most important, the quality of their supplements is second to none, both in terms of purity and precision of the amounts of the ingredients. Third, we've really emphasized supplements that are single ingredient supplements and that are supplied in dosages that allow you to build a supplementation protocol that's optimized for cost, that's optimized for effectiveness, and that you can add things and remove things from your protocol in a way that's really systematic and scientific. This is really hard to do if you're taking blends of different supplements or if the dosages are such that you can't titrate or, that is, adjust the dosages of a given supplement. So by using single ingredient supplements, you can really build out the supplement kit that's ideal for you and your specific needs. If you'd like to see the supplements that we partner with Momentous on, you can go to livemomentous.com/huberman. There, you'll see those supplements, and just keep in mind that we are constantly expanding the library of supplements available through Momentous on a regular basis. Again, that's livemomentous.com/huberman. Before we begin, I'd

3. 4:38 – 8:08

   Thesis, Levels, ROKA

   1. AHAndrew Huberman4:38

      like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and 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 Thesis. Thesis makes custom nootropics, and as some of you have probably heard me say before, I'm not a fan of the word nootropics because nootropics means smart drugs, and frankly, as a neuroscientist, the notion of a smart drug is somewhat ridiculous. Why? Well, it turns out that we have neural circuits in our brain that get engaged for creativity and yet other neural circuits that are engaged for focus and still other neural circuits that are engaged for task switching. So the notion of a smart drug or a drug that can induce smartness, if you will, is simply not grounded in science.Well, Thesis understands this and has developed custom nootropics that are tailored to the specific types of cognitive demands or physical demands that you might be facing. (inhales sharply) If you go to Thesis' website, you can take a quiz, and from that, they'll give you a sample of different nootropics that you can try so that you can create a customized kit of nootropics for your specific needs. To get your own personalized nootropic starter kit, just go online to takethesis.com/huberman. Take that three-minute quiz, and Thesis will send you four different formulas to try in your first month. That's takethesis.com/huberman and use the code Huberman at checkout to get 10% off your first box. Today's episode is also brought to us by Levels. Levels is what's called a continuous glucose monitor. Some of you may have heard of these before, others of you perhaps have not. Basically, it's a small device that you wear on the back of your arm, it's an app that you install on your phone, and whether or not you are fasting, or you just ate, or you several hours ago, you can get a real-time measurement of your blood glucose, which turns out to be extremely informative. I first started using the Levels continuous glucose monitor about a year ago, and it's taught me so much about how I respond to specific foods in terms of blood sugar spikes, how I respond to exercise, even the sauna, it turns out, can modulate my blood glucose levels and your blood glucose levels in very interesting ways. So all of that has translated into a huge number of very directed changes that I've made in terms of what I eat, when I eat, and how I schedule exercise relative to eating, and sleep, et cetera. If you're interested in trying the Levels continuous glucose monitor yourself, you can simply go to levels.link/huberman. That's levels.link/huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by ROKA. ROKA makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are of the absolute highest quality, and they also have some unique characteristics. The company was founded by two All-American swimmers from Stanford, and everything about ROKA eyeglasses and sunglasses were designed with performance in mind. ROKA eyeglasses and sunglasses can be worn while running or cycling. If you get sweaty, they won't fall off your face, and they're extremely lightweight. In fact, most of the time, I can't even remember that I'm wearing them. I wear ROKA eyeglasses when I read at night, so I wear their readers, and I wear sunglasses at various times throughout the day. The great thing about ROKA eyeglasses and sunglasses is that even though they were designed for athletic performance, they have a terrific aesthetic. So unlike a lot of so-called performance glasses that make people look like cyborgs, in my opinion, ROKA eyeglasses and sunglasses are the sort that you could wear out to dinner, that you could wear to work. They have a terrific aesthetic. If you'd like to try ROKA eyeglasses or sunglasses, you can go to ROKA, that's roka.com, and enter the code Huberman to save 20% off your first order. Again, that's ROKA, roka.com, and enter the code Huberman at checkout. And now for my discussion with Dr.

4. 8:08 – 11:37

   Vision & Motivation

   1. AHAndrew Huberman8:08

      Emily Balcetis. Well, thanks for being here.

   2. EBEmily Balcetis8:10

      It's my pleasure.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman8:11

      Yeah. I've been looking forward to this for a long time, uh, because as a vision scientist, uh, who is also very interested in real life tools and goal setting and motivation, your work lands squarely in the middle of those interests. So just to kick things off, could you tell us just a little bit about the relationship between perception and, in particular, how we see the world, and goal setting and goal retrieval? It's a vast landscape, but you're the expert, so I'll turn that over to you.

   4. EBEmily Balcetis8:44

      (laughs)

   5. AHAndrew Huberman8:44

      And then, uh, as time goes on, uh, 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 up?

   6. EBEmily Balcetis8:53

      Yeah, totally. I mean, uh, it, like, when we, when psychologists ask people, like, "How are you, what are you doing to help make progress on your goals?" They say all kinds of things, but a couple things always pop to the top, which is, you know, "Try to talk to myself in encouraging ways," you know, self, self pep talks, or, "I remind myself of how important it is to, to do this job," or, you know, "I'll put up Post-It notes around, um, to, like, constantly be nagging me about what I need to do." So those are common tactics that people use, and what we'll notice is that those are really effortful, having to constantly remind yourself, having to constantly talk to yourself, having to create those Post-It notes, remember 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've, when you first set it. You might make some initial progress, but then eventually, we get, you know, not even to the halfway point be- before things get real (laughs) things are, are challenging, and we fall by the wayside. And that's, I think, because those tactics that are our go-to strategies are themselves a goal to maintain. So it's like, you know, double-sided. We're putting so much on ourselves to try to advance the thing that we originally set out to accomplish. So then I, you know, with my team, I was trying to think of, like, well, what are strategies that don't require as much effort, that we can automate, that we can take advantage of what's already happening within ourselves, within our body, within our mind, that might overcome one of those challenges, that'll be easier, more automated? And that's when we started to land on the idea of vision, right? We look at the world without even thinking of it, for those of us that are sighted, and, and we thought, you know what? There are, 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 hadn't been able to see before. So we started playing around with the idea of visual illusions to see, like, do people even know that there's other ways of seeing things around them? Can we tweak that? Is there room for intervention? Can we encourage people, um, to take a new way of looking to s- 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.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman11:02

      That's great, and, uh, I always say, and here I'm strongly biased as a vision scientist, that, you know, vision is the dominant sense by which we navigate the world and survive. I love this idea of re- real world, real time access to vision, and I'm certainly familiar with how goal setting or s- or Post-Its and, you know, and magnets on refrigerators can have an immediate impact, but then over time it, they become so part of the visual landscape that you overlook them. And we know, as vision scientists, if something is stably in your environment, eventually you're blind to it. So that makes good sense. So...You've published a number of studies

5. 11:37 – 21:39

   Tool: Narrowing Visual Focus & Improving Exercise

   1. AHAndrew Huberman11:37

      in this area, but, um, maybe you could highlight some of the more, uh, what you would consider an, uh, 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. In other words, uh, what's the link between vision and motivation-

   2. EBEmily Balcetis12:07

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman12:07

      ... and how can we leverage that in order to better reach our goals?

   4. EBEmily Balcetis12:09

      Totally. So, you know, we started thinking about, "What are the goals that are most important to people that they struggle with the most?" So we asked hundreds, thousands of people what their New Year's resolutions are. We looked at all the other polls that, that do the same kind of work. And regardless of where you look, or who you ask, or when you ask it, people's number one goal is something related to their health, right? To, to lose weight, to exercise more, to, to get out, get more steps, for mental wellbeing, physical wellbeing. And, and that's, like, the number one goal every January 1st.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman12:41

      Mm-hmm.

   6. EBEmily Balcetis12:42

      So if, if we were able to accomplish that goal, you'd think it would drop (laughs) a little bit in the rankings, but it doesn't because it's really hard. So we thought, "I wonder if there's a way for us to make some progress on that, on helping people to exercise better, more often, stick to it longer, and, and make some progress there." We know diets don't work. (laughs) And why, why don't diets work? For the same reason that that self-talk doesn't work is that, you know, we go in it f- full bore, hardcore, uh, 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 (laughs) is something that requires less effort for a bigger payoff. So one of the first things that I did was, um, go over to Brooklyn to this old armory building. It, you know, used to, it used to be a military armory space. Yeah, it's-

   7. AHAndrew Huberman13:31

      I think I know that building.

   8. EBEmily Balcetis13:32

      Yeah, it's-

   9. AHAndrew Huberman13:32

      It's a beautiful building now that houses a lot of businesses, right, with plants on the walls? Was that the one?

   10. EBEmily Balcetis13:36

       Yeah, there's businesses. There's a couple armories all around, um, the, the, the boroughs here around New York City. And one, and the one in Brooklyn, in particular, is now a YMCA, right? So it's a family YMCA that's within this beautiful old red brick building that used to be a military establishment long, long ago. And what's really cool is that, you know, one winter after, afternoon, um, you know, somebody had invited me. A physical therapist said, "Hey, you should come out and, and check out what's happening here with your interest in exercise and trying to find new ways of helping people, new tactics that they can add to their tool belt. Uh, I think you're going to find some interesting people that are working out there." So I showed up. I look around. You know, there's families. There's new moms. There's kids that are, you know, moms trying to get kids to burn off some winter, you know, energy that they have. There's people that look like they're just there for their, you know, every couple of days, going out for a run. There's some people that look like they're training with a team, and that's who this physical therapist introduced, introduced me to is the, was the coach of this team. There's a bunch of people that were 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, you know, one of the people that was in the, the last Olympics before I showed up won the gold medal for the 400 meter. And I, and from the looks of them, I mean, of course their bodies are in better shape than mine, but there's nothing so pretent- Of course, they're not wearing their medals. There's nothing pretentious about how they're walking around or anything like that that would lead me to know, like, "This person's amazing, and they probably have some insight that I don't have." So once I got introduced to them and knew who are these people that were part of this, um, pretty elite, um, training team that happened to work out at this family gym, uh, I had the chance to talk with them about, "What strategies do you use?" Now, I am not an elite runner, and having recently had a baby, I'm not really a runner 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 peripheral 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 elite. So when I started asking them, "Is that the case? Do you, do you really pay attention to what's in your surroundings, what's behind you, what's on the side?" They said no. Like, all of them said, "No, and sometimes when I do do that, it's a mistake. It doesn't work for me." So that was surprising. 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're running a short distance, that target might literally be the finish line, the line that they're trying to cross. If it's a longer distance, they set sub-goals, like, you know, 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 sides of their face. That's all they're paying attention to. It's really narrowed scope of attention. And that was a strategy that they, that all of these elite athletes said that they used, and those that were better, rather than, um, you know, the, them slower, were ones that used it more. And I thought, "Oh, that's something we can play with," right? Like, they are elite, and 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 goal that they might have, that they might otherwise, you know, by February or March, be giving up on if they had set it at the beginning of, of January? So that's really where the work started was, you know, what you might call, like, focus groups or case studies of these incredible athletes. And, um, and then we did the other studies looking at, you know, you know, people who aren't 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 who have better pace, faster pace, better time, um, they use that narrowed strategy more often than this more expansive or, you know, open scope of attention. And there seemed to be a correlation 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 it, the... And the more, um, consistently they had adopted that, that technique of the narrowed focus of attention, it seems 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? (laughs) Can sh- can, can she do that? Or me when I'm trying to get back on the bandwagon and exercise more? Is this a tactic 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 used with you, right? Imagine that there's 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, 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 cans or the, or the trucks that are on the road. You know, tune those out and focus in on that target until you hit it and then choose another one, right? Sort of recalibrate, choose the next goal. And so we would test, like, can people do that? I mean, if you're listening right now, you probably are imagining that experience too. And the answer is yes. Like, I can imagine that. I know what those words mean and I can do that. And our work found that too, that people can do that. We have them say out loud what is it that's captured your attention. And of course, sometimes something in the periphery, like movement, captures our gaze and, and we're... Are pulled there for, for an instant, but then we can refocus up again and adopt that narrowed attention. Now, one of the first studies that we did was, was teach that strategy and juxtapose or compare it against a group that we said, "Just look around naturally." You know, you might see that finish line up ahead and there's things on the periphery. 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 finish line. We created sort of, you know, a... An exercise that's moderately challenging, um, but possible. We put ankle weights on that, that accounted for about 15% of their body weight, told them to lift their knees up, sort of high stepping to a finish line. So this would be challenging, uh, for them to do, um, but we said, you know, it's an indicator of overall health and fitness. Some of these people had narrowed their focus of attention and some were just looking more expansively or naturally. And what we found is that those people that we trained, just everyday normal people doing this, this moderately challenging exercise, they were able to move 27% faster. They could do the exercise more quickly and they said it hurt 17% less. The exercise was exactly the same for all the people. We set, we set the weight and we set the distance. It was in, you know, our lab space so it was a con- constrained environment. Everybody was in the same sort of circumstance, but yet their experience was really different. We helped them to move faster, burn calories at a higher rate, right? Exercise more efficiently. The amount of time they put in is going to produce a better, uh, physical outcome. And it also, it didn't hurt them, right? They're saying it doesn't hurt as much. So we were really excited about that, right? Because it meant that this strategy, we could use it on people who are not elite athletes. It could be easily adopted. A quick training session, right? Can teach people to look at the world in a different way. Again, this narrowed attention was different than whatever they do naturally, the comparison group, um, but it had a big outcome. It had a big difference on the way that they were engaged in the exercise. Those, like, some of the first work that we did and then since then we've done, you know, uh, dozens more studies to look at, well, what happens with that and, and, and what else can we do with playing around with this?

   11. AHAndrew Huberman21:32

       Yeah, those are impressive differences, uh, as a consequence of narrowing visual attention. Couple questions about the actual practice

6. 21:39 – 25:14

   Adjusting Visual Attention & Perceived Fatigue

   1. AHAndrew Huberman21:39

      of narrowing attention. Is there any indication of whether or not subjects, um, are constantly updating their visual attention? So for instance, if, uh, let's say the goal line is, uh, 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 a- along a trail or through a city, how often do you think they are updating their, um, their visual aperture and setting a visual goal? And I could imagine that there's some energetic expense to that, so tha- h- um, meaning how... You know you wouldn't want to do e- every crack on the sidewalk unless those cracks on the sidewalk were-

   2. EBEmily Balcetis22:22

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman22:22

      ... very far apart.

   4. EBEmily Balcetis22:23

      Right.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman22:23

      Because I think at some point, that itself would be exhausting.

   6. EBEmily Balcetis22:26

      Mm-hmm.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman22:27

      Um, so is there, uh, an optimal strategy or a semi-optimal strategy?

   8. EBEmily Balcetis22:33

      Yeah, so, you know, those Olympic athletes that we, that we started by interviewing, they tended to be sprinters. They were more often sprinters, short distance sprinters. So when they said like, "Yes, I narrow in more than I assume an expansive focus," that's because they're not going that far, right? They have to do it as fast as humanly possible but they're not going that far. And so we started asking that question too about, like, "Well, wouldn't that be tiring?" And the answer is yes. So when we start to look at, well, people who aren't sprinters, who are accomplished but who are more long distance runners, that's what we find that they do, is that they, um, you know, they're using that narrowed attention strategy strategically and it increases in use. They use it more often as the race progresses. And they really start to do this, you know, major switch (laughs) , um, uh, 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, um, 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 struggle the most...... uh, 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, are not using that narrowed strategy. They're s- they're looking more expansively, um, because I think that, that... Well, first of all, distraction is a thing. It's useful. Not necessarily that they're distracting themselves, because people are still trying to hold pace 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 and neck with somebody that you're, you're trying to, to just beat out, or when you're most tired but you know, like, that last push, you don't want to, you don't want to drop off, um, and you know, you wanna, you wanna push through hard through that finish line. That's when people are using it a- at its peak level of intensity.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman24:41

      I see. Yeah, I... To me, this m- makes total sense why it would work, um, without going down the r- the rabbit hole of visual neuroscience, uh, something for another time, that when we do these vergence eye movements, when we bring our eyes to a visual target, it's clear that some of the brain stem circuitry for alertness gets, uh, engaged, uh, to a greater degree. The other thing is that we know that when we focus on an object that the, the optics of the eye change and, and narrow the visual field. So that brings about a... This is a very detailed

7. 25:14 – 27:57

   Tool: Visual Focus “Spotlight”

   1. AHAndrew Huberman25:14

      question but I'm sure the audience is, is wondering, if let's say I'm focused on a goal line or a-

   2. EBEmily Balcetis25:19

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman25:19

      ... or a, um, intermediate goal, are they focusing on a specific point or is it kind of the entire horizon of that goal? Because the finish line is indeed a line.

   4. EBEmily Balcetis25:27

      Mm-hmm.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman25:27

      Um, so, and of course this is, it's impossible to know what someone is actually doing in their mind's eye-

   6. EBEmily Balcetis25:33

      Mm-hmm.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman25:33

      ... but how do people report this? Do they see it literally as a spotlight? And if so, how broad is that spot?

   8. EBEmily Balcetis25:39

      Yeah, so, you know, what is the, the, the length (laughs) of, of their aperture rather than the, maybe the diameter or, or the sphere, sphere size of it? Um, you know, in our interviews with people, our, our sort of focus group studies, um, it seems like it's more like a, 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 to, like, imagine a circle of light that's shining on some target. Now, of course, the finish line is a line, but if they're staying in their lane, if they're on a track, right, you can imagine that there is, that there is a circle shining just on where in their lane they'll 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 sort of being pulled to engage with peripheral vision. And there's some amazing people, um, some runners in history like Joan Benoit Samuelson, she's one of the first, uh, female marathon competitors who has wo- has won multiple marathons. She's Canadian. I think she's won... F- feel free to correct me, like 10 marathons in, in her life, uh, and she talks about sort of not assuming this, like, this wide but, mm, but narrow (laughs) wi- wide but not deep or tall, uh, attentional focus. She talks about, like, finding the shorts on somebody ahead of me and focusing on, on those shorts until she passes them and then resetting that goal. So i- in, you know, her interviews that she's done with Runners magazines, she talks about it in terms of this, this circle of attention.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman27:17

      Mm-hmm. Uh, I think I've experienced this a little bit, um, because we're visiting New York now to do this interview and, uh, runners here seem more competitive. The recreational runners here seem more competitive. Walk... People walking on the street seem competitive.

   10. EBEmily Balcetis27:31

       Yeah. (laughs)

   11. AHAndrew Huberman27:31

       You're walking at near pace to somebody, they'll quickly speed up. If you speed up, they'll speed up.

   12. EBEmily Balcetis27:36

       Yeah.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman27:36

       I think there have been some studies about walking speed in different cities and New York ranks among the fastest walkers around. I won't mention the slowest walking cities-

   14. EBEmily Balcetis27:45

       (laughs)

   15. AHAndrew Huberman27:45

       ... 'cause, uh, we don't want to cast any judgments. But, um, fascinating, uh, and again, makes total sense based on the way the, the visual system measures both space and time-

   16. EBEmily Balcetis27:55

       Yeah.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman27:55

       ... something maybe we'll get into a

8. 27:57 – 33:38

   Tool: Goal Gradient Hypothesis, Visual Spotlight to Increase Effort

   1. AHAndrew Huberman27:57

      little bit later. But I'm curious whether or not this, the whole thing works in reverse as well, meaning, uh, do people who are very motivated to exercise, do they think this way naturally? Uh, people who are averse to exercise or-

   2. EBEmily Balcetis28:17

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman28:17

      ... who find it hard to get motivated to exercise, do they view the world differently?

   4. EBEmily Balcetis28:23

      Yeah.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman28:23

      Literally?

   6. EBEmily Balcetis28:25

      Yeah, I have so much that I can say about this, um, so, you know, if you'll humor me, I'll give you a couple different stories a- about-

   7. AHAndrew Huberman28:31

      Please.

   8. EBEmily Balcetis28:31

      ... how we can answer that. So you don't have to do a deep dive into vision science, which of course you are capable of doing, um, but, but what I can share with you is some, like, animal studies where this work kind of first started. This was in the 1940s, 1950s, rat labs, mice labs, and they were looking, you know, those were the first models of, of, um, of human behavior 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. (laughs) They were hungry and they were thirsty and they had practiced running a maze 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 pace of, of movement through the maze. So as these, uh, as the rats were, like, going through the maze, they, they found that even though these rats were hungry and they're having to expend limited caloric, uh, um, 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 nearer to them, they actually, you know, used their resources probably, you know, suboptimally to make sure that they crossed the finish line and got their reward.So that was, like, some of the first early work that, 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.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman30:00

      Mm-hmm.

   10. EBEmily Balcetis30:01

       Even when they don't have that much to spare. And with the mice, the same kind of thing, you know, they were, they actually had these little harnesses on them, they were looking at how hard do the mice pull, uh, to try to make it to the food or the water that they were trying to get, and same deal, the closer they got to, to getting their reward, the harder they were pulling even though they didn't have that, that much energy to spare and they had already used some up getting to that finish line. So that was, that was, that early animal research from the 1940s, 1950s then spurred a whole wave of, of work in humans. Do humans do the same thing? You know, even when they're 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 if we're talking about exercise or a metaphorical finish line if we're 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 f- to finish that goal. That's what led us then to think, okay, you know, those rats, those mice, those people are seeing a finish line, right? And it's when they're maybe seeing that finish line, seeing that reward, seeing the goal they're hoping to 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 that illusion of proximity? What if we can induce a visual illusion, a visual experience, um, that approximates what the real rats and mice were ex- were actually experiencing as they 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 up ahead, or the stop sign that you're seeing," it induces an illusion of proximity that then is responsible for people trying harder, walking faster, feeling that it defied their expectations and that it wasn't as bad as they thought it would be. So we do things like measure, like measure their visual experience, like how far away is that finish line? Of course, we can ask them to report in feet, "How many feet is it?" Uh, 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 it is. We also use these other measures of, like visual matching measures to know, like that distance to the finish 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 of proximity, that goal looks closer to them, and then there's all kinds of downstream motivational psychological effects that happen from feeling like you're closer by, by, by visually misperceiving that space, it can have a really positive consequence. So your first question was, you know, which way does it go? Does it go both ways, that people who are better runners, like, happen to do this thing? Yes. Some of our research shows that, that if they, you know, for whatever reason happened upon this strategy and continued to practice it, they tended 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 and 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 illusion of proximity that has a direct and causal impact on improving their performance, um, when they're exercising. So yes, it, it goes both ways, but you can also teach yourself that you don't have to just rely on, on luck, luck of the draw for being a person who happens to be better at exercising or whose eyes happen

9. 33:38 – 35:00

   AG1 (Athletic Greens)

   1. EBEmily Balcetis33:38

      to do this on their own.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman33:39

      Before we continue with today's discussion, we're going to take a brief pause to acknowledge our sponsor, Athletic Greens, also called AG1. I started taking Athletic Greens way back in 2012, so I'm delighted that they've been a sponsor of this podcast. Athletic Greens contains vitamins, minerals, probiotics, digestive enzymes, and adaptogens, so it's got a lot of things in there, and that's actually the reason I started taking it and the reason I still take it once or twice a day. It essentially covers all of my nutritional bases, and the probiotics in particular are important to me because of the critical importance of what's called the gut-brain axis, that is neurons and other cell types in the gut, in the digestive tract, that communicate with the brain and the brain back to the digestive tract in order to control things like mood, immune function, hormone function, and on and on. Whenever somebody has asked me what's the one supplement they should take, I always answer Athletic Greens. I gave that answer long before I ever had this podcast, and it's the answer I still give now for all the reasons that I detailed just a moment ago. If you'd like to try Athletic Greens, you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman to claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs that make it really easy to mix up Athletic Greens while you're on the road, plus a year supply of vitamin D3 K2, which are also very important for a huge number of bodily factors and brain factors that impact your immediate and long-term health. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/huberman to claim that special offer.

10. 35:00 – 41:28

    Defining Goals vs. Accomplishing Goals, Dream Boards & Goal Lists

    1. AHAndrew Huberman35:00

       The most pressing question I have in my mind is, can we, I, uh, 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.

    2. EBEmily Balcetis35:17

       Mm-hmm.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman35:18

       And, you know, I would say, here I'm estimating, but 15% of the content on social media is about motivation.

    4. EBEmily Balcetis35:27

       Mm-hmm.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman35:28

       And how to get motivated to do things.

    6. EBEmily Balcetis35:30

       Mm-hmm.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman35:31

       Um, neurochemicals like dopamine, of course, being at the heart of motivation, I, in my mind, I'm making strong links between some of these visual aperture effects and goal lines and dopamine, uh, uh, 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 or motivated, and is there any physiology or physiological changes, I s- should say, to reflect the idea that maybe just visually focusing on the start line would actually get me more excited as opposed to make me less excited to engage in effort?

    8. EBEmily Balcetis36:10

       Mm-hmm. There's certainly vision science that's tied up in that 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's go-to strategies that involve vision are, are vision boards or dream boards or, you know, Post-It notes, right? They're creating some sort of visual representation of what it is that they want to accomplish, "Where is it that I want to be in five years, 10 days, 10 years?" Whatever, whatever that timeline is that they're working under. The idea of vision boards or dream boards is that you, like, you know, almost like a scrapbook, collect visual icons that reflect where you want to be to motivate yourself. It's a 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. It involves our visual experience, right? It's not just... People aren't saying like, "Why don't you just sit around and, and imagine what you want your life to be like in 10 years?" The strategy that people are suggesting is like, "No, cut out the pictures, put it on a board, and stick it by your bathroom mirror so you see it every day," right?

    9. AHAndrew Huberman37:19

       Or make a list.

    10. EBEmily Balcetis37:20

        Or make a list, yeah.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman37:21

        People are big on these lists. I have a lot of friends who are like-

    12. EBEmily Balcetis37:23

        Yeah.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman37:23

        ... "Have you made your list?"

    14. EBEmily Balcetis37:25

        Yeah.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman37:25

        Right? The list of things that you insist on having in the context of fitness, relationship, job, et cetera, et cetera.

    16. EBEmily Balcetis37:32

        Yeah.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman37:32

        This seems more and more common now.

    18. EBEmily Balcetis37:33

        Yeah, totally, and the idea, like, write it down, right? They're telling you, "Write it down." Like, or, or create a visual manifestation of it. Um, and so yeah, that, that's effective for identifying what you want, but it may not actually be effective for helping you to meet the goal to get the job done. So colleagues of mine at New York University, um, have probed, w- why. Why is that? Why is just, you know, thinking about what you want in your life and, um, and sort 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 wo-... Well, first of all, does it work? The answer is no. And why does it not work? Uh, because what happens, these colleagues, Gabriele Oettingen and, and her, and her research team have found is that, you know, going through and dreaming about or f- or, or visualizing how great my life will be when I get X, Y, and Z done, um, that is, 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, of thinking about w- how great my life is going to be when I get this thing done, and they start to sort of rest on their laurels. She's actually measured systolic blood pressure and heart rate, and they found that people who do that, who go through that experience of visualizing how great my life will be when I get X, Y, and Z done, their, their systolic blood pressure, 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 like, cool, great, so maybe I should just like think about how awesome my life will be when I get my buck- my bucket list done. But motivation scientists know that systolic blood pressure is actually an indicator of our body's readiness to get up and act, to do something. Now that 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, systolic blood pressure actually goes up in anticipation of your body or your mind needing to do something, taking the first steps on a goal. So then it is, it helps us to understand of 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 it bad that blood pressure goes down? Because it means your body is chilling out. It's like, "All right, cool. I just accomplished something pretty major." Right? I 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, uh, finding for motivation scientists to understand that, like, creating these dream boards, these vision boards or to-do lists might actually backfire because it in and i- in and of itself is the creation of a goal and the satisfaction of the goal, and then people understandably give themselves some time to just enjoy that positive experience.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman40:34

        So much for the secret.

    20. EBEmily Balcetis40:35

        Yeah, exactly. (laughs) Exactly.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman40:37

        I guess now the secret folks will come after me with pitchforks, but-

    22. EBEmily Balcetis40:40

        Uh, I, I try to never say the name, (laughs) right? But I'm like-

    23. AHAndrew Huberman40:42

        Oh, well, I'm not afraid to say the name. I mean, I, I, I imagine that certain strategies might work for other people, but I... Everything you're saying, again, is consistent with what we know about the physiology of dopamine circuits for motivation. I have a f- a good friend who perhaps ins- incidentally, perhaps not, is a cardiologist, uh, at a major university, said that, uh, one of the major errors that people make, uh, with book writing and completion is they will tell people they're going to write a book and people will say, "Oh, you definitely should write a book. Everyone's going to love your book." And they never end up writing it. And his theory is that they get so much dopamine reward-

    24. EBEmily Balcetis41:18

        Mm-hmm.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman41:18

        ... from that immediate feedback, with all the protection of never having the book criticized-

    26. EBEmily Balcetis41:22

        Oh yeah.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman41:22

        ... that they never write the book. I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but, um, I guess it raises the question,

11. 41:28 – 46:38

    Tool: How to Setting Better Goals & Identify Obstacles

    1. AHAndrew Huberman41:28

       what's the better strategy?

    2. EBEmily Balcetis41:29

       Yeah. So I'm not saying that people who enjoy, uh, dream board creation should stop what they're doing. That's not the take home message here.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman41:36

       Nightmare board making?

    4. EBEmily Balcetis41:38

       (laughs) Oh, definitely not that.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman41:39

       Okay, okay.

    6. EBEmily Balcetis41:39

       No. (laughs)

    7. AHAndrew Huberman41:39

       Mm-hmm.

    8. EBEmily Balcetis41:39

       There's enough anxiety and fear in the world. We don't need to encourage-

    9. AHAndrew Huberman41:42

       Mm-hmm.

    10. EBEmily Balcetis41:43

        ... more of it. Um, but the process of goal setting shouldn't stop with articulating what the goal is. Um, so at that same point that we're trying to figure out, "What do we want to do? What, what is my vision for the future?" In those planning sessions, we need to simultaneously, uh, think about a couple other things.One is, um, how are we going to get there? So take it out of the abstract, take it out of this id- idyllic visual iconography, and start thinking about the practical day-to-day. We need to break it down into more manageable goals, not just my 10-year plan for myself, but my two-week plan. What, what can I accomplish in the next two weeks and the two weeks after that's going to 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 know, plan, plan big picture, think big picture abstractly, but then also break it down more concretely. That's probably not surprising, but it's an important aspect of the goal-setting process. Then again, Gabriel Oettingen in my department has identified a third often overlooked or underappreciated stage that has to happen at that goal, in the goal-setting process, and that's 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 people think that that, like, is counterintuitive. You're saying, like, for, if I want to increase my motivation, have more motivation than I need to think about how hard it's going to be, all the ways that I'm going to fail, how is that going to, like, jazz me up? How is that going to help me get through when I actually, you know, when, when, when things get hard? But it does, because it's like coming up with a plan B, a plan C, plan D in advance of actually experiencing that. If you were on a boat and the boat started to sink, that's not the time you want to start looking for life jackets. You already want to know where one is so you can go to it right away. And it's the same thing with goal-setting, is that you want to know, "What am I working towards? How am I going to get there? And if I experience this 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, thin on resources, maybe experiencing an anxiety that hijacks your brain so you're not functioning at that optimal level of judgment and decision-making. You want to already have, like, the snap next step in place so you can just hop to it, right? We're 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 already used our resources in advance to come up with that plan B or that plan C. Michael Phelps, like incredible athlete, right? This is something that he and his coach have routinely incorporated into their, uh, into their training. So I love this story that, like back in 2008, he was, you know, hot, hot for the first time on the international stage. It was the Beijing Olympics. Michael Phelps was on the brink of doing something that no one else in the history of the Olympic Games has ever done, which is win eight gold medals in a single Olympiad. At the time of this story, he had already won seven and he had just the 200 fly in front of him before he could do what no one else has ever done, win the eighth gold medal. And like the fly is his thing, right? This should have been in... This should have been easy, like a no-brainer. He's going to win this. He's going to break Olympic history. As soon as he dove into the pool, his goggles started to leak, and by the time he had done three lengths of the pool, he just had to flip around and, and come back to the, to the starting line/finish line, back to the edge. Um, by the time that happened, his goggles were completely filled with water and he was swimming blind. I would have panicked. I would have sunk to the bottom of the pool. I wouldn't have even been in the pool, to be honest. Like I'm not a swimmer, definitely not going to be in the Olympics, but, uh, but for him, he didn't. It wasn't a moment of panic, like it probably would have been for nearly every other person in that situation, because he had foreshadowed that kind of possible failure. He had imagined that obstacle hitting him in advance, and not even just imagined it, but practiced it. "What will we do?" He routinely practiced swimming with his goggles not fully secured on his face. His coach notoriously would, uh, rip the goggles off of his head, smash them on the ground for maybe dramatic effect or something so that he didn't even have any goggles possible to grab as he's, as he's in practice. So because he had foreshadowed that possibility and the solution, "If my goggles start to leak, then I will do..." In his case, "Start counting my strokes, then I'll make it through." He knew exactly how many strokes it would take from him to get from one end of the pool to the other. He started counting his strokes. He won that, he won that race, the 200 fly. He won his eighth gold medal and he'd go on to win 15 more in his career. So we might not all be swimmers, we might not all aspire to Olympic level performance, but I love that example because I think it, it helps sort of demystify 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 awry, is actually effective at helping us overcome the obstacle that might otherwise lead us to throw in the towel.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman46:34

        That's a beautiful example. Um, I'm going to

12. 46:38 – 57:12

    Vision is Unique, Challenging the Visual System, Realistic Goals & Micro-Goals

    1. AHAndrew Huberman46:38

       springboard 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 Phelps was deprived of, and it was counting strokes.

    2. EBEmily Balcetis46:53

       Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman46:54

       Counting as another form of incremental measurement in the nervous system, obviously. Um, there are others. It could be the sensation of the, of the hands smacking the water or breaking the surface of the water. So th- there are any number of different variables or 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 distance run. It's one I do a few times a week. I'm also not a runner, but I try and complete some runs a few times a week at very slow pace, just for my health.

    4. EBEmily Balcetis47:26

       (laughs) .

    5. AHAndrew Huberman47:26

       I could count every step. That would be kind of exhausting. Uh, but if I knew that three miles was w- I'm gonna estimate here, I don't know, a couple thousand steps, uh, I could count backward, I could count forward, I could count every 10. Um, I confess, I spend every morning trying to find sunlight to get sun in my eyes to set my circadian rhythm and I do 100 jumping jacks, so I'm the, the guy that people are looking at strange on the street, but-

    6. EBEmily Balcetis47:52

       (laughs) .

    7. AHAndrew Huberman47:52

       ... sometimes I count every 10, sometimes I count backwards, sometimes I, 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 increment. Because it does seem like there's something special about vision-

    8. EBEmily Balcetis48:09

       Mm-hmm.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman48:09

       ... and we could maybe dive into it a little bit more why that is. But at a very basic level, how broadly or fi- or finely should one set the increments, and does it matter if you're counting steps or counting strokes, if you're... Uh, maybe it's every other song. You're going to listen to an entire album.

    10. EBEmily Balcetis48:26

        Mm-hmm.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman48:27

        That's something that I don't know if people do anymore.

    12. EBEmily Balcetis48:29

        (laughs)

    13. AHAndrew Huberman48:29

        Or you're going to listen to a whole playlist and then listen to it again, and you're going to run as long as the playlist is, uh, completed twice.

    14. EBEmily Balcetis48:36

        Mm-hmm.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman48:37

        Uh, you can obviously see what I'm getting at.

    16. EBEmily Balcetis48:38

        Yeah.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman48:38

        But I know people are going to want to implement these tools. And I have to guess that the nervous system is, is f- somewhat, um, indiscriminate when it comes to these things. But that there might also be some specificity.

    18. EBEmily Balcetis48:49

        I think vision is special and I think you do too.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman48:51

        Mm-hmm.

    20. EBEmily Balcetis48:51

        Uh, so, and for, 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, right? More, more real estate, more neurological cortex. Real estate is taken up by the visual sense than any other sense, more than taste, touch, smell, right? Vision gets more real estate, gets more neurological processing space than any other sense. Why is that? Well, because evolution has led us to prioritize that visual, the visual experience. There's some cool illusions where like maybe somebody's mouth is doing something different than what you're hearing, when people sort of create these, like, you know, weird tricks that might go on YouTube and go viral. Um, and, and people are trying to figure out, "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 kind of like out of sync.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman49:48

        Every time.

    22. EBEmily Balcetis49:49

        Yeah, every time, right? If you had 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? Well, I guess a couple other things too, right? Like, we can see super far. You can see like a flickering candle on a 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, right, like 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-guessed. You know, oftentimes we're having a conversation maybe in a loud restaurant and we know that we didn't hear the person right and so we say like, "Oh, did you say that?" Or like, "Oh, I thought you said this." And they're like, "No, I didn't say that," right? So people will correct us when our ears get it wrong or we're tasting something amazing and we can't quite figure out what spices were in here and so we know that our tongue isn't quite picking up the, the, the taste the right way and that's why we read the menu to see what are the ingredients or we ask the chef like, "What did you put in this? It tastes amazing." So we know that our tongue is getting it wrong or you might be t- touching something and you look at the tag to see what sort of textile was used in this really amazing piece of clothing that you're looking to buy, so we know that our, our sense of touch isn't quite getting it right. But rarely do we have that experience of having m- our eyes get updated where we're looking at something, "Oh, I think I'm looking at my mom. Oh, no, actually it was actually my husband." Like, okay, like that never happens, (laughs) right? That we have gotten vision as wrong as we might get any other thing that, that we're experiencing through any other sense. We trust our visual experience. We have sort of a naive realism that what we see reflects the world the way it actually is because it's never really fully tested. We never get the input or the feedback that you've seen something wrong until a visual illusion pops up on social media, right? Like the dress example or the last week or so there's been that horse seal line drawing that's been all over social media too. "What do you see?" "I see a horse." Someone says, "I see a seal." And then like, you know, chaos erupts or "I thought the dress was blue." "Oh no, I thought it was go..." I don't remember the options 'cause I see it as blue, so... (laughs)

    23. AHAndrew Huberman52:01

        (laughs)

    24. EBEmily Balcetis52:01

        Uh, right? And it, and it's like dividing up families and friendships because you've like seen something that the other person just literally cannot see. And that's why we love those examples when they pop up in social media wh- when they do is because it defies all of our previous expectations. There's a really amazing... I- if this interests you, um, there's a really amazing visual artist, Anish Kapoor, who plays with these ideas too and his installations are, are just fascinating. I saw one, uh, at a museum once where, you know, I walked down this long hall and it's just a big black rectangle that's painted on the wall and I was like, "This guy is super famous. What the hell?" It's just a big black rectangle painted on the wall. What is this about? Like, what a hoax. You know, (laughs) this museum paid how much? What? Or whatever. But then as you get closer, you get closer and your eyes start to settle in and they adapt to the different visual lighting. You realize it's not a black square painted on the wall. It's a huge hole he's carved into the wall and there is a whole other world that's back behind there that you can't see right away until your eyes adapt to the different lighting conditions.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman53:02

        Beautiful.

    26. EBEmily Balcetis53:02

        It's amazing. Yeah.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman53:03

        As a vision scientist, I, I have to see. Where is this exhibit?

    28. EBEmily Balcetis53:06

        Uh, it's not up right now. I've, I've seen... Um, there was a retrospective several years ago that was done, uh, in Sydney, um, but his work is all over the place. So-

    29. AHAndrew Huberman53:15

        Great.

    30. EBEmily Balcetis53:15

        ... Anish Kapoor, definitely, definitely worth looking up because, because it, um, like the dress example or the horse seal line drawing or artists like Anish Kapoor's work, that is a moment that, that gives us a different unexpected insight, uh, about the world, that it challenges us to, to see something that we hadn't seen before or it induces or tricks us into seeing something that we wouldn't have otherwise have seen. Um, and so it's those rare moments that I think are actually really important for understanding what do our eyes normally do because we wouldn't find 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, is special.And why it's, it can be thought of as a tool that we can add to our toolkit, 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 intentional spotlight, but maybe that's something that we can employ strategically on occasion when we think it's going to best help us, when we need an extra little push to cross that physi- the 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 not, 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 great power in 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 numerics that you're talking about. How f- how- do I think about my jumping jacks in terms of groups of 10 or as a set of 100? You do it routinely so you might be able to set a goal of 100 and have that sustain you through number 60, number 70 when maybe it's starting to get harder. But for somebody who's just starting out and wants to be able to make it to 100, 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 micro-goals of groups of 10 is going to be useful because as we start to get to number eight or nine or number 88 or 89 and it's really getting hard, we need that extra little hedonic hit of pleasure, of accomplishment, the micro dopamine rush that you might get by hitting another 10, you know, a- another decade milestone, (laughs) another group of 10 milestone. 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 10 that we might experience. So there isn't any, like prescription that I would give and say, "Every person should decide that 25 jumping jacks is the goal." No, we have to be idiosyncratic and, and introspect about where are 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 it, we're not going to trick ourselves 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 are you going to feel so great when you hit that goal? No, because it was too easy. You, you didn't have any doubt that you could do that one, but what about 25? Okay, yeah. I might feel pretty good about that. Well what about the next group of 25 and now I'm at 50? 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 going to 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.
13. 57:12 – 1:05:54

    Do Fit People View the World Differently?, States of Body & Visual Experiences

    1. AHAndrew Huberman57:12

       But was, the relationship between vision and our obviously is our sense of space but how the sense of space and time are related, and to, um, make the idea quite simple for those listening, you know when you, you narrow your visual window, you're measuring the time bin also gets smaller, right, which makes sense when you hear it whereas if you take on a huge visual landscape, you're actually carving up time differently. It's sort of 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're measuring distance over time more finely. 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, you know, slow motion, right? Strobe gives a, a coarse, uh, a coarse view into the time domain and high speed photography gives a fine view into the time domain. So I'm almost certain without any knowledge of underlying data, um, I'm, but knowledge of the mechanism that I'm, I am almost certain if not certain that by placing a narrow visual aperture, we change the way we perceive time. Now I have a question and I, to be honest 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.

    2. EBEmily Balcetis58:42

       Mm-hmm.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman58:43

       Uh, you talked about the, these elite runners, you give the Michael Phelps example, but, um, maybe you could describe that study. I think it's a particularly important one mostly because y- yes it identifies a perhaps a physiological or psychological differences between motivated and unmotivated or, or, uh, fit and unfit people, but it also provides a, a path to, to remedy that.

    4. EBEmily Balcetis59:04

       Mm-hmm. Yeah, so, you know, there's, out of my lab but also out of several other labs there's been work looking, looking at that relation between states of the body and visual experiences. Um, they haven't necessarily tried to, to, to integrate the motivation science element, um, to it but they were looking to see do visual experiences change as a function of different states of our bodies, so they looked at people who experience chronic fatigue, um, the elderly, people who are overweight, um, those that are, you know, 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 overweight, chronically tired, older rather than younger, weighted down with, with extra baggage, um, distances look farther and hills look steeper. We've, we've done some of those studies too where we try to like give people more energy or, or deprive them of, of energy and see does that change their, their perception of space.And, uh, we did that by, you know, sort of a classic technique of a double-blind study where the participant doesn't really know what they're experiencing.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:13

       I thought you were going to say a double espresso.

    6. EBEmily Balcetis1:00:15

       Oh. (laughs)

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:16

       (laughs)

    8. EBEmily Balcetis1:00:16

       That is also a good psychological experience to give people.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:20

       Uh-huh.

    10. EBEmily Balcetis1:00:21

        Uh, yeah, so, you know, a double-blind experiment where the participant doesn't really know the, the full extent of what, what they're doing or what they're experiencing and, and the researcher who's interacting with them also doesn't. You know, they do this a lot in medical studies. You give somebody a, a drug and you give somebody a placebo, a sugar pill, and then, uh, 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 Kool-Aid to drink and for some people that Kool-Aid was sweetened with sugar, an actual caloric entity. It could give them energy. Other people drank Kool-Aid sweetened with S- Splenda. So yeah, it's sweet, but it actually doesn't have any caloric value. You're not giving people energy, you're just giving them that, that experience, um, of, of sweetness. Now some people, of course, are really good at identifying like what's, what's sh- real sugar and what's Splenda, but when you put it in a Kool-Aid, a pretty noxious powder, it actually masked it for everybody and nobody had any idea.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:23

        'Cause it tastes like garbage to everybody?

    12. EBEmily Balcetis1:01:24

        It tastes like garbage. (laughs) Yeah.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:25

        Sorry Kool-Aid. I mean, I'm sure there are many people that love Kool-Aid.

    14. EBEmily Balcetis1:01:29

        Yeah.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:29

        I guess the sales of Kool-Aid will, will reveal the data, um...

    16. EBEmily Balcetis1:01:32

        Yeah. I grew up in Nebraska actually where Kool-Aid is from. It originated in Nebraska.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:36

        Oh.

    18. EBEmily Balcetis1:01:36

        So I do feel like I'm betraying my roots slightly by, um, by casting some shade on Kool-Aid, but, uh, but it, but that's how it worked is that, you know, we asked them to guess what they got, we tested them afterwards and they were wrong. So nobody is able to guess, uh, with accuracy what was your drink sweetened with, which is important because they were blind. I mean, uh, the way that scientists use it. They didn't know what it was that they were drinking. We give it, um, you know, we give them about 10 to 15 minutes for that sugar to metabolize and we measured, uh, their circulating blood glucose levels to make sure that we had in fact given their body a circu- you know, circulating glucose 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 Splenda. Then we asked people to estimate distance. So we gave some people more energy or we kept others sort of at 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 Kool-Aid sweetened with sugar perceived their space as, as more constricted. They, that visual illusion of proximity was induced. They felt that their finish line, again in the context of an exercise task, was closer to them. So in just the same way that these other physiology labs, vision science physiology labs found that people who are chronically tired, who don't have, don't feel like they have as much energy or those that are physically weighted down and for whom, you know, 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. The distances to a finish line don't look as far. So that was some of the experimental evidence that we had, um, to show that people's states of their body do impact their visual experience. Now, I'm a motivation researcher, so for me, the big question is, well, what's the point of that study then 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 physical state to move within a space, why don't... W- you know, you might say like, "Well, 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 it does to somebody who isn't, who, who isn't, who's in, 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, this looks really hard," you're already motivationally in a place, uh, for this task to be closer to impossible for you. So to put it all together then, what we know is that people whose bodies might make it more challenging th- for them to exercise, um, 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.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:53

        Mm-hmm. Um, is the solution the same however? Meaning if these people are taught to adjust their visual goal line or to set a visual spotlight-

    20. EBEmily Balcetis1:05:04

        Yeah.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:04

        ...on an intermediate goal, can they overcome some of this, uh, this challenge that they face simply by virtue of their skewed perception?

    22. EBEmily Balcetis1:05:12

        Yes.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:13

        Okay.

    24. EBEmily Balcetis1:05:13

        So in all of the studies that we have done, um, looking at that connection between this narrowed focus of attention and improvements in exercise, we do not find that it only works for the people who are in shape or that it 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 illusion for everybody regardless of whether you're overweight or you're, or you're at your target weight, um, or if you're struggling to get there or you've already accomplished where you want to be. That visual illusion can be induced for everybody and it has the same kinds of consequences.

14. 1:05:54 – 1:10:13

    Caffeine, Stimulants, Visual Windows & Motivation

    1. EBEmily Balcetis1:05:54

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:54

       Terrific. Earlier I made a joke about double espresso but now I'll make a serious statement about double espresso which is that it contains caffeine and caffeine is a stimulant like all other stimulants. Um-...cause a change in our visual world. Um, the most salient one is the one that police officers look for, parents suspecting that their kids have, uh, ingested substances of any kind look for, which is if somebody's pupils are unusually large for a given visual environment, uh, that is an indication of high levels of autonomic arousal. Uh, in the street drug translation of this, you know, people who take amphetamine or cocaine will have very big pupils. People who are very relaxed have small pupils. However, everyone should know that pupil size also is dynamically regulated by how bright a visual environment. So there are multiple things controlling pupil size. However, we know that when we are very stressed or very aroused in any way, positive or negative, the pupils get big.

    3. EBEmily Balcetis1:06:48

       Mm-hmm.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:49

       But within the visual system what that equates to is a narrowing of the visual aperture. So rather than ingesting sugar, which I'm guessing most of the world, certainly the US, needs to ingest less sugar. At least that's what we're hearing.

    5. EBEmily Balcetis1:07:01

       Mm-hmm.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:02

       I'm sure there are a little, few sugar, you know, sucronistas out there, sucrosinistas, who will also come after me with pitchforks. But let's face it, most people would probably be better off ingesting less simple sugar. But caffeine is a great motivator because of the internal sense of arousal, but it also narrows our visual window. I could imagine using healthy amounts of caffeine combined with, um, maybe even blinders of the sort that, um, horses wear. Maybe like a hoodie and a hat.

    7. EBEmily Balcetis1:07:28

       (laughs) Yeah.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:28

       Uh, maybe even blinders-

    9. EBEmily Balcetis1:07:30

       Yeah.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:30

        ...in order to get over some of those more challenging milestones.

    11. EBEmily Balcetis1:07:33

        Yeah.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:33

        Is there any evidence that people are doing this without, um... Well, obviously people are doing it without knowledge of how it works, but are there any studies looking at how adrenaline or epinephrine or any other stimulants impact motivation?

    13. EBEmily Balcetis1:07:48

        I don't know, honestly. Yeah. I mean-

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:50

        I mean, energy drinks are a big thing now.

    15. EBEmily Balcetis1:07:51

        Yeah. Yeah. For sh- for sure they are. Um, and you know, if y- if you actually are more physiologically aroused or jazzed or whatever, you know, amped up, um, or you just think you are-

    16. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:04

        Yeah.

    17. EBEmily Balcetis1:08:04

        ...uh, in our studies we have found that they work in the same way, that it can produce the same kinds of consequences. So a- and I like that because it tells us, like, you can actually change the state of your body to induce these kinds of experiences, or you can try to, you can just think that. You can trick yourself. You can placebo effect yourself out and produce the same kinds of effects. I had to give up coffee like 12 years ago, not because, not for any-

    18. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:26

        I'm so sorry.

    19. EBEmily Balcetis1:08:27

        I love the taste. (laughs)

    20. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:28

        Yeah.

    21. EBEmily Balcetis1:08:28

        And so decaf is my jam.

    22. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:31

        Yeah.

    23. EBEmily Balcetis1:08:31

        Um, but I can't 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 energized and more awake. I just got sweaty and jittery and anxious and I couldn't focus.

    24. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:39

        Yeah. Some people who already have a fairly high baseline level of attention and motivation, they find that it puts the autonomic seesaw too far in the sympathetic tone.

    25. EBEmily Balcetis1:08:49

        Yeah.

    26. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:49

        Yeah.

    27. EBEmily Balcetis1:08:50

        And I happened to marry the same kind of person. He also can't drink caffeine 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 that much of it to probably actually create a caffeinated experience in our body. But we're tricking ourselves psychologically into, into doing that thing that in years past used to work for us both. Um, so I think that's something to keep in mind. Like, you know, you might have a hoodie that you can wear to induce that visual, um, 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, um, that can do the same kind of thing that a hoodie might do or that a cup of caffeine might do.

    28. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:45

        Mm-hmm. I, I completely agree. The visual aperture is under our conscious control. That's an amazing feature of our visual system. We can narrow or expand it. Takes a little bit of practice, I think, for people to learn how to do this without moving their head around to expand their visual aperture, and how to narrow it. But what I always tell people is, um, just imagine a really troubling text message or a really exciting text message is coming in. All of a sudden you forget about the world around you. So it's, it's, it can be triggered by these outside events and we can learn how to, to anchor our visual attention.

15. 1:10:13 – 1:21:54

    Tools: Goal Setting & Cognitive (Non-Physical) Goals, Data Collection

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:10:13

       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, uh, 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, um, systems that allow you to highlight individual lines or even words on a page. That's, uh, v- very visual obviously, and everything else is ruled out except that word. I've always wished for books that would naturally highlight each page. And as I say this someone will put in the comments this has probably existed for 10 years, and I'm just showing how, what a Luddite I am.

    2. EBEmily Balcetis1:10:57

       (laughs)

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:10:57

       But, um, uh, is there any example that, or, or tactic that people could use to, um, better approach cognitive goals of school, work, recreational too-

    4. EBEmily Balcetis1:11:10

       Yeah.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:10

       ...but that don't exist in the, in the kind of fitness and sports domain?

    6. EBEmily Balcetis1:11:14

       Totally. Yeah. So just a shout-out to my brother-in-law who has done some of that research, um, where it does highlight different parts of words and paragraphs, and he's found it to be an effective way for English as a second language learners to, 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 know, a whole cool body of, of, of, of work and researchers looking at that, so you're right about that.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:37

       If you want to mention what he does, I, uh, is, is there a place that people can learn more about that? We can provide links if

    8. NANarrator1:11:42

       ...

    9. EBEmily Balcetis1:11:42

       Uh, yeah, let me...

    10. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:43

        Okay.

    11. EBEmily Balcetis1:11:44

        Yeah.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:44

        We will provide links to those resources 'cause I want those resources.

    13. EBEmily Balcetis1:11:47

        (laughs) Yeah.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:47

        I've been trying to learn a second language for a long time.

    15. EBEmily Balcetis1:11:49

        Yeah. Oh-

    16. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:49

        And we ... I speak Spanish pretty weekly but I, uh, would love to get better at it. Okay.

    17. EBEmily Balcetis1:11:53

        Yeah.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:53

        I'll, I'll approach you later about that.

    19. EBEmily Balcetis1:11:54

        My five-year-old son speaks Spanish better than I do at this point, so, uh, yeah.

    20. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:57

        And clearly better than I do too. Thank you.

    21. EBEmily Balcetis1:11:59

        (laughs) Yeah. Um, yeah. So you know, I was thinking that too. You know, we, we started this work within the context of exercise, but of course that's not people's only goal that they have in life. Um-And it, and it, it isn't mine either, you know? I have interests outside of, of improving my exercise game. W- 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, like, pull all this research together is the same month that, that my son came to be. And, uh, and I started to realize, like, I became a lot less interesting once he was around. He was fascinating, but I was changing diapers and feeding him, and, like, that was it. People would come over, they're like, "What's up? How have you been?" Like, "Tell me something (hands clap) that's going on in your life." And, like, all I had to talk about was this... Well, it was boring, and I just felt like, "I've lost myself." I used to pride myself on the crazy adventures and problems I would get myself in, and I was a great storyteller, and that all of a sudden disappeared as soon as he came into the world because he became my world. So then I started thinking like, "I need to pull back some coolness in... i- if I ever had it in the first place. But I need to be a cooler person than I'm coming across right now." So I decided, "I want to learn to play drums. I'm... and I want to be, like, ar- a s- a one-hit wonder as a, as a rock star drummer. I only want one song 'cause I know I'm not going to be able to do more than that. I'm not coordinated at all," you know? Like, from the beginning of time, uh, in fifth grade, I have this really vivid, like, flashbulb memory of playing basketball for the very first time. I lost my footing. I knocked into my own teammate, pushed her out of bounds while she had the ball. We lost the game, and I was not invited back on the team for the next season. And so that, you know, fomented my self-definition of uncoordinated. I am a musician, but I am not a drummer. And 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 tell people, "Hey, try this thing, like narrowed focus of 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, you know, one that I found particularly helpful was overcoming my bad memory, that everybody's memories are faulty, right? Everybody has sort of a, a warped perception of the past. It might be skewed more positively than maybe we deserve, or it might be skewed more negatively. If you feel that, you know, what looms large in your mind as you reflect on something from the past are the, the mistakes that you've made, or the things that... the social faux pas that you had, or, you know, challenges that you faced at work when you got in trouble with a boss or with a colleague, if 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 accountant and try to determine, how are we doing? If I want to become a drummer, am I on track for getting there before X, before my time runs out? Am, am I going to make it or not? And I think that's an experience, whether they want to be a drummer or not, that a lot of people can resonate with, of, like, trying to determine, is this trajectory, is this rate of progress going to get the job done by X amount of time? Will I have my swimsuit body by summer, or will I save enough for retirement by the time I hit 65? 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 pace to meeting our deadline. And I found that to be the case as I was thinking about, "Am I actually going to be able to learn this song?" I mean, I know that it's going a lot slower than it probably would for anybody else. But to give myself a deadline and a 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. Um, so...

Episode duration: 1:38:17