186. Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation with Ayelet Fishbach

Welcome to episode 186 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. Today's episode is all about the science of motivation and getting things done with Dr. Ayelet fishback. Ready?

Let's get started.

You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello.

Hello everyone and Happy New Year. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast.

Today.

I am very excited to introduce you to Dr. Ayelet Fishback. She is the Jeffrey Breckenridge Keller professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the past President of the Society for the Study of Motivation Business as well as the International Social Cognition Network. She's an expert on motivation and decision making and the author of the brand new book which just released this week called Get It Done Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation. Ayelet's groundbreaking research on human motivation has won her several international awards, including the Society of Experimental Social Psychology's Best Dissertation Award and we are going to talk.

A little bit about her early research.

In the conversation today. She also also won the Career Trajectory Award and the Fulbright Educational Foundation Award. Of course, Ayelet's insights are valuable all year round, but it is very much intentional to have this as the first episode of the year. Of course, her book came out this week, so I'm delighted we could tie the release of the episode at the.

Same time to help spread the word about this great book.

And we will of course talk about it today. And I got a sneak peek. It's awesome.

You're going to love it.

In addition, though, this really is the time of year where people are thinking about goals and motivation. New Year's resolutions are still hopefully intact and you can increase your chances of meeting and exceeding them with the insights from Ayelet in this episode and in her great book. And regardless of when you listen, it's always a good opportunity to set and achieve a new goal to get in contact with Ayelet and get your copy of Get It Done and other relevant books, find related past episodes of the podcast and more. Check out the show notes for the episode which are waiting for you within the app you're listening to or@the brainybusiness.com,186 now let's get it done. Dr. Ayelet Fishback, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.

Thanks for having me. Melina yes.

I'm so, so excited to talk with you and that this episode gets to kick off 2022, which I know everyone listening is thinking about goals and resolutions at this time of year or maybe have totally written off the idea of goals. I used to be one of those people before I learned more about the science of goal setting. So I'm so excited for you to share and help people with that. But before we really get into the meat of that sort of stuff, if you can share a little bit about your know, how you got into the space of motivation science and goals and aspirations, all that, how did you find yourself in this area?

Oh, that was a long time ago. That was over 20 years ago. I was basically getting my PhD in social psychology back when I was in Israel and I got interested in motivation, except that it wasn't really a topic in social psychology and behavioral economics. Very few people knew that this thing even existed. And most of their research on motivation was more clinical, was more thinking about how to address problems and not how healthy people motivate themselves. And I was lucky to be interested in this. Just when other people in other places, we're starting to explore motivation more seriously. And so as I was getting my PhD, thinking that maybe I'm the only person in my field that wants to do that, I learned about more people that are doing research in motivation. I connected to one of them. That was Arik Lansky as my postdoc advisor. I was convincing my PhD advisor that maybe that's a worthwhile journey. And. And then everybody started to study motivation. So, you know, now I sound so ancient when I say that no one really thought that that was an interesting topic that everybody around me is looking at motivation. It's such an interesting topic.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. I think it's so fun to be on the front end of anything like that though. And I'm still on the newer side of the people that are currently in behavioral economics, I guess as far as where there's the real, as you would say, maybe like the OGs, right? You've got the Daniel Kahneman, of course, for long time and Thaler and Dan Ariely and such amazing work. But as we're transitioning and having more of a focus in applied behavioral economics, it's really cool to be towards the front end of what that field is going to be and, and finding the same where I looked for 10 years for a program that was about behavioral economics. I didn't know what it was called yet, but all the schools said that's not a thing. You can't do that. You can't study that. And so, you know, then finding it and finding other people like me that had similar struggles from around the world is a really amazing camaraderie, I think, that comes out of that.

I agree. And you know, we often talk about the power of the situation and how much your circumstances influence what you achieve in life. And I think that maybe we were just lucky to have the situation supporting us in such way that your personal interest somehow fit what people are starting to be interested in around you. So lucky. Having a place, being in a place where other people are interested in what you are doing is something that I was very fortunate to have.

Yeah. So I guess taking a step back to some of your original motivation research, whether it's actually what your dissertation was about or some research you did early on in that point, is there anything in particular that you're able to share of what was kind of a big question that you were interested in answering or anything like that?

Yes. So I started with self control. And the question that was on my mind was how people respond when they learn that there is an upcoming problem, that there is a temptation that's not here right now, but that it's coming. That when I will go to the party, I will be tempted to have too many drinks. When I need to study for the exam, I will have too many friends suggesting that I will do too many other things. When I'm going to a dinner party, the food is going to be amazing and it will be hard to resist. And I was wondering whether having this knowledge makes people more prepared. That is whether self control is elicited by knowing that there is a temptation that it's coming. I was thinking about it somewhat like inoculation. You have the taste of it, you anticipate it, and that makes you ready. The alternative, of course, is that when you tell people that there are temptations all around them, then they are going to be more tempted. You know, when I remind you about the amazing dinner over your Christmas party, you will want to eat more, no less. And so we tested that. That became my PhD dissertation, showing that the intuition by which anticipating temptation makes people better at self control makes them better able to counteract these temptations. Is correct. We found that, for example, when we tell people that the medical checkup is going to be unpleasant, they prepare and they are more able to do it. It's like telling someone that the piece of furniture is going to be heavy. They are prepared to lift it, they watch it with more force. And so that was cool. Again, that was in the days when I had to justify why I study motivation. People were telling me that this is not motivation, this is attitude. And I had to insist, no, no, this is like people trying to motivate themselves. It's. It's not just their attitude.

Yeah, that's very interesting and, you know, a really important point, especially so as you're in early research, you know, now we look back on these things and you say, well, of course.

Right, of course.

That's how that. That works. And it's because of people like you doing that research to help us to know that we've all, you know, evolved to be learning that now over the.

Last 20 years, or whatever it was.

You said when you got your PhD. And so that's a foundational piece in a lot of what we've been learning. But at the time, you know, having to say, no, this is. This is important. This is different. This is something to know. And what that helps us to know about our own goals is, you know, you may feel like, you know, you want an ostrich effect or something. Right? Like, I just. I don't need to know what's ahead of me. I just need to be as optimistic as possible, and I'll pass across those bridges when I come to them. But thinking through the problems, if I'm understanding what you're saying here and knowing what those obstacles are going to be so you can create a plan, is actually much more valuable to keep yourself motivated and on track.

Yes. The alternative is to just fantasize about your amazing outcomes. So just fantasizing getting a degree or having the body that you want to have or meeting the person that you plan to meet. And these fantasies are less effective than thinking about where you want to be and what is the obstacle, what is going to stand in the way of getting there. I also want to say something about your intuition. When you hear it, you have this. Yeah, I kind of knew that response. And I often do this exercise with my students when I give them two opposite intuitions. And it turns out that before you know which one is right, they are both plausible. So I, you know, I present to my students statements such as, opposites attract. Sounds right. And then, yeah, that sounds right, but it's wrong. Okay. Opposites don't attract. Essentially the opposite. We tend to date people that are quite similar to us. So I present statements such as, to ensure that the behavior is learned, you need to reinforce it every time a person behaves in a certain way. And people say, yeah, like consistent reinforcement is this is great, but then they're wrong. This is not the right intuition. Actually, intermittent reinforcement rewarding a behavior only sometimes works. So beware with your intuition.

Totally. Yeah. No, great. Thank you for that point. So I have an episode all on the dose brain chemicals that digs in a lot on anticipation and understanding how dopamine and with the tests with the monkeys and when you have it only 50% of the time you get the treat that they have double the dopamine and all of that. So I'll make sure to link to that episode in the show notes for anyone who hasn't listened to that yet. But really, really important to think about what's keeping us. You know, the brain wants that chemical and so not knowing it's every single time I'm going to get something is actually highly motivating yet.

And as you said at the I remember like you did write about uncertain incentives in the context of marketing and how exciting it is to win something that you didn't expect.

Yes, yes, for sure. So I think you've already been laying, of course some groundwork for a lot of what's, you know, those are all things that are within your book, which is called Get It Done. And I love this. So everyone, you have to go look. Of course the book is in the show notes so you can see and get your copy there. But it's got these like crossed out lines to where it's, you know, forget, Quit Undone to where it's crossed out to just say get it Done. Which I think is very nice and clever. Were those always kind of words that you were planning on using and you wanted to do the COVID kind of in this way or did that just sort of come about, you know, how did, how did that even happen?

Not at all. No. This is probably like the fifth or sixth cover that I consider. There were many covers that didn't quite make it and it was my UK publisher that suggested that. And as soon as I know, I opened my email at 2am in the morning and I looked this morning and I said this is great. And then I turned to my husband and I know, I asked him, well, do you think that people are going to think that my book is titled Forget Quit Undone. That's not going to be good. And he's like half asleep. He says, no, I got it immediately. It's okay. So we are going with that.

Yeah, yeah. This is the Forget Quit Undone book. But I mean, I guess that's very different than what you would expect to see. So it would draw your attention at least and go wait, what, what's this about? So yeah.

Yeah. Do you know that like the research on fluency that when something is. Is fluent and it's very easy to process but when there is a bit of this fluency when something is not immediately make sense in your mind, then you stop for a second. You're like let me make sense of what's going on here. I'm hoping to get this reaction.

Absolutely. That's really important with book covers making sure that it's going to stand out along the wall of other books. And so I think it will. You don't see a lot of books with big black lines through text on their cover in the way that this has. So I think it's going to do well and we'll of course we'll all see by the time this comes out. I guess some people will start to know but I think it's going to do really well for you. So I think it was also where you're saying so I believe it was Dominic Packer when I interviewed him on the book the Power of Us that came out a few months ago and he had said the same thing. I believe that they had a cover for their book that was okay and they were feeling pretty good. And then one of the international publication they saw the COVID and went well that's way better than what we were going to do. Let's swap to that one. So it's good to get that diverse perspective on things for sure.

Absolutely.

One of the things that I think is so interesting about just even the. It's the from the very, very beginning of your book. So so many books and articles and podcast episodes and shows and anything that anybody ever does around goals it feels like is very pie in the sky aspirational. The like you can do it if you just focus and like not quite to what people might say Woo, woo. But like that comes. Comes into it right. And this like the power of these amazing things you can do. And your book takes a very different, you know, starting with a cautionary tale of Everest. And I thought that was such an interesting choice in the foundation it lays for the whole book. Can you share a little bit about why you started with that story and what it is I guess for the audience.

So the story of Mount Everest is a story of a group of people that really wanted to make it. And reaching the top of Mount Everest is such a wonderful, inspiring wall. It has all the elements for a successful Paul. It's It's a goal. It's not a means you. You don't climb Everest because you want to get somewhere else. It's the thing itself. It is very specific, you know, whether you were at the top or not. It's not ambiguous. It's something that you will be admired by everyone around you. You will get on podcast if you manage to get to the top. And I believe that most of the people that are making it at the top of Mount Everest don't even care about all these incentives. Although incentives help, they are really intrinsically motivated. I would love to tell you more about the tourist motivation. So it's a great example for a goal that works, but then people are dying trying to reach this goal. So it's also a great example of how goals might not be in our best interest and how knowing how to set a goal and how to plan the way that will get in there is one thing. Choosing the right goal for you is critical as well. The story of this mission that I describe in my book, they insisted on making it when their odds were against them. When the smart decision was to give up, they thought that maybe they will do it. The snowstorm was approaching. The weather was really bad. Many of them unfortunately didn't make it. We still have area of people that die, usually actually on the way down, so they reach their goal. But it's really hard to come down off the mountain. And so have a healthy relationship with your goals. It's one thing to know how to set them. You should always evaluate them. Is this good for me?

Right. Just even like we talk about the specificity of the goal and having something that you know you achieved it or you didn't, and even in the, I guess, articulation or whatever it is there to say that your goal is to reach the summit in that way. And that's, I think, the goal that most people set when they think about Everest. I want to get to the peak. And they all did. However, you know, maybe your goal should have been to like summit and get home safely. It feels like that last part, and like you said, where you're so tired and now that you've achieved it, your motivation is totally kind of deplete. You realize how depleted you are, where it's actually very, very dangerous to be coming down versus, you know, of course going up is dangerous as well. But if you're totally fatigued and you feel like you hit your goal and now it's. It's literally all downhill from here, then that is more likely to cause Accidents and problems than if their goal was to get home safely after the summit.

Yes, I like that. So you can have your goal is being safe and making it back home. The problem with that goal is that I'm already at home and I'm safe. Before I know I took the flight to Nepal. So I want to make it to the summit. Not me personally, but the person who does that. But there is another more important goal which is to be healthy and stay alive. Let's move from getting to the top of the Everest to all the. The unhealthy goals that we might set for our lives, which are often extreme diets, extreme sports that cause injuries like the running a marathon is great for some people. For other people that may cause injury and really not the way they should exercise. Even meeting deadlines at work that lead us to cut corners, maybe to do a job that's not great because we were highly motivated to finish it by January, whatever, 15th. Beware that setting these goals, setting numbers, being motivated to make it can also have downsides.

Right? Yeah. So as people are, I feel like maybe losing the motivation toward any sort of goals they may have set for resolutions by now. I think the, I think it's January 19th is National Quitters Day or International Quitters Day where like most people have totally given up on their resolutions. You know, almost make that three week mark before you realize you're done and the gyms are empty again or whatever that is. So if people are, you know, as they're listening now, they're thinking about goals they set or if they didn't set one and maybe we want to tell them why that's a good thing. What sort of advice would you give around that area?

Yeah, so many people quit on your solutions. In our most recent survey, it wasn't so bad as you may have presented it. We had maybe about a quarter of the people reporting that they are still, still pursuing their resolutions by November so many months later. So I don't know if what he receives a lot or few, but it means that some people are setting resolutions that actually work for them. You're right that most people drop or at least about half dropped by March, which was the first time we checked. And what we found predicts adherence to these resolutions is really how much these resolutions were intrinsically motivating, that is how much the person felt something good when they were pursuing the resolution. So it could be how much you enjoy doing it, how much you feel right about doing, could be any sort of this immediate pleasure that makes you intrinsically motivated that you want to do it for the sake of doing it. Maybe when you do it, you feel that you are growing. Maybe you. You found a really fun way to work out. Workout and eating healthier. We are more than half of the New Year's resolutions that people set in our survey. So these are the common ones. Do you like the food that you set to eat? Well, that will predict whether you are going to still eat it in November. Okay. Do you like the exercise? If you set the resolution to make more money, which about 20% of the resolutions where people either try to get out of debt or save more. Did you find a way that feels good, that feels right? What didn't predict adherence at all was how important is the resolution? You might say that being healthy is fine. Like it would be being healthier is fine. It's a good resolution. You are not saying that it's the most important thing for you in the world. I might say that this is the most important thing for me in 2022. When we look at the data, I am not more likely to stick to my resolution than you are. The only thing that predicts is how much we find pleasure in the path of pursuing the goal. So plan accordingly. Plans that you like. Let me decorate. No one sets a resolution to eat more ice cream. It's not about setting a resolution based on how pleasurable it is to do. We set a resolution because it's important, because it's somewhere that we want to be and we are not quite there right now. But it has to be somewhat rewarding as you do it. You have to find a path that is immediately fun and engaging. And I can talk more about the biases that prevent people from seeing that. Why? It's not intuitive. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, please do. And I think there are some goals where you say, like, it's not anyone's goal to eat more ice cream. However, along that same line, though, there are a lot of people that maybe are saying, like, you know, this year I'm really going to live in the moment, or I need to spend more time with family. I need to take a break and recharge and step away from work, travel more, you know, when the world permits those sorts of things. Actually use my vacation time instead of getting, like, sucked into other people's projects and drama and things that have a big pull on you. So those can still be very difficult. And even if it is important to connect with your family because you're worried that they're. You're going to lose them or There've been the like for some people, you know, threats of, like, this is it. You have to be around and you still get sucked into work. You know, that can be something that others would consider, like making a goal to eat more ice cream. And so. But it can still be difficult if it's not what you've kind of gotten stuck into.

Yes, I agree. That's about 20% of the people that state their goals that are not in there, like, be healthier, like save more money or get a promotion case, something related to work. We do get a chunk of people that are more about growing myself, learning new things, connecting to people in my life. I believe that for these kind of resolutions, it is more intuitive that you will do it if you enjoy doing it. It's less intuitive that this is the case for these health professional goals, and it's less intuitive for people because we have a bit of an empathy gap. That is, we don't have a lot of empathy to our future selves.

Okay.

That we think that my future self will do what's important for her. Okay. My future self is going to get up in the morning and just do everything that she should be doing. She's not going to be tired, which is why my future self can plan to drive 10 hours a day, because that person is not getting tired after a couple of hours. My future self will really care about doing well at work and of course will not get annoyed with her colleagues or bored or whatever My present self feels. And this is a mistake because of course my future self is going to be my present self. And if I get bored or annoyed or whatever, tired today, then I will feel like that in the future. That, I think, is the number one mistake in setting your resolutions, setting it to some ideal version of yourself, that it's just not who you are.

Right. And so I will definitely link to the episode on time discounting so people can revisit that. It's one of my very favorite concepts. I call it the I'll start Monday effect as the. Because I think it's hard for people to remember hyperbolic time discounting as a kind of a concept name. So if that's the number one mistake, what sort of advice is there to help? What do you tell people as far as making it feel more present and, you know, looping back to where you're talking about committing or thinking about the problems that might be in your way and kind of like setting up that plan in advance? Is there a similar type of thing that you would suggest to overcome that the way you think about your future self.

I can tell you about the study that we ran with Caitlin Woolley. We gave people a choice between listen, listening to a loud alarm clock and listening to the song Hate you by the Beatles. And we told them that we are paying more for the loud alarm clock. And so about three quarter of our sample decided to listen to the alarm clock because they came to our study to make money. And this is the task that offers more money. It turned out that the people that made this choice are much more likely to regret the choice than the people who choose the song. And I refer to this study because you could do this mental simulation in advance. You could think about how terrible it is to listen to a loud noise for a minute. That was at the time that they were required to do it. Sounds little but it's actually a long time when versus listening to a pleasant song. And how much are you going to care about money when you are in that situation? Well, when it gets to new year resolution, do the same. Do the mental simulation of I'm going to do that. How will it feel? Are there some immediate rewards that I can add to this? Can I make exercising more fun? How do I bring in to bring in stuff to my exercise like music or TV or whatever or a friend? Do I switch my routine? Maybe running or swimming is not sufficiently interesting for me. Maybe I should find a dancing class. What I found in my life is mainly I need variety. Doing the same thing for more than a few months, you just get bored. Think about doing that in the future the same way that you would think about doing it today. Right.

I really appreciated the Pokemon Go example in the book and one because my kids love Pokemon Go. So there's lots of walking that comes in from that. But I also think it's such a good example about the problem isn't always the problem. Dan Ariely's been on the show and we talked about shape and feels like you need to know your weight to lose weight. But actually knowing your weight is very demotivating for people. And so finding the scale that doesn't have to do that. You know, what's this kind of what's the real problem that's needing to be solved? And so with something like Pokemon Go, getting people out and we're walking and it's not about getting healthy, it's about catching that shiny Pokemon and like oh man, there's a, you know, Charmander over there with a funny hat on which of course, like I said, I know because we do this with the kids all the time. And so, you know, oh, I have to get that special, whatever it is. And it could be. There's anticipation with it. You get excited. Pokemon Go, I think does an amazing job of all this. I should do. I do these behavioral analyses episodes. I feel like I need to do one on Pokemon Go now. Resolution made. That's going to happen in 2022. But can you share a little bit about why something like that. And I know you've talked about a little, but like why that can be really valuable for the goal achievement.

So I love the Pokemon Go game as well. It's actually one of these tools that not only gets the walking, but you can also connect to other people. And so it's what we call a multifinal activity. It allows you to both get the steps, get the exercise, and also do it with other people and talk to other people and connect to your child over walking around the neighborhood or working in a new place that you go to. We had the experience of going to a new city and what kind of shiny Pokemons are out there. So my son was excited and we got to see the city. And what it does is basically bringing immediate rewards, making it intrinsically motivating. You want to go on the walk because you want to go on the walk. There is really not so much beyond doing that that you are motivated to do. And this is when we see motivation increasing when, when you're doing this thing now in the book, I talk about making your activities rewarding at the moment so that you're excited to do this. Also with exercising, we often see people setting avoidance goals, which are the worst when we think about long term. So when people say that their New Year resolution is not to be a couch potato case, is not to not do something, we don't think that they are going to be successful. Because when you're trying to avoid something, the act of trying to avoid it brings it to mind. Right? And Pokemon Go, it's the opposite. Okay. It's the think about it. One side of the scale is don't be a couch potato. The other one is let's catch Pokemon. And catching Pokemons is an approach goal. It's exciting. It's a game. These avoidance goals from don't drink, don't smoke, don't eat, don't think about your ex. We know that they will fail because just thinking about this goal brings to mind the thing that you're not supposed to do. Right?

So how would you recommend someone reframe if they have set themselves an avoidance goal. The don't drink, don't eat badly, don't, you know, be a couch potato. How might they reframe that in a better way to be more productive and more likely to stick to it?

So the problem with avoidance goes is that first, they are not exciting and second, they bring to mind the thing that you're trying to avoid. It's like Wagner's classic study by now don't think about white bears. Everybody's thinking about white bears. The way to get people to follow goals over time, by the way, avoidance goals seem urgent. So they're not bad. If you need to do something immediately, okay, so you know, if I want you to nowadays to avoid large crowds immediately, okay, Starting now, then like avoid large crowds, okay? Don't go to the mall. They are not good in the long run. Okay. So when we talk about stamina, when talk about doing something over time, then avoidance goals don't work. And so you need to think about what, what should I do so that I don't do the thing that I don't want to do? Okay, like what should I think about that is helpful for me, okay. Not what food I should avoid, but what food I should eat. Okay. So the call to have a healthy snacks is much better than a goal to avoid junk food. Any way that you can frame it in terms of what does it mean that you do is better than what you do not do? Dieting goals are so hard, right?

So if we, if we like break the, if we go step by step and you've already shared some of these. So if we were to say, if someone had their goal set to be stop eating junk food and they are then to change it to be eat more healthy snacks. But then we're missing some definitely like measurability in there and that kind of intrinsic motivation is missing. And so it could be eat carrots every day. And then they may think that, oh, and I should say because eat healthy carrots every day, I want to be eating these nutritious snacks every day. But there's a problem with that too, right? Of combining too much into what we're thinking we want to be moving toward.

Setting the goal to eat healthy food is actually like a goal that works for people in general. The mistake there is when we think about healthy goal as not tasty. And this is a problem in our culture, it's something that we learn from early age. Like we found that when we tell three year old kids that food is good for them, they conclude that it's not Tasty. They conclude that healthy food is not tasty and they learn it very early on in their lives. When you look at how in this culture we think about food, how we talk about food, when you read menus in restaurants, the healthy food is often not described as tasty. We use words such as crunchy and flavorful for unhealthy food. But crunchy and flavorful can apply to many vegetables, how you prepare them. And what we find is that when people think about healthy food in a tasty way, when they are able to break this perception of a negative correlation, then they are better able to eat the healthy food. To give you an example, when we ask people to choose that bag of carrot that looks the most tasty, then they then ate these carrots, they enjoy that. When we asked them to choose a bag of carrots that looks the healthiest, they chose it, but they didn't really want to eat the carrots in the bag.

Of course, you know, carrots are carrots. So it's all the same. But the way we kind of frame it to ourselves makes a difference. And you have some other really great examples in the book of how the name on the menu or things like that you were talking about of not just saying like it's a light, refreshing, healthy salad. It's like meh, like every, every, every salad should. Is that right? And that's not anything that's as exciting as this luscious. Whatever. I think you, I really love the wine example of where you're saying when you, the trade off that you have in your own mind when it comes to picking a wine, can you. I think that'll resonate for people too. Can you share a little bit about that?

Yes. So the wine example is coming from thinking about how people resolve trade offs. And you think that there are certain conflicts between goals, that the wine cannot be both amazing and cheap. By the way, unlike healthy food, which can be amazing and healthy, which is completely in our mind when it gets to wine, there's probably some correlation out there, right? Probably the more expensive wine many people will think is tastier. But because we over generalize this perception, we end up thinking that wine that cheap is not tasty. And if I tell you that the wine is expensive, expensive, you will enjoy the taste more. So basically what experiments do is telling people this wine is expensive, this wine is less expensive, and then how much you enjoy the taste and people enjoy the wine that they think is expensive.

Right. And so the way we think about it, our brains get what they expect. You can shape your experience based on how you prime yourself and the way you frame your goals to make it so that you're more likely to achieve them. So as we wrap up the show, if you can, maybe because so much amazing stuff that you've shared through the episode. And thank you for that. If you. I know. And they're kind of, I believe, four kind of things that the goals need to have. So if you can summarize that one more time for everyone as they're kind of doing their mental checklist on their own goals. And then of course, for everyone that's already excited to go get the book and to connect and learn more, if you can share a little bit about that as well.

With pleasure. So when I looked at all the interventions that we as motivational scientists studied and developed to help people follow their goals, when I looked at this so that they fall into four buckets. And really thinking about these four buckets helps you think about how should you design your own intervention? How should you motivate yourself? The first bucket is setting a goal. What do you do in order to set a goal? That is motivating, that is intrinsically motivating. Having a precise number, for example, being a bit too challenging for yourself. So asking for a bit more than you can actually do is motivating. All that. The strategies that make a good motivating. We talked about Mount Everest. The second bucket is how do you monitor progress? When do you look back? When do you look forward? How do you collect feedback? And how do you learn from this feedback? It's so easy to ignore feedback. So what do you do in order to find out where you are on your goal? How are you doing right now? The third bucket is what do you do with everything else? And just discuss the wine example and these goal conflicts that we have. Should I go for something that is a better experience, for something that is less pricey? If I think the taste and health are conflicting, how do I resolve these conflicts? Basically, how do you manage the rest of your life around your goal? How do you manage conflict? Conflict and juggling between goals? And then the last element is social support. Who in your life is going to help you with your goal? Who should know that you are doing that? And support by telling you that, hey, you should do that or that it's important for them that you are successful. Many of the goals we pursue with other people, like starting a family or having a successful company or a research collaboration, but even for individual goals, it is so critical that people around us are supportive Melina, we both wrote a book. You more than one. So you know that if the people around you are not supportive of this very personal endeavor, this is not going to work. Right. And like how you design this social environment that supports your goal is the last and fourth element.

Absolutely. Well, thank you so, so much for the summary there. For people as they're thinking about their goals and getting on the right foot as they start this year or whenever they listen to the episode, there's always an opportunity for a new goal.

And, you know, we don't have to.

Be stuck in the fresh start effect. Right. Tomorrow's the first day of the rest of your life. So that can be your new spot there. And for everyone who now is ready to get the book, like I said, we'll link to it in the show notes. But what's the best way for them to get that and if they want to connect with you? I always encourage people to, you know, if someone's on Twitter, go share and say how much you love the book and how it's helped you and what you learned from it. Let people know because writing books, it's a hard thing to do. And I don't think I've ever met an author that doesn't want to hear that their book resonated with somebody.

Absolutely. And so if you're listening to this, please go on my website, ilhfishback.com so a y e L E T F I s h b a c-h.com for information on my book on me, on how to connect with me. Everything on social media is listed there and really that's the place to start.

Perfect. Well, we will definitely be linking to your website and to some social media. We'll have a link for the book and just. Ayelet, thank you again so much for joining me today. It has been very delightful to learn from you.

Same here. Thank you so much, Melina.

Thank you again to Dr. Ayelet Fishback for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation? If you've been listening to the show.

For a while or know me very.

Well, you know I'm all about understanding motivation and goals and what's going on in our brains to either help us stay on track or make us get derailed. Some of my favorite concepts like time discounting and temptation bundling are linked for you in the show notes as well as others on setting goals, staying motivated, New Year's resolutions and more. I've also linked to an article featuring some research that was done by my friend Dr. Marco Palma of the Texas A and M Human Behavior Lab on whether motivation is like a snowball or a battery. There is a lot of great stuff waiting for you, as well as ways to get in touch with Ayelet and get your own copy of Get It Done in the show notes@the brainybusiness.com186 and as I mentioned in our conversation, I really appreciate how she talks about goals and motivation in a more balanced way than you often see. Many people, myself included, can get a little excited and lofty when we talk about goals. I'm a very rah rah, inspiration focused kind of person and I know that isn't everyone's style, so I like that Ayelet talks about how goals can be great and that it's also important to have a healthy relationship to them so you can adjust as necessary. And being able to have information from her years of great research in the science of motivation is truly remarkable and useful. As you think about your own goals and what you want to achieve this year. Are you setting up goals that have you intrinsically motivated? That are fun? Are they push goals or pull ones? Do you have support? Have you thought through what you'll do when roadblocks get in your way?

Of course.

To help you in that process, get your copy of Get It Done, which is available now, and there's a link in the Show Notes. You will be glad you did. And one of the things that I do myself here at the Brainy Business is I like to choose a word of the year, kind of like a theme to guide everything I'm working on. Word of the Year is central to my goals and I wrote an article which is actually my very first, first LinkedIn newsletter that I'm calling Brainy Bites. And I've had so many people that signed up already and have joined in.

To be subscribers of that newsletter.

I'll make sure there's a link in the Show Notes for that as well. So you all can subscribe to get your regular edition of Brainy Bites as they're moving forward. But this first post article, what have you, that I wrote in the newsletter.

Is all about a week word of.

The Year and how you can use it to be priming you with great imagery or visuals and sounds or, you know, anything else that you want to.

Make sure that it helps keep you on track throughout the year.

Here in 2022, the word I have chosen is content, but also the other pronunciation of that being content. So I am wanting to really focus on the content that I'm currently creating in a way that it will make others content in what they're getting as well as myself. I want to make sure the work that I do this year is of balance and contentment. So I tend to want to say yes to everything, but then you get a little spread thin and maybe it's a bit too much. So really focusing on what will make me content and focusing on content will help me with that here in 2022. And that is my Word of the Year. Thanks to everyone who's been participating in the conversation and sharing your own Words of the Year. Had some great ones like flow and open and blooming and fearless. Cool words that people have in the past. I've had visibility and have seen people with just really, really great words that.

Mean things to them.

So if you want to join in on the conversation, I would love to hear your Word of the Year. Whenever you're listening, whenever you are connecting here, please do come subscribe to the Brainy Bites newsletter on LinkedIn, which will have of course a link in those show notes for you along with everything.

Else we've talked about today at the.

Brainy business.com,186 and you can always find me by searching for Melina Palmer on LinkedIn as well. So I just want to say thank you. Thanks for helping me kick off another Brainy Year of the podcast today. I appreciate you being a listener of the Brainy Business. Thank you again to Dr. Ayelet Fishback for joining me on the show today and congratulations on your fantastic new book. It was a delight to chat with and learn from you. Next week, my friend Kurt Nelson, one of the the co hosts of Behavioral Grooves, will be joining me to talk about motivation and incentivizing people at work. It's going to be a lot of fun. You won't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me and remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.