332. Mastering Motivation: Ayelet Fishbach Reveals the Secrets to Achieving Your Goals (Refreshed Episode)

Welcome to episode 332 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy Today's episode is all about motivation and getting things done with 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. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's episode is a look back at my first conversation with Ayelet Fishback about her wonderful book Get It Done. This episode, which originally aired on January 7, 2022, rose to instant success to become the most downloaded episode of that entire year and going on to hit the third most downloaded episode of the first five years of the show, which I went over and talked about earlier this year. And considering episodes one and two are the top two most downloaded and have been since, well, day one, this really is your favorite modern episode of the podcast, which is pretty cool and I'm glad I had an opportunity to refresh it for you today. Now, why am I doing that, you may ask? It's because in this coming Friday's episode I have a conversation with Vishal George about his book Money Mindsets. He references Ayala's work in motivation, science and decision making research in the book and we talk about her directly in the episode. So it felt like the perfect time to refresh this one for you today. With that in mind, as you listen to the episode today, think about any and all the goals you have, of course, but also specifically I want you to think about your goals around money and financial stability. Perhaps these are goals for your business. If you're an entrepreneur or business owner, perhaps these are goals for your personal finances, a desire to be debt free, mortgage free, to pay off that student loan, to buy a house, to travel more, whatever you care about. Keep it in mind as you think about your motivation and goals in this conversation with Ayelet today.

She's awesome.

I'm confident you're going to love the conversation. And don't forget there are links for everything, including past episodes, books like Get It Done and Money Mindsets and more, as well as articles. They're all waiting for you in the show. Notes for this episode, which are found within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com 332 all right, let's talk about how to get it done ielet 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 like 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 SOR stuff, if you can share a little bit about, you 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 were 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 A. Lansky, as my postdoc advisor. I was convincing my PhD advisor that maybe that's a worthwhile journey. 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 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 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 dinner party, the food is going to be amazing and it will be hard to resist. 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. 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, wash it with More force. And so that was cool. And 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 happen, stand in the way of getting there. I also want to say something about your intuition that when. 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 they say, 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 people say, yeah, like consistent reinforcement 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 say that. Yeah, I remember like you did write about uncertainty 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's this about? So yeah. Yeah.

Do you know that like the research on fluency that when something is. Is fluent then it's very easy to process but when there is a bit of disfluency 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. 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 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, that the snowstorm was approaching, the weather was really bad. Many of them, unfortunately, didn't make it. We still have, every year people that die, usually actually on the way down, so they reach their goal. But it's really hard to. 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.

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 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 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, 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. To be healthy and stay alive. And let's move from getting to the top of the Everest to all 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. 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, you know, what sort of advice would you give around that area?

Yeah, so many people quit on your usual solutions. In our most recent survey wasn't so bad as you may have presented it. We had maybe about a quarter of the people reporting that they are still pursuing their resolutions by November so many months later. So I don't know if whatever receives a lot or few, but it means that some people are setting resolutions 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 found a really fun way to work out. Work out and eating healthy awareness. More than half of the New Year's resolutions that people set in our surveys, 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. Do you like the exercise? If you set the resolution to make more money, which about 20% of the resolutions where people either trying 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 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 that you like. Let me decorate. No one sets a resolution to eat more ice cream next year. 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 inward 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, 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, save more money or get a promotion, 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. We don't have a lot of empathy to our future selves. We think that my future self will do what's important for her. 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 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 is 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 that? 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 some 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 Katelyn Woolley. We gave people a choice between 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. And so about 3 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 those 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 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 feeling. 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, we talk 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. 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 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 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 it a little, but 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 that working, 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. 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 you're doing the 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 exercise, if 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 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. And Pokemon Go, it's the opposite. It's the think about it. One side of the scale is don't be a couch potato. The other one is let's get, let's catch Pokemons. 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 goals is that first, they are not exciting and second, they bring to mind the thing that you're attracted to to avoid. It's like Wegner's classic study. By now don't think about white bears, everybody's thinking about white birds. 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, starting now, then like avoid large crowds. They don't go away to them all, they are not good in the long run. Okay? So when we talk about stamina, when we 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 they should avoid, but what food I should eat. The call to have 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 should you 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, 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 that at 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 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? Okay, how are you doing right now? The third bucket is what do you do with everything else? And just discussed 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 goal 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, you know, 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 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.

So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about motivation and goals with Ayelet today? For me, I really love how a makes things that feel difficult and unattainable really relatable. So we can see where we might get stuck and be more likely to be successful once we're able to plan for them properly. Since this initial conversation and reading is book, there are a couple points that have really stuck with me and that I find myself saying to others often when talking about goals. First is that you need to prepare for the stuff that's going to get in your way. You it's important to know that it isn't supposed to be easy all the time. Just like we weren't wired to be happy 100% of the time. Listen to the episode on the Dose Brain Chemicals, which is linked for you in the show notes. For more on that so if you change your mindset to know that it isn't about getting to some zero effort state where you're magically different and perfect, but instead to be thoughtful about what matters to you, limiting those goals so you have the bandwidth to achieve them and plan for what will be distracting and get in your way and what you're going to do when it does, not if, but when is so important. I love the comparison she makes about lifting a heavy couch. If you're told something is heavy, whether it's a couch or a small box, you prepare differently before you try to lift it, you bend your knees and brace for the effort. That's important with achieving your goals too. Planning in advance and bracing instead of just relying on willpower, thinking that you're going to be perfect in the moment and then beating yourself up when you don't. It's just such a really great and smart strategy to set yourself up for success. Another thing I love that Ayelet has said is that a year has a very long middle and that you don't want to be the person who did something, but rather the person who's doing something. So along that line you want to pick goals that you're going to live with and have be a part of your identity for a long time and break them into small pieces so you aren't having to wait so long for the little wins that are going to be motivating you along the way. This is kind of getting back to that reward is in the journey lifestyle so you can overcome time discounting and knowing that loving the thing in the moment that's helping you achieve longer term goals is a great way to keep you on track so you ultimately achieve the goals. Trying to force yourself to run if you hate it will be a much harder path to fitness than playing tennis or kayaking or Pilates if you love one of those things, and instead of saying that you will have lost X pounds by the end of the year or something like that, looking at smaller goals and milestones like the number of steps in a day, or running a little faster than you did yesterday, or mastering a yoga pose each month or whatever can help you keep on track and ultimately hit that bigger goal, which is really more of a lifestyle that you've now achieved, which is really, really great and you can continue to just layer on to get better and better instead of thinking you've made it and then it's done. So things do get easier over time as they become habits, which is made possible with less goals and areas of focus. But there are still times where your brain is going to try to trick you into your old ways or try to get that hit of dopamine or doing the now thing instead of focusing on that ultimate goal. And that's why these tips from Ayelet, from the entire conversation from her book, and what I just brought up as my kind of main takeaways, they're just so, so important. And if you remember from the top of the episode, the reason I refreshed this one today is because of this upcoming Friday's conversation with Vishal George about his book Money Mindsets. Saving money and talking about money and achieving financial goals is really hard for a lot of people because of our biases toward the immediate win versus the long term term one. This of course includes time discounting and lots of other interesting concepts which are linked for you in the show notes and before we close out the show, I encourage you to take a few moments to think about your money based goals, whatever they may be. What do you really care about? Where do you get stuck? What can you be doing regularly to help reach the goal instead of looking at it only in the long term? Things like planning for retirement are really hard because that's so far away and we don't realize the little changes or choices we make today and the impact that they can be having on us. So being more thoughtful is really important there. Which is again why I refreshed this episode with Ayelet today. Friday's conversation with Vishal has some great thoughts about this, of course, and knowing what you care about and where you might want to focus in advance can help you get even more more out of that conversation and his insights when you listen to that episode. If you aren't yet subscribed to the Brainy Business podcast, now is a great time to do so. To ensure you never miss an episode including that one, and to make it easy, there is of course a link in the show notes along with links to related past episodes and books like Get It Done and Money Mindsets, as well as a timestamp summary of the entire entire conversation and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and atthe brainy business.com 332 and just like that, episode 332 on get it Done with Ayelet, Fishback is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with Vishal George discussing his book Money Mindsets. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want 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. Melina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.