Social psychologist Emily Balcetis has devoted her career to understanding how people’s perceptions of the world fuel their motivations and life goals. In this episode, we discuss the science behind setting and achieving goals, the link between focus and motivation, overcoming obstacles, and so much more.
Now available on: YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Transcript
Balcetis is an Associate Professor of Psychology at New York University (NYU), focused on how the motivations, emotions, needs, and goals people hold impact the basic ways people perceive, interpret and ultimately react to information around them. She is the author of the book Clearer, Closer, Better: How Successful People See the World.
Here are a few highlights from our conversation:
But in comparison to other sensations, other ways that we get information about the world, we don’t get the kind of feedback about our visual experience the way we do about all the other senses.
And that’s the idea of the goal gradient hypothesis that, as we get close to meeting our goal, whether we are rats, mice, or people, that we double down on how much we’re investing to cross over that finish line.
When we have a greater distance from something, we start thinking about, do I want to do this? Is this related to something that would be of interest to me? And in the here and now, it’s about feasibility.
Memory informs perception not only of what our eyes are doing but our beliefs about the world. Our memories inform that. So, if we’ve had a lot of unfortunate, negative, experiences, we come to expect them moving forward. People have had a lot of positive experiences. You come to expect that moving forward
If we start thinking about ways to more intentionally engage our eyes with our surroundings, we can nudge ourselves in pretty incredible ways.
Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro
01:30 – Perception Reality Gap
11:14 – The background of the Perception-Reality Gap
16:30 – How to use what you see to accomplish goals
34:30 – On the Goal Gradient Hypothesis
40:37 – Using science to set better goals
46:00 – How Michael Phelps prepared for failure
51:36 – The ideal frequency for goal-setting
57:37 – The relationship between what we say and what we do
1:01:45 – Optimism vs pessimism
1:05:30 – How to use the environment to accomplish goals
1:13:00 – Advice for setting and keeping New Year’s Resolutions
1:17:40 – Setting process-based goals
1:21:00 – On dealing with stress and priorities
1:23:30 – What Balcetis sees as wasting time
1:24:30 – What does success mean to Balcetis?
