Ayelet Fishbach, PhD, is the Jeffrey Breakenridge Keller Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business and the author of GET IT DONE: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation. She is the past president of the Society for the Study of Motivation and the International Social Cognition Network.

She is an expert on motivation and decision making. Dr. Fishbach’s groundbreaking research on human motivation has won the Society of Experimental Social Psychology's Best Dissertation Award and Career Trajectory Award, and the Fulbright Educational Foundation Award.

Goal-setting has been a divisive subject of discussion for us here on the Rational Reminder Podcast, and today we dive a bit deeper into the topic with the help of the amazing Ayelet Fishbach, author of the recent book Get It Done. Ayelet is an expert in motivation and a Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing at the Chicago Booth School of Business. Her focus in her work is researching social psychology, management and consumer behaviour, and having her on the show to share some of this amazing insight is a real honour! In our conversation, we cover many sides of the goal-setting process, exploring the vast array of research that Ayelet has done and has examined. We talk about the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic goals, the outcomes of tracking progress, what makes an effective goal, and what is meant by a 'goal-system'. Ayelet also shares how this research can inform tasks such as retirement planning, and the work of financial advisors. So for this and a whole lot more that is bound to be illuminating, fascinating, and potentially life-altering, be sure to join us on the show.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Using goal-setting to address our inability to predict elements of the future. [0:03:50]

• Differentiating between intrinsic and extrinsic goals. [0:05:00]

• Ayelet lists some examples of effective goals and their qualities. [0:06:37]

• The dangers of avoidance and unhealthy goals and how to recognize these. [0:10:48]

• Exploring the parts of human psychology that push us to always want more. [0:14:46]

• How quantifiable, self-set targets for goals can aid the process of achieving them. [0:17:18]

• Weighing the benefits of creating incentives associated with the goals you set. [0:21:45]

• The roots of intrinsic motivation and how to foster more of these. [0:25:13]

• Making the pursuit of a goal enjoyable and why this is so important. [0:29:21]

• How these findings on goal-setting relate to long-term retirement planning. [0:32:10]

• Ways for financial advisors to make certain processes and tasks more enjoyable for their clients. [0:33:36]

• The impact of tracking and monitoring progress towards a goal. [0:35:03]

• Learning from failure and why this can be an unreliable strategy for achievement. [0:39:36]

• Ayelet describes a goal system and its most important components. [0:43:06]

• Writing out goal systems and an explanation of the chart that is included in Get It Done. [0:46:17]

• Prioritization and how to choose between conflicting goals. [0:48:02]

• Strategies for keeping on track with resolutions; the role of intrinsic motivation and the question of temptations. [0:50:14]

• How other people and our social environment influence our ability to reach our goals. [0:55:04]

• Ayelet responds to Ben and Cameron's tendency to avoid setting bigger goals. [0:56:41]

• How Ayelet goes about setting goals for herself, and how she applies her expertise to her role as a parent. [1:00:53]

• Learning as the marker of success; why Ayelet feels that she never left school. [1:03:42]

Read the Transcript:

As we understand it, people are not really terribly good at predicting what will make them happy in the future. How do you think this can be addressed when you set goals?

Well, people are not very good at predicting what will make them happy. In particular, people are not very good at predicting what will make them happy at work, what will make them happy in pursuing their goals. The common mistake that people make is not taking into account intrinsic motivation, that is not taking into account how much value we get from doing something that we like at the moment that we do that. The common mistake is to set a goal, thinking that the future self is going to care mainly about long term rewards, my future self will do what's good for her in a year or five or 10 and care less about how it feels at the moment of doing that thing. However, we know that what predicts engagement is, to a large extent, how we feel about the thing that we are doing at the moment that we do that.

Is there a difference between intrinsic and extrinsic goals?

Yes. Intrinsic goals are goals that we want to pursue for the sake of pursuing them, that it feels right. Often it feels fun, other times it might feel right in other ways. It might feel like this is really the purpose of doing the thing, I live up to my potential, I discover something new. It's an immediate positive experience of doing something that feels right. Extrinsic goals are goals that we pursue for some long term benefit for something that is not immediately in pursuing the goal that might result from pursuing the goal. Most of the time when we think about setting goals, we are at least somewhat extrinsically motivated. We don't need to convince ourselves into doing something that is purely intrinsic, and so the reason that we engage in this process of motivating the self is because there was some extrinsic benefits, there was some external benefits often that we wish to achieve.

Saying that, our goals vary by how much they're also intrinsically motivating. You might go and get a job because you need to pay the rent, but that job might be engaging and fun or boring and difficult. It is the latter, the extent to which that job is intrinsically motivating, that will predict how well you're going to do and how much you're going to persist.

What are the characteristics of an effective goal?

Many, at least several effective goal is, first of all, a goal is not a means to a goal, it's not a chore. An effective goal could be to have a career as opposed to apply for a job, to own a house as opposed to look for a house to have a family, as opposed to sign up for some online dating thing. It's basically the end state, the thing that you are hoping to achieve. What else...? An effective goal is often an approach goal, a do-goal, as opposed to an avoidance goal, do-not goals. There are a couple of reasons why do-not goals are less effective. First, when you pursue a do-not goal, that often brings to mind what you are trying not to do. How do I know that I am not smoking? Well, I ask myself, "When was the last time that I smoke?"

How do I know that I'm not thinking about my ex? Well, I ask myself, "Are you thinking about your ex?" Guess what? Pursuing these goals often brings to mind the thing that you are trying to avoid. Also, do-not goals tend to elicit reactants, that is we tend to want the thing that we are not allowed to have just because we are not allowed to have it. There are some really nice studies showing that when you ask people not to do something, that's exactly the thing that they want to do. I can keep going.

Please, keep going.

What else is effective for goals? Effective goals are not a means, in the sense that people are not motivated to work on something that is a prerequisite for something else. People are not excited to pay for parking or shipping or gift wrapping. In one of the studies that we ran a few years ago, we found that people were willing to pay more money for a book than for a tote bag that contained that exact same book. Now, clearly they're getting less if they just get the book, as opposed to the tote bag that contains the book. Clearly people are not seeing both conditions, they either are presented with an offer to get the book or with the offer to get a tote bag that contains the book. By finding that people aren't willing to pay less for the bag that contains the book, we had strong evidence that we as people don't like to invest in the thing that's not the goal itself. Intrinsic motivation, of course, effective goals are intrinsically motivated, they have the right incentives. There are many more elements.

What about how specific versus abstract should a goal be?

That's a good question. It should be as abstract as possible while still being connected to some action. Fantasizing doesn't really work, when people fantasize themselves winning in an award or getting a degree or having a large retirement saving, that doesn't motivate action. You want to set your goals such that it is connected to action, that you know exactly what is the plan that gets you there, but it's not so specific that it's not motivating. The way to do it is by asking yourself several why questions. I do this, "Why do I work on this project? Maybe because I want this project to be completed on time. Why? Maybe because I want to impress my boss. Why? Because maybe I want to be a great employee in my company," and so on.

Try to go with the "why" questions high enough so that you know why you are doing the things that you are doing, but not so high so that you lose connection to action. If you get to that, "Why do you do this? Because I want to be happy." Well, be happy is not directly related to any specific action, and so that's not the best goal.

Are there any things to avoid in setting goals? What should a goal not look like?

Start by avoiding-avoiding. Avoidance goals, should probably avoid it... well, let me say, avoidance goals tend to be urgent. You tell yourself, "I should not spend money." It feels like you should start not spending money today versus if you tell yourself that you should save money, which is basically the same thing, just frame this as an approach goal. That sound like something that you can start maybe tomorrow. Saying that, approach goals are more motivating, as I said, avoidance goals tends to bring the thing that you are trying to avoid to mind and elicit reactants. Another thing that you should avoid, I would say the goal should be the right goal for you. Many times people set goals that are just unhealthy for them, that are just not going to help them flourish in their lives, so you want to check with yourself.

Now, I started my book with the story of climbing Mount Everest, which is a really motivating goal. It's a great goal, in terms of getting people super motivated to do that. But, if your goal is to get to the summit of Mount Everest and the weather is bad, well, you should really adjust your goal. I tell the story of a group of people that really insisted on making it to the summit on the wrong day to do so. As it turned out, when you get to the summit of Mount Everest, you still need to go down, and many of them paid with their lives, they just couldn't make it on the way to the camp. Choose the right goal for you.

I want to go further into this because it's really important. I think goal setting's pretty hard, and to say that the goal should be the right goal for you, that sounds like a good thing to do. But, how do you measure that? If I'm setting a goal, how do I know? How do I know I haven't set a goal that's going to be detrimental to my life?

Let's separate between, how do you know that you set a goal that is motivating and how do you know that you set a goal that is good for you. We're now putting aside the motivating part. Clearly getting to the summit of Mount Everest is a highly motivating goal, it has a very clear target, it has everything that we want to see in a goal that's motivating, but for some people or under some circumstances, it's the wrong goal. How do you know that a goal is the wrong goal for you? Well, often it doesn't fit with other goals, often you think about your goal as your only goal so that nothing else matters. We see this with extremism. It's something that goes across terrorist groups and people who sign up for some extreme sports that will end up being very unhealthy or an extreme diet that might be very unhealthy for your body. We see that these individuals tend to really only have one thing that stands above all, and they're willing to compromise everything else. This is often a clue that maybe it's not the right goal for you.

Occasionally we will speak with people who have a financial goal, it's something like, "I have $2 million now, and I want $10 million." What questions would you ask that person?

Why? What's your ultimate goal? How does this goal that you stated, have $10 million, facilitates your basic needs? How does it help you connect to other people? How does it help you grow intellectually? How does it make you mentally healthier? What are you trying to achieve by $10 million?

The follow-up question to that, I'm not sure how to word it, and this is perhaps a society-wide observation, but so many people just want more. If you have a million, you want two, if you have two, you want five, you have five, you want 10, if you have 100, you want 200. We observe this in our day jobs, any commentary on...? Is there a societal pressure for what's normal?

I don't know that it's a societal pressure as much as the human psychology. Here's the thing, we feel good when we achieve our goals and we feel good for making progress toward goals. That means that there was a problem once we achieved our goal, that you are there, you wanted to get one million, you got one million, and now there might be some emptiness and what's next? We constantly want to improve. We want to have more than what we have. We want to achieve more than we have achieved because this is, in a way, our human psychology. You pointed out one way in which that can go against us, it can lead to being too focused on accumulating wealth. In other domains, it could lead to overweight because we know we always want to eat more and eat better food. There could be negative consequences in whatever we do. We should just stop and think about what else can we do? Maybe we should stop pursuing wealth, or put this on hold and focus on something else, maybe we can do something for society, for our family, maybe we can grow in other ways.

That links back to most of the "why" questions that you would've asked.

Yes. If you say that you want more money because you want to buy more houses and then I ask you, "Why do you want to buy more houses?" You say, "Because I don't know, why would you buy more houses? I want to accumulate even more wealth." Then, at one point I think you will see with several "why" questions that there was really no point, you don't get more. But, let's keep in mind that most people don't have enough wealth for what they want to do in their lives, so there are few people that have too much wealth and many people that don't have enough.

We just talked about wealth related stuff, which is numbers, but then other things like social goals or community goals, which are maybe harder to quantify, do you think goals need to have quantifiable targets related to them?

It helps to the extent that you can have a target and you can put a number on your goal, these numbers are highly motivating. I give the example of marathon running times. When you look at the distribution of marathon running times, you see that there are many more people that finish a marathon just below four hours than just above four hours. Now, it cannot be easier to finish marathon in three hours and 59 minutes than in four hours in one minute. We suggest that the reason that we see many more people in the three hour 59 minutes group is that finishing a marathon under four hours is a common target for marathon runners. Same thing for the 10,000 steps, there was really no reason to walk 10,000 steps a day, but once people set this goal as opposed to not 9000 steps, which is less of a round number, they are highly motivated by this number.

They will see 100 steps below it as a loss, they will walk around their bedroom at night to make it to the exact number that they said. Numbers help, they're good. Well, let me say, they're good until they get bad. There are a couple of problems with targets, but when there are problems with targets, one of them is that people got too attached to the number. There was a really nice study that looks at dieters and looked at whether they met their daily calorie goal and how that affects how much weight they lose over the program. It turned out that dieters that were just above their goal, they're just like 100 calories above what they set for the day, they just had, I don't know, another cucumber on top of what they were supposed to eat are the dieters that lose much less weight than those who are just below, who just met their targets. You see this discontinuity in distribution we suggested. If you just miss your target, you are significantly less motivated than if you met it.

Wow. In your book, you mentioned the importance of setting your own targets as a commitment device. In our jobs, we'll often tell people they need to save $500 a month, $1000 a month perhaps to meet their retirement goal, but that is not a self-set target. How would you approach that?

I would make them self-set. I would involve people in the process of getting to this number, where this number comes from. There's probably some formula that you've used, can you let me, as your customer, put in the numbers in this formula? Can you engage me in discovering this rule? In education, we often talk about the Socratic Method, which is basically asking people many questions. Don't give answers, ask questions if you want someone to learn something and to be committed to learning something. If you can ask questions, if you can guide the person who would like to save, guide them through the process that helps them discover what's the right target for them. They will be much more committed than if you just crunch the numbers and say, "This is the number for you."

That's really interesting. It's almost reversing the order in financial planning. Instead of starting with the retirement date, it's how much can you save, figuring out what that number is and working from there.

Yes, which really can work for some people more than others. Clearly, some people can better understand and engage in how you arrive to these goals and how to set them. But, the idea is, as much as you can, to involve the person that needs to do the work in deciding what their goal is and what is the work that they should be doing so that they own their goals and their targets.

Should people have incentives related to meeting the targets on the way to their goals?

Do they have it or should they have it?

Should they create incentives for themselves?

I would say yes. I would say that in general incentives are good. Incentives are often... we think about them as many goals. There is obviously the big incentive, which is from reaching my goal, but there are also the little incentives, the nice beverage that I'm going to buy myself if I finish my daily tasks today, or the nice gift that I'm going to buy myself, nice, but inexpensive, if I make my saving goals. These are kind of mini goals. For many of the goals that people pursue, they are so long term, their rewards are so much delayed that, really, you need something that's more immediate. You need to celebrate successes on the way there, and incentives are a good way to do it. As we know, incentives can also backfire, but we need to be careful with incentives.

Can you talk more about how they can backfire?

In several ways, we often incentivize the wrong thing. In my book, I tell the story of the rats in Hanoi, and that was at the beginning of the 20th Century when French Colonials were running the city of Hanoi. They were struggling with rats running around, and so they created this incentive system, that bounty system, by which you get a cent a pair of dead rat. Now, that worked, there were many dead rats, actually the tails of the dead rats that were broached to the authorities as the result of the incentive program. But, how do you get that rat? Well, first you need the live rat, and so the residents of Hanoi started to breed rats so that they will have a nice supply of dead rats to get the money. In our own lives when we reward the wrong thing, we might find that we engage in the wrong actions.

If I give a saving example... if we save money in one account by taking it from another saving account, then you really did nothing, so where the money is really coming from is important. The other problem with incentives is that often we have too many incentives and that results in being a bit confused by why we do the thing that we do, that kids often infer that food that is healthy is not tasty. We ran a study in which we told very young kids, three to five year olds, that some food will help them learn how to count. They inferred that this food is not tasty and didn't want to eat it. Now, what happened? Well, there is one incentive, a big incentive to eating, which is that you like the taste, and when you add other incentives such that it's good for you, that it will make you whatever the health claims like smart, calm and so on, that it confuses you about the taste. You no longer eat the thing because you like it, you eat it for those external benefits.

What causes people to be intrinsically motivated to achieve a goal?

What causes people to be intrinsically motivated is that they feel that they achieve the goal as they are pursuing the action. There is this mental fusion between doing the thing and getting whatever I'm trying to get for me. The act of achieving the goal, this moment when we achieve the goal, is always intrinsically motivating because at that moment, achieving the goal happens at the same time. It's completely fused. The ultimate intrinsic goals are those that tap into our curiosity or creativity or the moment that we discover something. Also social goals, like being with people that we love, pursuing our passion, these are highly intrinsically motivating. But you can increase intrinsic motivation for other goals as well, basically by making them more immediately fun, more immediately rewarding, adding entertainment to your exercise is making it more intrinsically motivating.

You might not want to workout, not just because that will make you in better shape in a year, but because that feels good as you are doing it. We ran a study when we introduced healthy snack, music, and colored pencils to a math class, and the kids enjoyed doing math more, they solved more problems now. What did we do? We just made the entire event of solving math problems more fun with music and colored pencils. You can do these things, even just noticing the fun that exists in what you do, just paying attention. When you go to the gym, choose whatever activity that looks the most fun for you. Look at the menu and ask yourself not what's good for me, but what I will enjoy doing and do that, and you will be more intrinsically motivated, even though very few people go to the gym because they couldn't think of anything more fun to do.

How does our relationship with our future self affect intrinsic motivation?

What do you mean by that?

I'm familiar with some of the research on future self versus current self. I'm wondering if a feeling of closeness with your future self affects your current intrinsic motivation.

Yes, I think it affects your motivation. The more you are psychologically connected to the person that you are going to be, the more motivated you are to take care of them. It might not be necessarily intrinsic motivation, but it will probably be to some extent. You will feel good about helping that future person to the extent that you are connected to them. I'm really curious about the notion of psychological connectedness because, really, if you think about it, if you are not connected to your future self, if your future self is a stranger, then there is really no point in doing anything that will benefit that person. Then, putting money aside for that person is like giving money to strangers, which I might do, but not a lot. Or, pursuing education for that future person. Well, if you're a stranger, then why should I work for a stranger?

That goes almost against our nature to take care of someone who is not connected to us, which is why the feeling that this is me that I'm working for, that this future self is somehow the same person that I am now is absolutely critical to get people to do anything that is beneficial in the long run. I wouldn't say that this is the best way to increase your intrinsic motivation, but this is a really good way to increase your motivation.

How important is it that the pursuit of the goal itself be enjoyable?

It is very important that the pursuit of the goal will be enjoyable or somehow that it will feel good. Sometimes it feels right, even if it's not enjoyment. It's very important because we really discount anything that is in the future. Now, it's not that we should, we should not discount outcomes that are in the future, but we do because this is our human, our animal nature. It is just hard to do something that will benefit me in the future, we are so much oriented toward the present. I had a conversation with a colleague the other day and we were just in our minds thinking about the kind of time commitments that we make, and basically most of us would say, "I'd rather give you an hour next week than five minutes today." What does that mean? I can absolutely not afford five minutes today, but I'm very happy to commit one hour of my time next week because it's in the future. We discount too much beyond what's good for us, that just makes it harder.

But if we add the immediate outcomes, if we make something pleasurable or feeling right at the moment, then we can do it for the sake of the moment. Let me also say something about feeling right, which is not necessarily enjoyable. We recently published a study about improvisation. We did it here at The Second City, which is the famous Chicago improvisation club. We invited people who were just starting improvisation to feel discomfort while they're doing that. We actually told them, "Your goal is to feel uncomfortable while you engage with the exercise." Now, here's what that did. It was very easy to feel uncomfortable. If you ever try to do improvisation, if you are not a professional, the first thing that you would feel is embarrassed and uncomfortable. If that's your goal, then you actually... it feels right, like you are doing what you are supposed to do. You were asked to feel uncomfortable and here you are feeling uncomfortable.

By having people trying to feel uncomfortable, we got them to engage more, and they did more, they were more interested in doing improvisation again, they were excited about doing it. It's not really just about enjoying the present, it's about feeling that this is right, that you are in the place that you wanted to be, that you're making progress.

That's a cool study.

Thanks.

What about long term retirement planning, where the goal is very far in the future in many cases? Progress... you're saving money. It's not fun, it doesn't necessarily feel good. How would you approach that situation?

One of the hardest goals, everything goes against you. It's hard to get excited about it. It will help a person that is very much in the future and not quite connected to me. It's highly extrinsic, and despite that, very much necessary. One thing that we find that works is making it into a habit or using a default, just getting it off your mind. If you had to decide every month or even every year about your retirement saving, we know that people just don't do that. They don't want to engage. Most of the interventions with retirement are really geared towards creating some plan that will just be automatic, will take care of that, giving people really good defaults. If you just don't make any decision, then your default is really good. These interventions are better than telling people, "Every day when you get up in the morning, remember that you need to put some money aside for retirement."

In our jobs, we give people financial advice. Is there some something that financial advisors can do to make progress toward a retirement goal more enjoyable?

Progress is enjoyable. I think I briefly mentioned it before that we feel good about progress. Sometimes we feel good about progress even more than we feel good about reaching the goal, it's the progress that is going for it. For many people, just look back at how much you have done is the way to go, just feel that you are making progress might be helpful. Be aware that, for some people, looking at how much they have saved could result in actually spending that money. You really want to tailor the way you monitor progress to the individual. If someone is under-saving, is unsure that they can even save, then looking back at how much they've done, they're monitoring their actions, in terms of the glass half-full is better than looking at how much is still missing. But, if someone is doing well and is already highly committed, then looking back, they might feel licensed to spend some of this money. You want to monitor progress, in terms of how much you still need to do in order to be on track to meet your goals.

In your book, you talked about how different people, at least I understood it this way, how different people have different levels of motivation depending how far along they are towards their goal, and how that last 10% to some people is extremely motivating whereas other people might be more motivated to get a plan in progress. How important is it to know which part of that progress matters most to you? Then, how do you link that to actually tracking your own progress towards the goal?

I believe it is important that you track your progress in the right way for you, which could either be monitoring how much you have done or monitoring how much you have left to do, and for a few reasons. First, at the beginning, if you look at how much you still need to do, it's too overwhelming. Everything looks like a drop in the sea and it's just hard to look at the target, keep your eyes on the prize just doesn't work when you're just starting on something. It's much better to look back and monitor the few baby steps that you did. I give the example of the reward program, so imagine you have a reward program where you need to make 10 purchases to win a reward. After you made one purchase, thinking about the fact that you still have nine purchases is hardly motivating, thinking about the fact that you already made one purchase and the next purchase will double your progress, that's more motivating. Toward the end, that reverses. 10% to completing the goal, if you look at 10%, that's motivating.

If you look at the 90% that you completed, that has less impact. Using my reward example when you are just one purchase from completing the reward program, thinking about these terms is more motivating than thinking about the next purchase as adding 10% to the 90% that you already collected. This is one thing. At the beginning, look back toward the end or beyond the midpoint, look ahead. On top of it, for many goals where there is no clear end or no clear beginning often, if you feel uncommitted, think about what you've already completed, what you've already done. Taking that saving example, if you feel that you are not sure that this is possible for you, that this is something that you can fit into your life, it's complicated, think back, think about how much you've already done. Even if you have done little, the little that you have done will make you more committed. If you are highly committed, think about what's missing, think about what else you can do and this will increase your motivation.

That reminds me of one of the illustrations you gave about reward cards, where I think you had a card that if you buy 10, you get one free. But, there was also a card where they give you the first two and when you get 12, you get one free. Exact same number you had to buy to get one free, but there was an illusion of having accomplished more up front. Is there a lesson there that we could take to our profession to show people that they're perhaps further along than they might think?

Yes, I like this. This is a study by Ran Kivetz and Yuhuang Zheng, what we call the Goal Gradient. He hypothesized that as people make progress, they feel more motivated. In this study, the progress was complete illusory, you still need to do the same number of purchases, but they tweaked you to think that you have already made progress because they're giving you the two purchases for free, presumably. This is one way in which we can motivate ourselves and others. We can always highlight things that people did. When we try to motivate students, we often talk about the beginning of their journey, not the first day that they showed up on campus, but the first day that they applied to the school, which was a year before. Now, when did you start? When did you start saving? Was the first day that you started saving with us, or the first day that you started saving at all, or the first day that you contacted us? How much progress you've already made often depends on, when do you start counting?

What do you think people can learn from their failures in an attempt to achieve a goal?

Too little.

We feel that we have learned a lot from failure, but when we run studies, people are learning too little. Just to give you a sense of what that means, we often have people complete a task where there are two possible answers. We ask you, "What's the meaning of this word in the language you've never heard of? Is it an animal or an object?" You make your guess, and then we either tell you that you were right, or we tell you that you were wrong. Presumably, you should learn either way. If that thing that you've never heard of is not an animal, then the only other option was an object, then it ought to be an object. There is full information there. But what we find is people don't learn from failure, often they are closed to chance in guessing the correct answer when they are tested on their knowledge. This is just an example of how hard it is for people to learn from failure. Often when people do learn from failure, they learn the wrong lesson, that is they learn that they cannot do it.

Instead of learning that maybe this was not the right way for me to save money or the right program or the right person to work with, what people learn is they learn helplessness, "I just can't do it. This is not for me. Other people can do it, I am a failure." Between not learning anything to learning that you are a failure instead of that they are lessons in failure, it's hard to learn from failure. There are ways to learn, and this is one thing that I'm actually excited do in my research, which is explore ways in which people can use their failures to learn something.

Do you think the lack of learning from failure is at all related to the general success bias that we have as humans, but maybe particularly related to social media?

Yes. On social media, everybody's having the best life ever. Everybody's on vacation, it's sunny there, their kids are amazing, they always get admitted to the best schools, and their relationship is amazing. Part of the reason why we don't learn from failures is that we don't get good information. By the way, this is particularly problematic because it's easier to learn from other people's failure. Other people's failures don't sting. If you tell me about what doesn't work for you, the way you failed, I can learn from it, except that we tend not to talk about it, so a lot of that information is just not out there. One of the interventions that we explored, and this is a research led by Lauren Eskreis-Winkler.

One of the intervention was to get people to give advice to another person based on failure, things that we had unemployed people giving advice to another person that's looking for a job. That motivated the unemployed person that was giving the advice. People that were dealing with anger, we had them give advice to another person who was also dealing with anger management, and that helped the person that was dealing with a problem.

Can you describe a goal system?

A goal system is basically the structure of your goals, the sub goals, and the activities that serve them. You can think about the most abstract goals in your life, you might care to be healthy, you might care to be connected to your family, and you might want to have a successful career and so on. Then, you think about sub goals that connect to them and then activities that serve these sub goals, and then the goals. In a goal system, we can think about multi-final means, that is activities that serve several goals. I might bring lunch from home and that will help me save money and also be healthy, so I get two things from the same means. I refer to it as feeding two birds with one scone. There is also the structure of equi-final means, and those are several activities that all lead to the same goal.

I might eat healthier food by bringing lunch from home, by cooking my food, and by avoiding alcohol... although I said that avoidance goals are not great, and so on. The nice thing about multi-final means is that they help you achieve more than one goal. We are often looking for these means, we want things that will achieve more than one goal. The nice thing about we equi-final means is that these are your backup plans. It's going to be a one foot snow in Chicago today, which means that if I can only think about exercising in terms of running outside, that's a problem. But, if I have another means, which is working out indoors, that's my backup plan, and that would mean that I would be able to pursue my goals even when things don't work the way I originally planned.

Would you say we should have a preference for multi-final means?

We should, yes. Multi-final means should be selected. The problem with multi-final means is that they are often not the first thing that come to mind, and they often don't seem the most instrumental. This is a bias. The thing is that once an activity serves multiple goals, you become less associated with any of these goals. This sounds a bit abstract, but let's say that I commute by walking or biking, and therefore I get my exercise while also getting to work. By the fact that biking in my example helped me both get to work and exercise, I tend to think about biking less of an exercise and less of a commute. It becomes less strongly associated with each one, and that means that we often don't go for this multi-final means because they don't come to mind as the most instrumental way, as the best way to achieve something, although they are.

That's really interesting. How important do you think it is for people to... in the book, there's a chart, there's a drawn out, and maybe we can show it in the YouTube version of this conversation, of the goal system. That makes it really easy to visualize what is a potential multi-final means. Do you think it's important for people to do that, to actually write out the goal system?

I think so. As you hear, I'm struggling here to explain this without actually drawing it. It's so easy when you actually draw the circles, you write down your goals, you write down your sub goals, and the means that achieve them. I don't think that anybody can be completely precise about it. Eventually I can think about it, everything that I ever buy is serving some sub goal that serves another goal, so I'm not looking for a map that is complete. I'm looking for a map or a goal system that summarizes, that captures the main thing that you want to achieve. Going back to your example of the person that only wants to get another $10 million, if I draw the entire system, I will see that this is just one thing that I want to achieve in my life, there are many more.

It might just be the engineer in me, but that chart was one of the most powerful parts of the book for me, to see just how you could write it out. Then, I would find it difficult to think of multi-final means without seeing a picture like that, so I thought that was powerful.

Thank you. I'm curious now to see your goal system.

Well, I've got to write it out now. We've got a question about this later on, but I've never been a big goal setter anyway. Well, we'll get to that in a minute, but after this maybe I'll change. What about conflicting goals? We've talked about retirement saving. If people want to save a lot because they want to retire early, but they also want to buy more time for themselves today by doing something like paying for a house cleaner, how do you do that? How do you prioritize between those two?

There are always several goals, we never just want one thing. It's very realistic and an everyday situation that we have several goals. What I advise people is to start by thinking about whether you are trying to find the compromise or the prioritization. Are you prioritizing or compromising? Are you trying to balance between spending and saving, between career and family? Or, do you want to prioritize one of them? Is this a time in your life when you want to basically focus on your career and postpone starting a family? Do you want, at this point, just forget about saving and just focus on spending and you plan to save later? As I say that, I hope that you hear that at least for saving and spending prioritization, that doesn't sound like anybody's best solution. We never just want to save because then we don't get to enjoy the present. We never want to just put it aside because then now we might not be able to enjoy the future.

Given that we are looking for a compromise, this is where we need to think about how much we want to balance between decisions and how much we know we want to sometimes save, some other times spend, how much we do this compromise within a particular purchase or between several purchases? When we prioritize, we often think about this in terms of a self control conflict. Then, we are trying to prioritize what we refer to as a goal over what we refer to as adaptation. I can talk about self control more, but in the context of saving, this is where we think about people wanting to prioritize saving over something else.

You raised self-control, here we are a little more than a month into the new year. Many new year's resolutions were made, and I'm guessing that a few have perhaps derailed since the start of the year. Are there some strategies that can be used to avoid goals becoming derailed?

Yes. We collect data from 100s of people about new's years resolutions, we did it now for a few years. The good news is about 25% of the people that set resolutions tell us by the following November that they are still pursuing them. It's not that everybody's not pursuing their resolutions by today, which is the first day of February, but 75% are not going to make it to November, so clearly, it's hard to stick to these resolutions. What we find predicts adherence to resolutions is how much they're intrinsically motivating, how much people enjoy pursuing them or found the path that feels right, that feels good. We don't find that the importance of the resolution is a predictor of success.

What about temptation, though? If you decide to eat healthier, but you drive past a McDonald's on the way home from work every day, are there strategies to deal with things like that with temptation?

Yes, the self control dilemma is exactly where you want to prioritize. You identified one goal as more important for you than the other. You can tell yourself that you would rather eat at home than eat at the McDonald's, but the McDonald's is really tempting. When we get to strategies that help people with self control, they either address the problem of identifying the temptation or the problem of battling the temptation. Let me start with identifying most temptations are hard to identify because if you only do it once, nothing happens. If you only stop by the McDonald's today, that's totally fine, that will not hurt your budget, that will not hurt your health issues. It's one lunch that's perfectly acceptable. The problem is what if you eat at the McDonald's every day, of course. To identify temptation, we need to think about many decisions together, we need to use what we call broad decision frame. Sometimes it's easier than others, you might create a rule by which you don't eat at the McDonald's or you only eat at the McDonald's two times a month. This rule by definition is a broad decision frame.

Other times, it's not so easy. What comes to my mind is a study by my colleague here, Abby Sussman, on exceptional expenses. What she found is that it's hard for people to think about all the exceptional expenses together in one bucket. This is like the money that you spend on hotels, buying gifts to your friends, buying champagne for the holiday. In a way it's much easier for people to set a rule, like this is how much money I'm going to spend on a regular bottle of wine and this is how much money I'm going to spend on champagne, because champagne is so exceptional, it's not the thing that you buy every week. In her study, getting people to think about all the exceptional expenses that they're going to make over a year, all the times that you will buy a theater ticket or go to a hotel or buy champagne led them to be able to identify the temptation that is to set a lower budget for each of these expenses.

This is for identifying. For battling temptation, once you know that it's there, what we found in our research is that advanced warning really does a lot of the work. Knowing that the temptation will be there is good reminding yourself, reminding others, things such as thinking that you will be tempted to spend too much money that is what leads people to maybe leave their credit card at home and just go with cash. Knowing that you are going to be tempted to eat too much leads people to just mentally be prepared to control what they eat. In a way it's like preparing to lift a piece of furniture, if I tell you that this piece of furniture is going to be heavier, you're going to mentally prepare to put more force in lifting it and you will be more able to do it than if I didn't give you any warning and you're just approaching this thing, trying to lift it, and hurt your back because it's so heavy.

What about your social environment? Does that affect the ability to stick with goals?

Yes, we are social beings. As it turned out, we are very much influenced by others in our life. Others influence our goals in two ways. First, they help or they don't help, which is a problem. Often we need to do something with other people, whether it's starting a company, this podcast that you two are doing together, starting a family we deal with another person. There are just many things that we are doing with other people, and so we need them. Other times, it's just having other people in our life as we pursue our goals. Knowing that my partner supports my exercise goal or that my colleagues support my research agenda is absolutely critical. We look around us and we want to feel that our goals are being appreciated by other people. We look for role models. Role models, are those people that want us to be successful in what we are doing.

On the negative side, you really cannot say if you are married and have a joint bank account with someone who's not onboard with that. Without social support, that doesn't work. Then, even if it's a personal saving goal, if the people around you think that you are being foolish, that makes it really hard to stick to that goal.

Here's the question that Ben alluded to earlier, and it's something we've talked about fairly often on the podcast, about how each of us have certain styles towards goal setting. Ben loves challenging work and follows it simply where it leads him whereas I'm more of a system's person, a James Clear Atomic Habits style. I implement routines that get me to where I want to go. But, both of us have never really found the so-called big hairy, audacious goals terribly motivating. Are we missing something?

I'm not sure that you don't have these goals, or maybe you just didn't identify them as the goal. You started a podcast, so clearly that was a big goal, right?

But it's the enjoyment of making it, not we want to have X number of listeners, for example. It's the passion of doing it that's driving us, not some big goal of being the biggest financial podcast in Canada or whatever other more typical goals one might set.

Yes. You're not missing much, I believe in this kind of relatively short term goals. It's more about doing that thing that you like, it's learning, it's developing, these are important goals and they go beyond the specific activity that you're doing today. If you have a learning goal in your life, then you might learn by creating a podcast or by reading books or by doing whatever you're doing that gets you to accumulate knowledge. I don't think that people need to have a life goal as like, "One day, I will be the president of something," but more as knowing where I'm going so that I'm not just running in circles. It also sounded like Ben is a bit of a locomotor and Cameron is a bit of an assessor, so that's a nice combination. We know that some people like to assess, understand the options, understand the pros and the cons. Some people like to move, to experience progress, and you really need both. You can't forever assess, and if you are just moving without assessing, this is when you're moving in circles. We need the right combination.

That's a pretty accurate assessment. I don't know. What do you think, Cameron?

It's true. How do we learn more about those types and where are those types from?

The assessor and the locomotor?

Yes.

Well, this is something that Tory Higgins wrote about. Let me step back and say that there is a distinction in that motivation science between the implementable and the deliberative mindsets. First, you start with deliberation. This is something that Peter Gollwitzer wrote about. For every goal, for everything that we do, we usually start with the deliberation mindset. The deliberation mindset is very rational, if you will. It's very unbiased. When you talk about the pros and the cons of doing something as you deliberate on whether you should do it, you are usually less biased and more accurate. When you move to implementing, the implementable mindset is that, "Let's go get it." It's the mindset that is more biased, that is more willing to hear the pros of why I should do it and don't tell me why I should not do it because right now I'm implementing, right now I'm going for it. We know about that.

The assessors, going back to the assessment versus locomotion, the assessors are those that tend to be more stuck in the deliberative mindset. They are forever seeing the pros and the cons, but they're not fully committed. The locomotor's are implementing, they are willing to move ahead and do something. They are spending less time on assessing, they need to feel the movement, they need to feel the progress. This is a lot of names that I threw on you.

No, that's fascinating information though. Ayelet, how do you set goals for yourself?

I'm very much intrinsically motivated, so whatever is interesting for me, whatever I'm curious about, often whatever I didn't try before, so that will probably be fun because I'm going to be new and I'm going to have a steep learning curve, which is really nice for me. I'm really lucky I have a career as a researcher, so I can just think about what are interesting problems to explore and do that.

Yes, that is very cool. You've got three kids you mentioned in the book. Your two daughters, it sounds like have been very successful academically, which is amazing. I've got kids. Cameron's also got kids. I'd love to know how you apply the information that we've talked about in your relationship with your kids.

Yes, I have two girls in their twenties. They are an astrophysicist and a med school lab student, and a 10 year old son who is really the person that I'm still very much influencing because I think that my older kids, they are already so self-driven, there is nothing I can do. We very much support each other in whatever we do. The book that I wrote was with the help of my med school student daughter, she read every chapter that I wrote, commented on it, and provided some edits. She was the first one to see everything that I wrote. My astrophysicist inspired me in her own way. Then, my little guy, as I said, is still the work in progress in terms of parenting. We'll see. The other day he told me that I'm an expert on failures, so I felt pretty good about the parenting that we have with him. But, with kids, sometimes you feel like you're the best parent in the world, many times you feel like you are a total failure as a parent. It depends on the day.

Is there anything that you've deliberately done related to your expertise in motivation science as you've raised your kids?

The learning from failure I think is... I'm not surprised that my son told me that I'm an expert on failure. We talk a lot about learning from failure, and failing as an opportunity to learn how to be successful or to learn new information and how we should try out things. We talk about when you apply to something that you should learn from the rejections that you have, and in a way, if you've never been rejected, then you are probably not applying to enough things, you're not trying enough things. I would choose that as something that we talk a lot about.

Ayelet, our final question for you, how do you define success in your life?

Learning, I never left school. I feel successful when I learn something new. I feel successful on days when I learn something new. We just talked about how learning often comes from something that didn't work out. It's really just about, was this experience worthwhile, in terms of giving me new information? If this is information about myself, then that's a big plus because, as you know, we are very curious about the world, but we are particularly curious about ourselves. If I can learn something about myself, I'm even more intrigued.

Well, we learned a ton today. This was truly an incredible conversation. Ayelet, thanks so much for your time.

Thanks for having me.

Book From Today’s Episode:

Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation — https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/ayelet-fishbach/get-it-done/9780316538350/ / https://amzn.to/3sG6s2z

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