This episode is also on Bilibili too.
How to achieve all kinds of goals in a satisfying way is both a central question of life and a notoriously difficult one. For many people, successfully reaching a goal is actually pretty rare; giving up halfway is the norm. So how can we achieve our goals more efficiently?
Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals, by Heidi Grant Halvorson, associate director of Columbia University’s Motivation Science Center, is a pretty reliable guide. The title may sound a lot like one of those books that peddle the mythology of success, but all the advice in this book is grounded in science. Halvorson wrote it after bringing together a great deal of psychological research on motivation, goals, and execution. It is miles above those airport-bookstore books that teach people how to succeed—so far above, in fact, that I don’t even know where they went.
The book is just over two hundred pages, and its writing is pretty direct. It basically explains a principle and then immediately offers advice, getting straight to the point and emphasizing practical application. So I’ll follow the book’s style here too: I’ve distilled its most practical content into 8 science-backed suggestions for achieving goals.
Suggestion 1: If you lack motivation or need to resist temptation, think more about the big-picture meaning of your goal. If you’re doing something difficult or unfamiliar, think more about the fine details.
There are two key terms in this suggestion: big-picture and fine-grained. Every goal can be understood from these two perspectives.
For example, to reach the goal of exercising regularly, we can think about how far we should run every day and how many kilos we should lift. Or we can think about whether regular exercise will make us slimmer and healthier. How to exercise is a fine detail; the benefits of exercise are its big-picture meaning.
These two levels of thinking have different value for achieving a goal.
Understanding a goal through its big-picture meaning can leave us energized and more motivated to stick with it, because we’ve connected one thing—usually a small thing—to a larger meaning or goal. People are simply more likely to be moved and inspired by grand visions.
For example, if you have to work an extra hour, instead of viewing it as 60 more minutes of making a PPT, tell yourself that you’re helping advance your career. This big-picture thinking can generate more motivation. So when you lack motivation, think more broadly and spend more time considering your goal’s meaning.
The same goes for moments when there are lots of temptations around you: think more about the big-picture meaning. Meaning doesn’t just give you a shot of adrenaline; it also gives you staying power. If I know that losing weight is worthwhile, and meaningful to my lifelong health and happiness, it becomes easier to resist the tempting cup of milk tea right in front of me.
Big-picture meaning can increase motivation and staying power. So what can thinking about fine details do? It can make a difficult task easier to get started. If you’re tackling something unfamiliar and hard to begin, think more about the fine details.
Break the task into several concrete steps that you can start right away. For example, when learning to ski for the first time, pay attention to how to bend your knees and how to align them with the front of your skis. Don’t keep thinking about Eileen Gu, imagining the day you’ll be just as glamorous as she is—that will only make you crash into a tree.
So if you lack motivation or need to resist temptation, think more about the big-picture meaning. If you’re doing something difficult or unfamiliar, think more about the fine details. That’s the first suggestion for achieving goals.
Suggestion 2: Stay appropriately optimistic about the possibility of achieving your goal, and appropriately pessimistic about the process of achieving it.
Dazhu and Tiedan both want to lose weight. Dazhu says, “I have what it takes to lose weight. I believe I can definitely succeed.” Tiedan says, “With my lazy, food-loving personality, there’s about an 80 percent chance I won’t be able to lose this weight.”
Dazhu and Tiedan—one optimistic, one pessimistic—which of them is more likely to reach his weight-loss goal? Optimistic Dazhu is more likely to succeed. A great many psychological experiments have shown that people who are optimistic about the possibility of achieving a goal are more likely to actually achieve it.
But be very careful: optimism about the future comes in more than one form. There’s another kind of optimism, like this—
Dazhu says, “I can easily resist the temptation of milk tea. I can definitely run two kilometers every day.” Tiedan says, “With my lazy, food-loving personality, I’d better stay as far away from milk-tea shops as possible. And I need to find someone to keep me accountable for running. If it’s just me on my own, I’m afraid I won’t be able to stick with it.”
Dazhu and Tiedan: still one optimistic and one pessimistic. Who is more likely to reach the weight-loss goal this time? The pessimistic Tiedan is more likely to succeed. That’s because here, optimism and pessimism concern not the possibility of achieving the goal, but the process of achieving it. Being too optimistic about that process is not a good thing. On the contrary, if you somewhat pessimistically believe that the road to success won’t be smooth, you may actually have an advantage.
Psychologists have confirmed through experiments that people who believe the process of achieving a goal will be arduous make more preparations, put in more effort, and take more action toward the goal. These slightly pessimistic people anticipate that success will require hard work, and so they really do work harder.
People who are very optimistic about the process of achieving a goal do the opposite. For example, graduates who believe finding a job will be easy send out fewer applications; students who think exams are a piece of cake study noticeably less.
So we need to distinguish between two kinds of optimism. Stay appropriately optimistic about the possibility of achieving a goal, and appropriately pessimistic about the process. Believe that the future is bright, while recognizing that the road will be winding. That’s the second suggestion for achieving goals.
Suggestion 3: Don’t take away people’s “autonomy.”
This suggestion is about both how to set your own goals and how to help other people achieve theirs. If you’re a teacher, company manager, or parent, often you don’t just set goals for yourself—you also set them for your students, subordinates, or children.
When you help other people set goals, the issue that deserves special attention is this: don’t take away their “autonomy.”
Autonomy is the power to freely choose and decide certain things. During the pursuit of a goal, if people feel autonomous—that is, if they feel able to freely choose and decide some things—their intrinsic motivation is greatly activated. They become more persistent and creative, and their performance throughout the process improves. But autonomy is easy to undermine. Any external control can damage it. For example, when parents use rewards and punishments to push children to study, children may feel, “I’m studying to earn rewards and avoid punishment; studying isn’t something I’m doing for myself.” Managers who impose deadlines and monitor employees too closely can likewise make employees feel they have no autonomy, and then lose the motivation to pursue their goals.
So when setting goals for other people, find ways to strengthen their sense of autonomy. Of course, this is where things get difficult: sometimes rewards and punishments are necessary, assigned tasks still need some supervision, and certain rules have to be mandatory. What do we do? The main solution is to leave some room for personal control within the task you’re assigning. What people control doesn’t even have to be related to the task’s core. For example, in one experiment, a teacher had students learn math in educational game software. One group could choose their own avatars and name some of the objects in the game; the other group could not. The students who had those choices loved the game far more, and they also scored higher on later tests. See? Choosing an avatar and naming game objects had nothing to do with the core task of learning math in the game. But as long as the overall task included an element of “autonomous control,” people’s motivation to complete it increased dramatically.
When setting goals for others or for yourself, don’t take away people’s “autonomy.” Leave room for personal control within the task. That’s the third suggestion for achieving goals.
Suggestion 4: Use a “promotion” mindset and a “prevention” mindset to achieve different goals.
This suggestion also has two key terms: “promotion” and “prevention.” Promotion and prevention are two mindsets we use when doing things.
Here’s an example. When a baby is first learning to walk, Dad is often pretty carefree. He likes putting the child in front of all kinds of obstacles and encouraging him to cross them. Even when the child nearly falls, Dad doesn’t panic; he keeps his hands behind his back and watches to see whether the child can walk steadily. He gets especially excited when he sees the child conquer a new challenge.
Mom’s mindset is often very different. She may pad every sharp table corner in the house, and when the child walks, she holds out her hands on both sides, terrified that he might get hurt.
As you can see, the parents have the same goal: helping the child learn to walk. But they understand and implement that goal in completely different ways. In Dad’s eyes, learning to walk is an achievement—a new ability to acquire. Dad’s mindset is one of promotion.
Mom, on the other hand, feels that the process of learning to walk is full of danger. Her job is to keep the child safe and away from danger. Mom’s mindset is one of prevention: preventing danger.
A promotion mindset focuses on gains—the acquisition of opportunities and abilities—while a prevention mindset focuses on losses and worries about losing a sense of security.
Neither mindset is absolutely better or worse. Each has its own strengths and is suited to different situations.
When we use a promotion mindset, a few characteristics tend to appear: we have a stronger desire to perform, care more about speed than accuracy, think more flexibly, and show greater creativity.
So a promotion mindset is useful in these situations: 1. When the task is relatively simple—when a task is simple, people who like to show what they can do and get started faster have an advantage; 2. When speed is the priority; 3. When inspiration and creativity are needed.
On the other hand, when we use a prevention mindset, we’re afraid of making mistakes. We care more about accuracy than speed, our thinking becomes more focused, and we’re better able to concentrate on the task right in front of us.
So, a prevention mindset is useful in the following situations: 1. When you want to procrastinate—yes, a prevention mindset helps curb procrastination, because it makes you seriously consider the terrible consequences failure might bring, spurring you to finish the task quickly. 2. When there are lots of temptations and distractions, a prevention mindset makes you more alert to them. A prevention-oriented test taker is also better at shutting out outside distractions while answering questions; when a prevention-oriented dieter sees a pile of snacks, what they see is a whole heap of danger. 3. When accuracy is your priority, being in a prevention mindset makes you more inclined to favor slow, meticulous work. There is one exception, though: when danger is closing in, people with a prevention mindset may actually act faster. For example, a prevention-oriented driver will brake more decisively in a dangerous situation.
A promotion mindset and a prevention mindset each have their advantages, so you should adjust your mindset flexibly to achieve different goals. That is Suggestion 4 on how to achieve goals.
Suggestion 5: Don’t aim to “do your best”; set goals that are specific and challenging.
The more specific a goal is, the better. “Lose 5 jin” is a better goal than “I want to lose weight.” If the goal you’re striving for is unclear, it’s easy to fool yourself: when you’re tired, discouraged, or bored, you can just put it aside. After all, the goal is so vague that whether you’ve reached it is up to you. But once you set a specific goal, you can’t deceive yourself. Either you’ve hit the target or you haven’t—there’s no middle ground. Whether you’ve lost 5 jin is decided by the scale, not by you. A specific goal naturally keeps you accountable.
When setting goals, many people like to say, “I’ll do whatever I can to make it as satisfying as possible,” or “I’ll do my best.” This kind of resolution sounds very determined, but it should be avoided whenever possible, precisely because it’s too vague. What counts as “most satisfying”? What counts as “doing your best”? None of this has an objective standard. When you pursue a goal like that, it’s easy to end up fooling yourself. So your goal has to be specific.
Besides being specific, a goal should also be challenging. Of course, the harder it is, the better it isn’t. It should be difficult, but still achievable—something you can just barely reach on tiptoe, something that requires a real push to overcome. Those are the goals that best ignite our desire for a challenge. A goal with just the right level of difficulty will make you work harder and concentrate more fully on achieving it.
Does constantly stretching up on tiptoe to reach something sound exhausting? Actually, it isn’t. Successfully overcoming difficulty gives people a powerful sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, and makes them feel happier overall. Why does Elden Ring have more vitality than games that do nothing but please players? Because it’s difficult. The pleasure of mowing down enemies is shallow; the satisfaction of overcoming difficulty runs much deeper.
In short, don’t aim to “do your best”; set goals that are specific and challenging. That is Suggestion 5 on how to achieve goals.
Suggestion 6: Use “if…then…” rules to carry out your plans.
This suggestion introduces a way to fight procrastination. A lot of people fail to achieve their goals because procrastination beats them.
So what, exactly, are we procrastinating on?
What is the hardest step in writing a paper? Coming up with the ideas? Finding the right words? Actually, neither. The hardest part is carrying out the tiny action of moving the mouse and opening the Word document. Procrastination delays the start, not the process.
So how can we make it a little easier to carry out that initial action?
The implementation intentions technique, developed by German social psychology professor Peter Gollwitzer, was designed specifically for this problem. Implementation intentions mean pre-installing rules in your mind along the lines of, “If a certain signal appears, then I must perform a certain action.”
It asks us to make ourselves extremely rigid when starting a task, leaving no room for negotiation. As soon as the prearranged condition appears, we mechanically perform the corresponding action. For example:
“If I sit down at my computer, I will go to my work folder and open the Word document for my paper.”
Once the signal “sit down at my computer” appears, you carry out the prescribed behavior without thinking. The action isn’t triggered by determination or willpower, but by an objective external condition. By outsourcing the trigger for an action to an external cue—”if…then…”—a highly rigid rule can dramatically lower the difficulty of getting started, and procrastination is greatly improved. It’s that simple.
Setting rigid “if…then…” rules to prompt yourself to carry out your plans is Suggestion 6 on how to achieve goals.
Suggestion 7: Replace a fixed mindset with a growth mindset.
Psychology has one utterly correct but useless cliché: nearly all of our qualities and abilities are shaped jointly by heredity and environment. In other words, very few human abilities have nothing to do with talent, and very few are entirely innate and impossible to change later. Intelligence, the ability to learn, artistic creativity—you name it: every quality and ability is partly something you are born with, and the rest comes from effort after birth.
So “Work hard! Strive!” isn’t just motivational fluff. Human beings really can change themselves through “work hard, strive.”
The problem is that not everyone realizes this. Some people believe that human abilities are basically fixed: smart is smart, dumb is dumb, and there’s not much room for change. That’s a fixed mindset. Others believe that abilities can change and have room to grow. That’s a growth mindset.
So which do you think is more helpful for successfully achieving goals, a fixed mindset or a growth mindset? In the vast majority of cases, a growth mindset.
Why? Let’s use intelligence as an example. If someone believes their intelligence is fixed and can’t really improve, they will be especially eager for other people to affirm that they are intelligent. That makes perfect sense: if I can’t get more, I’ll find every possible way to prove I already have a lot.
As a result, this person will deliberately choose goals that are easy and safe rather than challenging and risky. If a challenging goal ends in failure, it shatters the illusion that “I’m smart.” So people with a fixed mindset often stay in their comfort zone and make little progress. People with a growth mindset are the opposite: they believe they will become smarter through learning and practice, so they are more willing to accept challenges. They see challenges as opportunities to learn and grow, and failure doesn’t matter as much.
People with a fixed mindset are afraid to accept challenges, and in the end they really do remain stuck. People with a growth mindset are willing to learn through challenges, and in the end they really do grow.
So we should replace a fixed mindset with a growth mindset. We should adopt the belief that our abilities and qualities have room to grow, and that challenging difficult goals is an opportunity for growth. That is Suggestion 7 on how to achieve goals.
Suggestion 8: When a task is easy, focusing on performance can lead to better results; when a task is difficult, the overall benefits of focusing on progress are greater.
This suggestion is a supplement to Suggestion 7, with one special case. In the vast majority of situations, a growth mindset is more helpful for achieving goals. But one situation is different: when the goal or task is relatively easy.
A growth mindset focuses us on whether we can make progress. But if a goal is especially easy, that means there aren’t many opportunities to gain or improve, so a growth mindset may have trouble generating strong motivation.
People with a fixed mindset care deeply about their performance; they are always trying to prove that they are capable. So when a task is easy, they will go all out to perform well. As a result, in simple, relatively uncomplicated situations, people who focus on performance get better results. Earlier we said that when a task is easy, we should shift into a promotion mindset. Here’s an addendum: when a task is easy, I should also pay more attention to my own performance.
But in other situations, focusing on progress brings greater overall benefits. Focusing on progress not only helps people grow; it also brings many side benefits, such as a better mood. When progress is your goal, you are more likely to enjoy what you’re doing and find pleasure in it. Research has found that compared with people who spend all day trying to prove their abilities, people who focus on progress have fewer depressive symptoms, and their depression lasts for less time.
So the general principle remains: we should focus our attention on progress as much as possible, because it gives us more in return—unless the task is very easy, in which case you can temporarily shift your attention to whether your performance is impressive enough. That is Suggestion 8 on how to achieve goals.
That’s all.
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