A simple guide on goal setting.
Discover 5 principles based on neuroscience &
psychology.
Author: Dr. Ewelina Kurtys
Check five simple principles, which stem from neuroscience and psychology, for better goal setting. We also include short explanations of why they are important & how can you implement them with the help of Psync app.
Principle 1: Maintain focus
Contrary to machines, humans have a big problem with parallel computations. This is why multitasking is a myth and it is much better for a human brain to focus on one thing at a time.
Also, when it comes to setting up goals, neuroscience research shows that it is better to focus on one goal at a time. If you try to set up too many goals simultaneously, it will disperse your efforts and you are less likely to achieve something (a great podcast of Dr Huberman with many scientific details which were an important inspiration for this blog article.)
With the rise of dopamine-inducing technologies (social media), our attention span is getting shorter. This means we have difficulties focusing on one thing for an extended period.
This, together with external pressures coming from diverse sources (work, family, personal, and again, social media and the fact that we are all hyperconnected today), makes focus even more difficult to achieve.
With all this in mind, how can we choose which goal is important for us today?
Psychologists recommend prioritizing. As it seems better to accept that we cannot do everything we may wish to do, it is good to think about what is the thing I care about the most? When thinking about priorities, it is also good to consider the trade-off between short-term and long-term values. How will my current approach affect my distant future? Will I have to pay a price, or will I benefit from my current behaviors?
How Psync will help you to focus one goal at a time?
With the Psync app, it will be possible to focus on one goal at a time. Since you can automate goal tracking, you do not need to think about all your problems at the same time and struggle with huge goal-setting worksheets. You can keep your goals nicely organised and separated and think about each of them separately.
Principle 2: The right difficulty level
If the goal is too easy to achieve – your brain will not create enough drive to achieve it (specifically, the amygdala will not create enough arousal). On the other hand, if the goal is too hard, it will remain a dream rather than a goal. This is why it is important to choose the appropriate level of difficulty to make sure that you will be able to stick to the goal and that it will make you a better person. Feedback from other people can be very helpful here, as there are many coaching techniques to assess your skill level across different areas. But what also helps, and you can do it by yourself, is an honest look at yourself, what you have achieved so far and what you really want to aim for. Writing it down helps to structure your thinking and it also helps to find gaps in your reasoning. As we are all biased and driven by emotions – when we write things down, it is easier to get rid of these confusing factors in our heads.
How Psync will help you to choose the right level of difficulty for your goals?
With the journaling feature, you will be able to reflect on your current skills level and what you want to achieve in the future. This will help you to choose an optimal range of difficulty for your goals.
Principle 3: Taking action
If you want to increase the probability of achieving your goal, you need to focus on what you do today, a specific action. Procrastination or unspecific descriptions transform goals into dreams and does not help to achieve them. To achieve any goal, you need to act on it. This is why also brain research recommends focusing on verbs, to describe specific actions and when and for how long you will undertake them. As exercise psychology suggests, taking action also helps with overcoming nerves in sports and other high-pressure endeavours (see our previous blog on Conquering performance pressure). Thorough preparation – this is action – increases our confidence and decreases our anxiety levels. This is particularly important if we are preparing for a big day, such as a sports competition or a public speaking event.
How Psync will help you to take action toward your goals?
With the Psync app you will be able to set up reminders for specific actions at specific time points which you will undertake in order to achieve your goal.
Principle 4: Measure
As we are all biased and emotion-driven, we need to apply some objective measures in order to be able to assess the key events in our lives. Our metrics should be based on our values. What do we really want from life, is it money, a gold medal, a lot of friends, or peace of mind? It is good to understand what specifically you want and how you can measure it. Knowing what you want requires reflection on all experiences we encounter and whether this is really what we want also in the future. Once you know what you want, choosing a proper metric is essential. As again, the human brain is not good at computing, multiple parameters may not be a good idea. It is desirable to measure what really matters the most. Want to get fitter? How fast can you run? How long? Want to read more? How many books have you read in the last three months? Want to develop a habit of journaling? For how many days in the last month have you kept your journal notes? We are often overwhelmed by the large amount of data, which only distracts our attention from the key factors that really matter. Sometimes we use statistics to give ourselves the impression that we did a lot of work. But usually, objectives can be quantified in a very simple way. Want to get fit? Run for 10 min. See how tired you are. Set up your training routine for one month. Run again for 10 min. See if any improvement has occurred. No need for extended dashboards.
How Psync will help you to measure your goals?
With the Psync app you will be able to measure simple parameters of your goals over a long period. Have you done what you planned, how many times did you skip doing your objectives? This simple approach over a long period of time will give you clarity and will not confuse you with unnecessary thousands of metrics that do not mean anything.
Principle 5: Reward yourself
When you try to achieve a goal, especially long term, it is very helpful to set up intermediate milestones to be able to see if you are on the right track. For example, if you want to run a marathon, your preparation will not happen overnight, from zero to 40 km, but it will rather be a bumpy journey over a few months. Depending on your fitness level, you will gradually increase your capacity for running longer distances. This is why it could make sense to set up some milestones to achieve, like 5 km, 15 km, 20 km etc. On a more granular scale, every training can be a tiny milestone to achieve. Every time you go to a gym you are a small step closer to your objective. Dividing problems into small pieces is a common strategy for dealing with complex problems (e.g. in science). As the whole problem is usually overwhelming at once. E.g. running 40 km can seem an incredible effort for most of us. But if you divide it into small steps of regular training and small improvements, you may notice that, when divided, they are actually not so hard to do. Here we also come to the science of rewarding yourself. Recent neuroscience research suggests that you should randomly reward and not reward yourself to keep your motivation at a maximum level.
How Psync app will help you to reward yourself?
The variable rewards feature in Psync app will help you to maximise your motivation to achieve intermediary goals. As proven by science, rewarding yourself on random occasions after achieving small goals, will reinforce your behavior toward the goal.
Develop your atomic habits with the Psync app!