Ollie on Work Emily Balcetis - The Science of Goal-Setting
We're often told we should have clear goals for ourselves. In fact, as we've heard from guests like Marc Effron and Grace Lordan in the past, there is a connection between effective goal-setting and high performance. The thing is, many of us still really struggle with this idea, so I wanted to explore it some more.
And I figured if you want to dive deep into a subject, we may as well invite one of the world's leading experts onto the show.
Today's guest is Emily Balcetis. She's an Associate Professor of Psychology at New York University, where she runs the Social Perception Action and Motivation research lab. Or SPAM for short. Emily and her team have pioneered the scientific investigation of behavioural science and motivation. Their work has uncovered previously unknown strategies that increase, sustain, and direct people's efforts to meet their goals.
She also explores these ideas in her excellent book, Clearer, Closer, Better, and with us today on the Future Work/Life podcast.
Our conversation starts by examining why materialising goals is crucial to achieving them before digging into the relative benefits of a narrow focus of attention and applying a wide bracket.
Along the way, we discuss how to motivate ourselves to pursue big, long-term goals and why, although vision boards can help us discover purpose, used in isolation, they can actually be detrimental to our success.
I love the way Emily reframes goal-setting – literally, as her work is all focused on the power of our vision. She gives some fantastic practical examples of visual tactics that can help us meet and exceed our goals, all of which help build a tool kit for success.
LINKS:
The Social Perception Action and Motivation research lab
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