Episode 12: Setting goals—what are you still meaning to do?

Oscarlyn Elder:

For many of us, our lives are becoming more complicated. It might feel like every time we finish a task on our to-do list, we just add another one. So how can you stay motivated and focus on realizing the goals and tasks that really matter to you? That’s what this episode’s guest is here to help us with.

I’m Oscarlyn Elder, co-chief investment officer for Truist Wealth. And this is “I’ve Been Meaning To Do That,” a podcast from Truist Wealth, a purpose-driven financial services company. Thank you for joining us.

I recently had an opportunity to talk with Dr. Ayelet Fishbach from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business about her book, “Get It Done.” She’s a world-renowned researcher on the science of motivation, and you’ll hear how passionate she is about her work and its impact on people. Before we get started, if you want to take notes on today’s episode, we have a worksheet you can download and print. You can find it by selecting this episode at Truist.com/DoThat.

Ayelet, welcome to “I’ve Been Meaning To Do That.”

Ayelet Fishbach:

Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited for our conversation.

Oscarlyn Elder:

Thank you for being here. We talk a lot about purpose here at Truist. We’re a purpose-driven financial services company. And so we like to start each episode by talking about it. And if you’re willing, have you thought about your purpose, and would you be willing to share it with us?

Ayelet Fishbach:

I think about my purpose every day. I feel as someone who has been studying motivation and as an academic, this is always on my mind. Basically, what are my priorities? What am I trying to achieve at this point in time?

And my current purpose, well, I want to understand how people navigate their multiple goals. I want to understand how people pursue goals with others. I also want to understand what is about that knowledge of motivation that is in particular beneficial for people. What do you need to know in order to motivate yourself? So, three things that are high on my list.

Oscarlyn Elder:

So, you are a very purpose-driven individual—academic—and what we’re talking about today is, really you are living out your purpose. So, we are extremely lucky to have you on the podcast today. And from that, let’s go ahead and jump into your book. And one of the things that we do on the podcast, with a special focus on the financial element, is try to help people get moving from intention to action, because we think the lack of action, right, is one of the things that keeps us from achieving our goals. So, we’ve talked a lot on our podcast previously about how to think about and define wealth aspirations and objectives.

But what can you tell us about how to organize thinking about goals? How do we organize them?

Ayelet Fishbach:

I like that you start with the distinction between what you ideally would like to have and then what is your actual goal. What are you going to do? It’s a very important distinction and it often gets lost for people. So, you know, one way to think about it is your attitudes versus your goals, your actions.

I might hope for the war in Europe to end, but it’s not my personal goal, so I don’t really do much about it. I might also hope to have some, you know, financial goals achieved, but it’s not a goal unless I actually do something about it. And so a goal is an end-state that guides action.

And if it does not guide action, I would say, “Ah, you call it a goal, but not really.” Maybe you’re fantasizing, maybe you are expressing a positive attitude toward being in that position. But you’re not really committed in any level of doing it. How do you get from this positive attitude for this fantasy or inspiration to a goal?

Well, you’d need to be concrete enough so that there is an action. Abstract enough so that you know where this action leads you. And we sometimes do this game of asking many questions of “Why do I want to do this?” so that you understand the abstract objective and then many “how” questions that leads you back to what is the action?

Why I want to do it—because I want to be financially comfortable. How am I going to do it? What are the specific steps that connect the concrete with the abstract? We want to set a goal that is assisted by specific targets. So some numbers, some deadlines. How much, how soon, right? Some subgoals: What do I need to do this week, today, this month? It’s not just the long term.

We want to be intrinsically motivated. How can I do it in a way that feels right? How can I find a way to meet my financial goals so that I get some pleasure from doing it, not just from being the person who has done it? This is a critical distinction in motivation science, between wanting to do something and wanting to be the person who has done it.

Hopefully, I can identify a way that feels right, that when I do it, I feel I’m making progress, that feels good.

Oscarlyn Elder:

We’ve talked about this before on the podcast, the importance of values. And when you think about intrinsic motivation, I think values. That if you’re going to take action, if it’s in alignment with your values, then you’re more likely to actually take the action, follow through, and maybe create a positive feedback loop.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Yeah, let me also clarify that when we think about intrinsic motivation, we actually think about the means and the end as colliding, OK. We are doing it for the sake of doing it. So, in the extreme, intrinsic motivation is what you experience when there is no goal other than doing the thing.

It’s like having a wonderful meal with the people that you love. Why are you doing it? Well, I’m doing it because I want to do it. There is no ulterior motive.

For most of the things that we try to motivate ourselves to do, it’s not extreme. I cannot say the only reason to do it is because I want to do it. Like, I go to work—well, it’s because I also want to get paid by the end of the week or the end of the month. I take care of my health. I exercise because I want to be healthy in the long run. And so it’s not like this wonderful meal or a stroll in the park on a spring day.

But it is also not awful. It does feel good. It does feel right. I do get pleasure from doing it. And these variations in intrinsic motivation, this is what matters. So, I am not suggesting that you will think about your goals as it’s just for the sake of doing it, but I want you to find ways where doing it feels good by itself.

It’s not just about where I’m going to be by the end of it. It is feeling good about what you’re doing right now, feeling right, feeling that you’re moving. You make progress, it feels right. You are the person that you want to be.

Oscarlyn Elder:

So the journey to the goal feels good and right.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Yes, and this is often where the intrinsic motivation comes from.

Oscarlyn Elder:

So just thinking through the goal itself, right. In order to have a goal—to call it really a goal, you have to take concrete action, I think is what I heard you say. If you’re not taking action, it’s really just aspiration with nothing to back it up.

So, having a concrete goal, setting that, taking action, and then having some intrinsic motivation to help move you toward that goal so that the journey feels good, so that the journey aligns with you, is really important.

OK. I think that’s very helpful insight for folks and within that goal setting, I think the other element that I heard you speak about was, it’s helpful to set a goal that’s measurable, that there might be a specific target, there may be a number associated with the goal as well. Or how do you think about associating numbers with any goal?

Ayelet Fishbach:

Well, given the part of what makes goals intrinsically motivating is that we feel that we are making progress, we feel good about making progress, we need to have a mechanism by which we know that we make progress. And the easier way is to have a number. How much and how soon?

You tell me that you want to work out. Well, what are you going to do? How many hours a week? How soon are you going to start?

You’re looking for a job. Well, how many applications are you going to send? By when do you expect to get a job? What is exactly the numbers that you can put on your plan?

These numbers tend to be very motivating. These numbers first make you feel like you’re doing something. And second, there was something interesting with putting a number on a goal where anything that is below meeting this number feels like a loss, and we are very motivated to avoid losses more than we care about gains.

And let me give you an example. I bet everyone that listens to this tried at one point in their life to walk 10,000 steps a day. It’s a very popular goal.

Oscarlyn Elder:

Yes. I try.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Not really the most important thing to do in your life, but, you know, worth trying. And what’s interesting about this goal is that you will find yourself after you walked over 9,000 steps just walking around your bedroom, basically trying to get the circle to close, trying to achieve the goal.

Why the falling short by 100 steps feels so much worse than going 100 steps above the goal? Well, because losses loom large. We don’t like to be just below our goal.

There is wonderful data looking at distribution of marathon running times. And many marathon runners would like to run a marathon in under four hours. And so you see that there are more people that finish just a few minutes below four hours than a few minutes above four hours. It’s not easier to run a marathon in three hour and 55 minutes than four hours and five minutes, but it’s the effect of the number. You want to meet your target. So, set ambitious targets. It will get you moving.

Oscarlyn Elder:

Set ambitious targets. So that’s a key takeaway for folks, right? An actual goal that you take action toward, an ambitious target, and ideally intrinsically motivated along the journey, that alignment of those things.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Yeah, you enjoy doing it, you know how much and how soon, and you are ambitious. If you always meet your numbers, you are not ambitious enough. You need to sometimes fail to know that you set them ambitiously.

Oscarlyn Elder:

In your book, you talk about the middle problem and specifically as we think about, especially, the financial journey, it’s a multidecade journey for us, right. It’s a lifetime journey often when we think about finances. And so the concept of the middle really intrigues me and how we think about that with goal setting and then also within our behavior, like our daily behavior. So, that’s a really long prelude to how do you think about the middle problem?

Ayelet Fishbach:

The middle problem. Well, I often ask people when I meet them live to think about a goal that you have achieved. It could be an academic degree that you achieved. It could be a financial goal. It could be a health goal. And then I ask people, when were you most motivated? When you just started, in the middle, or when you were about to achieve your goal?

So, if you think about it as some academic degree, so like your first class, in the middle, or your last class. The majority of the people say that they were mostly motivated at the beginning and the end. Very few say that they were motivated in the middle. Middles are a problem. We find that in the middle, people lose their motivation, they disengage. And now, Oscarlyn, you are presenting a goal that has a really long middle.

Oscarlyn Elder:

Yes, a really long middle. Decades of middleness.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Now, financial goals are particularly hard for several reasons. One is the long middle. Now, the other one that is obvious is that it’s just so long term. There was nothing in our evolution as a species that prepared us to pursue goals that will only materialize in 20 or 30 or 40 years.

Our ancestors had no bank accounts and no expectations about their life expectancy that suggests that that would be a useful strategy. So, we are going to do something that is very far in the future that we are not programmed to do well and that has a really long middle. That’s not going to work.

We need to have subgoals. I need to have a financial goal for this year. Because having a financial goal just for 20 years from now—my mind doesn’t go that far. That’s not going to be an efficient way to motivate myself.

You avoid the middle problem by having short middles. What makes sense for you? A monthly saving goal? An annual saving goal? The shortest that you can get it, the less middle, the more motivation.

Oscarlyn Elder:

So, what I hear you saying is that while we keep the long term in mind, and we’ve got this long-term aspirational goal that we likely have a number attached to, that could be decades long, a place that we want to get to, we’ve got to break that up into much smaller increments. And whether it’s a year or a month or six months, we’ve got to set some shorter time periods and arc toward measuring ourselves versus this shorter time period in order to keep ourselves connected to that longer-term goal.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Absolutely, and when you try to make it shorter, remember, it still needs to be meaningful. Let’s say that you are a salesperson and you only have a sale every other week on average. Then it makes no sense to set a weekly goal because on some weeks there will be nothing, right. For many of us, financial goals are not something that we can realistically monitor on a weekly basis, so the minimum will be monthly.

But then, as you mentioned, well, for some, it’s going to be six months. That’s fine. The shortest that you can that is still meaningful.

Oscarlyn Elder:

So, picking the appropriate time frame to keep the middle away as much as possible. That’s in essence—we don’t want to get stuck in the middle. So, whatever works for a family, for a couple, for an individual—a number of folks work with an advisor—whatever time frame cadence works for you, the key is, you can’t just look long-term.

You’ve got to shrink the middle to keep yourself motivated, moving toward that longer-term outcome that you’re seeking. That’s what I’m taking away from it.

If we can, I’d like to take a second. In the third section of your book, you talk about competing goals, specifically. And this part of the book really resonated with me and the experiences that I’ve had with clients and also personally. You talk about goal systems, which I think is the first time I had really thought about goal systems, even though we inherently have goal systems within financial planning, right. There are multiple goals, but you talk a lot about goal systems.

And I’ve noted that you’ve co-authored a book on goal systems, so I know this is an important area of your research. Can you just share with us, what are goal systems? How do you think about them and why are they important?

Ayelet Fishbach:

Well, goal systems are basically the organization of goals and means that is in our head. Like, how do we think about our actions, how they connect to some goals, and how these goals are connected to each other? And so you might say, I have my financial goals, I have my health goals, I have my family goals, I have my career goals. How do they all interact with each other? Are they pulling you in different directions? Are they something that go together? They complement each other. How are they connected to means?

When you pursue an activity, can you think of activities that will help you save several of these goals? So, for example, can you think of maybe preparing your food at home so that it is more affordable and healthier? You know, you took two goals that maybe seemed unrelated to each other. What does my financial situation have to do with my health? And I connected them via this activity of preparing healthy food.

You can think about ways of connecting and separating goals. We generally find that when people have greater awareness of their goal systems—and we often ask people to draw it, just, you know, what are the main goals in your life, put each one of them in a circle, describe how you pursue each of these goals. These are the means. And now think about, can you get means to pursue more than one goal, to connect your goals?

When people do this exercise, first, there is more mindfulness. Mindfulness is a good thing. It’s being aware of who you are and what you are trying to achieve, and when you write it down, you have a better insight.

Second, as people make the connections, there are two outcomes. One is that there is greater well-being, and the other one is that there is greater motivation. Let me give you a very simple example. We ask people about the conflict that we all experience, which is between work and family. Do you see these goals as conflicting or as complementing?

When people see these goals as conflicting—basically they think about this in terms of time and the time that I’m at work is the time that I take away from my family—they report lower well-being and lower motivation to work. When they think about work in terms of generating income and resources that will help them support their family, now they see that the family and the work as complementing each other. There is greater motivation to work, to advance at work, and greater well-being.

Oscarlyn Elder:

That makes a lot of sense to me. If we can see how the means are aligning together, then that leads to greater well-being versus internal conflict and kind of the tension there.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Yes. Let me add to this that as you write down your goals, as you think about what you do and why you are doing it, you also realize that some goals should, maybe you should let go of it. Maybe some things that you are doing really don’t fit your schedule, don’t fit the other things that you want to do in your life.

In particular, some goals we refer to them as temptations. Maybe they’re just not the right thing. Maybe the expense is really not necessary once you realize what are your priorities in life. Maybe a certain habit should be changed if it’s unhealthy for you. It does not support your relationship. So writing down also makes you realize what needs to be let go.

Oscarlyn Elder:

So, really clear advice that being mindful and writing down your goals is important. Actually put them on paper, I’m hearing is really important.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Yes. Writing down and connecting.

Oscarlyn Elder:

Writing down and connecting. Visually connecting, having that intentionality so that you see it in front of you.

So, the investment person in me is like, is there a maximum number of goals that someone should have? Is there a place where it gets—because investment professionals are known for complicating things that shouldn’t be complicated. We kind of have this running joke here on the podcast about that. I’m the queen of overcomplication at times. So, you know, my mind goes to—or, actually they call me chief overengineerer on the podcast.

So—but is there a place where you’ve seen someone’s goal system and you’re like, wow, this is actually just too much. It’s too complicated. It’s too much to manage. Or is there not such a thing? Is it really just individually driven and it’s OK if it’s that complex? Just recommendations there as folks maybe are starting out.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Well, it depends on whether the same activity can serve several goals, and then it’s totally fine to add goals. If you need to add more actions for each of these goals, well, this is not going to work.

So, you know, at one point in my life a few years back, I was offered a position as an editor of a journal, and one of my colleagues suggested that I will do it, and he said, well, that’s OK, just wake up one hour early.

Now, I thought that was terrible advice, because what do you mean, like, wake up one hour early? I will have to go to sleep one hour early. I’m not buying time by this, right? There is no more than 24 hours a day, so that’s not going to work. But if I can now connect this new position, or this added task to the task that I’m already doing, if I can think about how being an editor in my case also advances my research, now it becomes part of my academic work, well, that I can do.

Oscarlyn Elder:

So, if we have goals and they’re the means to the goals—I believe you call them multi-final, is, is that the right description? So, if I’m doing a task that attaches to more than one goal, that is wonderful, right? Because I’m getting extra bang for the buck, if you will.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Yes. I refer to this as feeding two birds with one scone, because I don’t like the phrase with killing birds.

Oscarlyn Elder:

OK, so we’re feeding two birds with one scone. We’re making all the birds happy. Same amount of effort, but it’s really impacting multiple spheres of my life, is the way to think about it.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Yes. You find ways to save money while also getting other benefits, like you bike or commute by walking, and so maybe you don’t need a car or you save money on this, and you basically get more for your buck. You get more for the same investment of efforts, which is much more realistic than suggesting that, how about you wake up an hour early so that you can get to bike before you go to work. That’s not going to work.

Oscarlyn Elder:

Not going to work. I will share, Ayelet, that I’ve had that recommendation made to me before. I would say a similar context and I love my sleep, and the reality is I need seven to eight hours of sleep regardless of what I’m doing in life.

So, I can’t just manufacture another hour. I have to figure out how to balance the priorities. And now I know how to connect my means to multiple goals, to align things so that it works.

You talk about goal juggling. This is really at the heart of it. It sounds like goal juggling that’s connected to the systems, if you will. And you write something very powerful in your book, and you have a statement that pursuing goals sequentially is unrealistic. And that really grabbed my attention, because sometimes I feel like I’m a very linear person and I think sequentially. And that was, I felt like a very strong call to action that we can’t always think sequentially. We have to think in a different way, maybe.

What do you think about that? What insight can you give me about that thinking?

Ayelet Fishbach:

You know, my example for why sequential goal pursuit often doesn’t work is again with that work-family conflict. Most of us cannot wait to retirement to start a family. So, unless you find a way to do this at the same time, you will just have to give up on one or the other. And I didn’t want to give up on one or the other. Many don’t.

And so you have to find a way to do things at the same time and basically to connect these goals. Another example: Many of my students here at the University of Chicago tell me that they cannot get a full night’s sleep. We are back to sleeping today. They cannot get a full night’s sleep and finish their homework.

So, either I do my homework, or I get a full night’s sleep. Now, I then ask them whether they seriously think that being mentally healthy is something that conflicts with being academically successful. And they say, no, of course I need my mental health in order to be academically successful. Well, so you now need to find a way to do both.

Oscarlyn Elder:

Right. So, you’ve got to find that pathway.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Yes.

Oscarlyn Elder:

Let’s arc for a second to temptation. You also talk about temptation in your book, and specifically you talk about how we might be working toward our goal, and we might be tempted to set the goals aside. You have a really wonderful chapter on self-control as well, self-control and patience, that just really struck me.

So I’d like to hear how you think about temptation and why self-control and patience.

Ayelet Fishbach:

A lot in your question. I would say that temptations are goals, are things that we would ideally want to do except that they conflict with something else. So, ideally there are many foods that I would like to eat, except that they will undermine my health. There are many purchases that I would like to make, except they would empty my bank account.

And so the solution is often not to completely give up on the temptation, but just to control consumption. There are only that much of unnecessary purchases that I will make. There is also that much ice cream that I’m going to eat. And when we think about goals, when people want to limit the consumption, to reduce it, there are two categories of strategies.

One is to identify that this is a problem, to realize that going on vacations is great—vacations support my life, support my life at work. But going to too many vacations and too expensive vacations is not something we can afford. Anticipating this in advance, thinking about my vacation in terms of what I’m going to do next year as opposed to, oh, I have a weekend or a winter break coming up in two weeks, let’s go do something fun, is helpful.

Oscarlyn Elder:

So, identifying early, so pre-thought, like, sufficient amount of time before you want to take action to really be able to think about it. And I think what we’ve called like a cool state before when we’ve talked about decision making.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Yes. And the cool state is often like the advance warning. This is coming up, this is going to be in your environment. There will be unhealthy food at the party. There will be the temptation to make these purchases when you are in the situation.

Then once you are already there, it helps to design your situation such that you’re going to gravitate toward what you should do, not what you should do less of. Kind of design the environment where temptations are less available; things that are consistent with your goals are more available.

And that leads me to your questions about patience, because often self-control is about the smaller sooner and the larger later. This is the conflict. Am I going to get, you know, in my experiment, $10 now or $15 later? Can I wait? You know, the classic marshmallow test: Am I getting the one marshmallow now or wait for the two marshmallows later? And here again, there are several strategies that people can use that are going to guide them toward making patient decisions.

To give you an example of one of them, if you make several decisions together, you are likely going to be more patient. If you decide today about $10 now or $15 later, and then tomorrow about $10 now or $15 later, then make the decision 10 times, you are going to take the $10 many of these times. However, if you collapse them together and I ask, do you want $100 or $150? Most people would say, well, $150 is better.

So, I just take small decisions and put them together.

Oscarlyn Elder:

Decision bunching, yes, that decision bunching. On the temptation, you talk about something I thought was very interesting: that idea of, I think you called it bulk identification, or thinking about temptation in bulk. Tell me about that.

Ayelet Fishbach:

That’s actually similar to the numerical example that I just gave. When we think about all the temptations together, it’s easier to see that there is a problem. So now let’s take losing your temper. We’re often tempted to lose our temper, right? People can be annoying.

Oscarlyn Elder:

It happens.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Yeah, it happens. Now, if you think about losing your temper every time, well, clearly I will not do this. Clearly I can control myself. I’m not going to be the person who shows up at work and starts yelling at people. But if you just think about, it’s just once, then you might be tempted to behave in a way that is not in your best interest.

I wanted to study where I asked people about all kind of semi-unethical behaviors at work. So, like taking home office supplies for personal use. Or using your business traveling budget to also cover a friend’s bill while you are traveling. And when I asked people to consider doing it just once, the majority of them say, yes, I will do this.

When I asked them to consider all the times this year that they will be tempted to do it, then the majority of them say, I will not do this.

Oscarlyn Elder:

So there’s something about taking an action and like multiplying it in aggregate that helps us in the decision making, perhaps, right? To say, oh, maybe I should walk away from this temptation.

You also talk about identity and thinking about your future self and connecting to your future self. I thought that was just really powerful, right, to contemplate who do I want to be in the future? What’s my identity? Using that and self-talk to help navigate temptation and ultimately staying motivated. And I may not understand—let me just be clear, I am not the Ph.D., so I may not be interpreting this correctly—but, you know, identity is so essential to all of us.

And I just thought, like, this is really powerful. This concept is really powerful. So will you explain it to me?

Ayelet Fishbach:

So, I think you got it, Oscarlyn. You are not giving yourself sufficient credit. Identity matters. Being able to think about your future self as the person that is similar to you, that you care about, helps. We started with intrinsic motivation. And when you think about your actions as a reflection of your identity, they clearly feel more right.

You feel better about what you do because that’s who you are. Because you get to signal to yourself that you are the person that you want to be. You are the person who is achieving her dreams by connecting the action to your identity.

It’s not just that I, I don’t know, saved $1,000. I’m a saver. I’m a person who’s getting to where she wants to be. I’m pursuing my dreams successfully. That’s identity.

And then you mentioned that the connection to your future self, which—now go back to the problem with the way our brain is programmed. We’re not designed to live to the age that we live now, and we had no ways of saving for the future, because …

Oscarlyn Elder:

It was perishable. We were living—I guess the currency was food and shelter, right? And, yeah, it was perishable. So you couldn’t save that.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Just use it, right? Yeah. It’s like I often feel that like when inflation is very high, we go back to our ancestors’ kind of mindset. Just buy everything now because you will not be able to afford it in the future. But luckily for most of our lives, the incentives are not quite to spend everything that we have right now.

And then we need to connect to our future self in ways that might require some practice. Luckily for us, we’re also time travelers. All humans, we are time travelers in the sense that we can travel in our mind to the future and the past, too. But what’s relevant here is the future. You can actually imagine what your life is going to be in 10 years and see that person and try to help her.

Oscarlyn Elder:

So having a vision of who my future self is, using that to help motivate me to identify the temptations that may keep me from achieving that vision. Anyway, just, I think, very powerful imagery and just want to encourage folks—again, very impactful.

And I guess one more question in this section of the book, because you’ve touched on patience as well. Are there any additional, I guess, tips or tricks that you have for us around how to increase patience? You’ve talked specifically, I think, about that decision bunching and how important that is. Is there anything else that you want us to walk away with—hey, that we should start practicing this in our everyday life to increase that patience muscle?

Ayelet Fishbach:

Well, you know, I don’t want to discourage you from reading the book, although you already read the book. So I would just give the general framework and then there are many specific strategies. The general framework is to think about what is the barrier for being patient.

Is it that you don’t value enough what you are waiting for? Or is it that you feel that you don’t have the willpower, that you don’t have the strength? These are very different barriers. If you are not sure that this is valuable, you’re not sure that you care about the future person that you are going to be, you’re not sure that you have clear goals, or you think that life is too unpredictable, then you need to engage in strategies that increase the value of being patient.

By the way, when you make your decision in advance, it’s actually easier to see the value in making this decision. When you make bulk decisions, decisions about many situations, it’s easier to see the value.

If you think that the problem is with willpower, then there are ways to increase your willpower. For example, don’t make these decisions when you are already overwhelmed, when you are in this hot mindset. Make them when you’re in a cool mindset, when you feel more thoughtful and rational and calculated.

Oscarlyn Elder:

And you bring out, I think, a very good point I want folks to understand. We’re having a brief conversation about a very complex topic and a complex book, and you do a beautiful job, I think, of writing it in a way that’s very relatable. You don’t have to have a Ph.D. to take this information in.

There is a lot of nuance in places, though, to kind of the research that you’re bringing together. And so as I read it, you know, I was writing and thinking, OK, in this situation, I need to think about X, but in this other situation, Y may apply. And so, again, I just want to make sure folks know that we’re offering kind of the highlights. But to get the full benefit, you probably need to dig into the text. And you’ve got a great list of questions at the end of every chapter that folks can turn to, that help move people to action.

You give thoughts for folks to key off of, kind of next steps that they can use in their own journey.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Yes.

Oscarlyn Elder:

I would like to take one other turn, or at least one other turn here, and talk about the fourth section of your book, which is really about the role of social support and motivation.

If you will, what does your research tell us about the role of social support? What would you call out for us that you think as listeners to this podcast, we should really key on?

Ayelet Fishbach:

Thank you for asking. So, as it turns out, many people have this imagery of pursuing goals as an individual project, as me by myself climbing the mountain, as something that you do alone. Which cannot be farther from the truth. There are very few things that we do by ourselves, and even when we do do something by ourselves, we do it in the presence of others.

They might be in our head. They might be around us. And let me explain this distinction. Some goals we pursue with other people. At work, we work with other people. Usually we start a family with at least another person. We take care of a pet usually with another person or people.

Other goals we pursue in the presence of others. They might be the people in my gym class. They might be the people around me in the office. When I go and buy food, there are other people and I can see what they eat.

And both are important. It’s important to be able to work with other people. And it’s important to think about who are the people around you and what kind of role models they provide, how they influence what you do. And thinking I will just do it by myself because I’m strong and self-reliant—well, unfortunately that’s not a great strategy.

Oscarlyn Elder:

You make a statement in the book, I believe, that shared goals are the glue that basically bind people together in a positive way. And I’m probably misquoting, but that shared goals really create that connectivity, that they’re an interconnection among folks.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Yes, now you’re actually going beyond that fact that you need other people to pursue your goals. You can also connect to other people by pursuing goals with them. So, not only you get the help of another person, and if it’s important that probably someone is helping, you also make a better relationship with them. Again, it’s like a win-win. And now there are two birds that are fed with one scone. I get your help and we become friends in the process. I got two goals.

Oscarlyn Elder:

And you talk about relationships and the relationship between spouses—or a couple, they don’t have to be formal spouses, but folks who are committed. You talk about that. There’s also some mention of parent-child relationship, and I’m thinking of relationships in addition to work, because I know a lot of the folks who were listening here are really thinking about their families and their legacy and how their families operate.

And one of the takeaways for me as I was reading this was, well, I need to be much more deliberate around how my husband and I are talking about our goals. We’ve been married for 30 years now, officially, back last month. So we’ve been married a long time. And so I would say, obviously, I think there’s been some goal alignment there, but likely there needs to be more explicit discussion around this and identifying where we have shared goals and that understanding of each other. That taking this action would actually deepen our relationship even more. That it could be a very powerful force, thinking about the communication loop.

So, how does this goal setting, sharing the goal, being known—which you talk about as well—being known and communication, which all of these are elements, I think, that we talk about often with our clients.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Well, first, congratulations on your anniversary. That’s a big one.

Oscarlyn Elder:

It’s a big one.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Yeah, I hope you are celebrating it.

Oscarlyn Elder:

We’re planning on it. So, we’re planning. We’ve got to be in the cool state. We’re planning. We’re trying to figure out what we’re going to do for it. So, thank you.

Ayelet Fishbach:

So, yes, we want other people to know about our goals. We want them to support us and often, like, be partners to these goals. What we find is that what predicts relationship satisfaction is often how much the person with whom you are in a relationship knows about your goals.

We look at two types of knowledge. There is how much you feel that you are known, and how much you feel that you know. That is, in the context of romantic partners—it’s not limited to this. It’s also at work, and with friends, and with neighbors. But in the context of romantic partners, you can think about how much you know your partner and how much they know you.

And what we find is that what predicts relationship satisfaction is more how much you feel that you are known. How much you feel that you are in an environment in which the people around you support your goals, even more so than how much you feel that you know that you can support their goals.

You mentioned the relationship with children. That’s actually the one exception, where in our relationship with our children, we care more about knowing them and knowing their goals than about how much they know us and they know our goals. So, it’s not that it doesn’t matter, but the relative importance reverses for our relationship.

We care more about being with someone who can support our goals. With our children, we want to know them and support their goals.

Oscarlyn Elder: So, it’s very important—again, I think a key takeaway—it’s very important that I feel like I’m known, that I feel like my partner knows my goals. I think some of your research suggests that it’s likely my partner may not—I don’t know if I’m interpreting this right—but it’s important that I feel like I’m known. Often, maybe we aren’t known as well as we think we are.

Am I putting the pieces together there correctly? Or we don’t know others as well as we think we do.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Well, there are always discrepancies. I think in general, we feel that other people know us better than they do. But that’s another effect. It’s related to the extent that you might feel that, yes, of course, the people around me support my goals. They already know what I’m doing.

Well, you’re probably exaggerating how much they know. So, it’s not that they have no clue, but you are not an open book as much as you think you are.

Oscarlyn Elder:

Or we’re overconfident in our assessment of it. So, another cognitive bias that creeps up on us: overconfidence. Very good. Well, this is fantastic information. As we think about, again, the relationship element, is there anything else that you would like to share with us that you think folks should keep, like, top of mind around that social support relative to motivation to achieve goals?

Ayelet Fishbach:

Let me add one more thing, which is that it is more important that your role model, the person in your life that inspires you, wants you to be successful than they display success in themselves.

Now, my example for that is from Michael Phelps, who’s an amazing swimmer, and I’ve been watching him for probably many hours, and it never inspired me to go in the swimming pool. So here I have this person who is amazing, and his success doesn’t rub on my desire to swim.

But then I have my spouse who wants me to swim, and that can get me in the water, even if he doesn’t do it. And so, get the people that want you to achieve something, to be successful, to pursue your goal. This is what important. It’s less important how successful they are by themselves.

Oscarlyn Elder:

So, we need role models and supporters who are invested in our success.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Yes. Another example: Kids that do better in school have parents that want them to be successful, and it doesn’t really matter whether the parents were academically successful or not. It doesn’t matter if a parent has an academic degree or not. What matters is that they want their child to be successful.

Oscarlyn Elder:

So, we all need that person in our corner, at least one person, if not more, who are just rooting for, supporting us, compelling us forward to achieve our goals.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Yes. 

Oscarlyn Elder:

It’s really important. I know here, you know, in our work, that’s really the way that I think about our teams as they support clients, right, is that they’re a group of folks who are expert, who are really trying to compel folks forward toward achieving their goals.

So, I’ve got one more question for you about your book, and that is that the subtitle of your book mentions surprising lessons from your research. And within all of the research that you’ve done, which is this really wide body of academic research that you’ve been involved in, what’s the most surprising?

Did anything just like take your breath away and you go, wow, that’s really counter to what I expected?

Ayelet Fishbach:

Oh, gosh, that’s a hard one, because there are many things that were not intuitive for us or are not intuitive for people. If I had to choose one, I would say that it is always surprising, the way to change ourselves is by changing something around us. It’s not direct. It’s not that I change my situation, or that I change my position. I change my success by telling myself, “Ayelet, you should do more, you should put more focus on something.”

It’s often an indirect way by changing something about my situation. By finding a really comfortable way to do my work, with surrounding myself with people who are excited about my work. By bringing healthy food to my house instead of telling myself, well, you should really not eat that junk food.

And so this idea that often it’s about changing the circumstances and not directly changing yourself. Don’t change your personality. Don’t yell at yourself. Don’t tell yourself that something is more important than you thought. Make it easy.

Oscarlyn Elder:

The environment matters. What I’m hearing is the environment that you’re in matters, what’s around you matters, and if you’re looking to change something, to reach a new goal or to change goals, instead of changing the core of who you are, look at the elements in your environment, your situation, that maybe you can tweak. Because maybe it’s just one small thing that leads to another.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Yes, exactly. Change something around you. You don’t need to change your personality. You probably cannot.

Oscarlyn Elder:

Yeah, like you are enough. It’s changing the environment around you.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Yeah. There are easier ways of doing something. So, you know, don’t think that it’s hard and that you have to, like, climb the mountain, I don’t know, run the marathon. Just find an easier way to get there.

Oscarlyn Elder:

This is really part of why we wanted you on the podcast, right. This insight, this fantastic insight that folks can take away. Before we say goodbye, one of the traditions, if you will, on our podcast is to ask all of our guests if there is one thing that you’ve been meaning to do, but you haven’t done and that you’re willing to share with us and to commit to doing in the future.

So, talking about the environment and small things. And, you know, some of the examples have been, for instance, I needed to update my estate planning. My daughter’s 17, almost 18, and we had crafted it when she was younger. And I was just uncomfortable with it. I needed to update it. So, I’ve gotten that done.

But is there anything that comes to mind kind of in your life that you would share that’s on that I’ve-been-meaning-to-do-that list?

Ayelet Fishbach:

What I’ve been meaning to do. There is so much that I definitely need to, I know, update my estate and, like, future plans, and I need to think about where I want to go next in my life, in my career. So many topics that I would like to read about and learn about more.

So, I think that if you ask me, like, what are the things that I haven’t done? There is a lot that just—I’m curious, I just want to learn. I just want to know how you do these things. And then in terms of life, do I want to be working forever? What comes next? What do I want to do if I retire or when I retire are things that I need to be doing and many others need to be doing, but, you know, we are working on it.

Oscarlyn Elder:

We’re working on it.

Ayelet Fishbach:

We are all a work in progress, yes.

Oscarlyn Elder:

Absolutely. I was expecting like one punch list item, and you kind of wrapped up and all that you talked about there, I think, what so many of us are thinking. And so many of us actually have a number of those items on our to-do list. So, I wish for you and hope for you the space to be able to dig in more deeply to some of those areas that you talked about wanting to explore, because those are big life decisions that are in front of you.

Ayelet Fishbach:

So, let me add just one, which is figuring out what is it that is top priority for me to do.

Oscarlyn Elder:

There you go. And let me just ask what’s your framework for figuring out what’s top priority for you? I think that’s fascinating that you talked about prioritization. So, given your academic research, how would you frame that for yourself personally?

Ayelet Fishbach:

Mindfulness. Basically asking the questions and be willing to engage with them with no immediate answer, understanding that some answers will take time to come up with.

Oscarlyn Elder:

Mindfulness. So, having an awareness that this is something that you want to contemplate sitting with it. Bringing it to top of mind on a regular, consistent basis. Giving yourself the space to kind of work through however you frame up that decision, is kind of how I’m translating what you just said.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Yes. Some answers take a really long time and it’s OK.

Oscarlyn Elder:

It’s OK. Ayelet, I cannot thank you enough for taking so much time with me and with our team. It has been a real honor to have you on “I’ve Been Meaning To Do That,” and I look forward—I hope you’ll come back and visit us again. And I just want to thank you for, I think, all the folks who are going to listen and take away really insightful advice and expertise.

And I just encourage folks to go get your book and begin to work through it, because I think it’s the kind of title that they’re going to work through once and then they’re going to pull it off of the shelf or pull it out of the Kindle again and again as certain situations come up. So, thank you.

Ayelet Fishbach:

Thank you very much. It was such a wonderful conversation.

Oscarlyn Elder:

I learned so much about setting and accomplishing goals from my conversation with Ayelet, and I hope you did, too. Here are the concepts that I’m really going to focus on for the goals I’m working on today and the ones I’ll set in the future.

First, goals are powerful. A goal captures a desired end state that guides action.

So, a goal should be concrete enough that action is required, but it also should be abstract enough that it captures the purpose behind the action or where the action leads you. Also, intrinsic motivation is key to moving toward your goals, and that’s possible when your goals are aligned with who you are and your purpose. And goals should have ambitious target numbers attached to them that help to motivate you.

Second, simply put: Middles are bad. We’re usually excited when we start working toward a goal, and as we’re closing in on accomplishing a goal, but for many of us, it’s the middle part that’s hard. We tend to relax our standards and lose enthusiasm when we’re in the middle stage.

So, the solution is to keep the middle short. That’s because time frames matter. Financial planning involves goals that are often decades long to achieve. So, to stay motivated, it’s important to establish subgoals with shorter time frames that are meaningful to you. For instance, saving goals may work best as monthly goals. Other types of goals, such as exercise goals, may work better as weekly goals. The less middle you have, the more motivation you’ll experience.

Third, write down your goals, organize them, and how you mean to achieve them. Writing your goals down and visualizing them increases mindfulness, and mindfulness leads to better insight, well-being, and motivation. Writing down a goal may also help you realize that you need to let go of that goal.

Fourth, temptations may be the things we want to do, but they conflict with something else. There are four main ways to battle temptations.

One strategy for addressing certain types of temptations is to limit consumption. Another is to think ahead and make decisions well in advance and in a cool state. A third way is to design your environment so that temptations are less available.

Finally, think about using both your current identity and your future self to help guide your actions. Think of your future self as a different person and envision who that person is in 10 years when she achieves her goals. Try to help your future self. Use the power of imagination to motivate your actions.

Fifth, few things we do in life are a solo sport. Achieving goals involves the presence of others. It’s important to think about the people around you and how they influence you, how your goals align, and how you support one another. A powerful role model, the person in your life who inspires you, is a person who wants you to be successful. They don’t necessarily have to be an expert at the specific goal you’re trying to achieve.

Lastly, if you’re looking to change an outcome, focus on changing something around you, not so much who you are. You often can make meaningful progress by changing a situation or an environment instead of trying to change your personality.

You can learn more about what we’ve talked about today and Ayelet’s book, “Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation.” We’ve included a link in the description of this episode and at the episode’s webpage.

And if you liked today’s discussion, be sure to check out Episode 10, where I talked to Tim Houlihan, Truist Wealth’s chief behavioral scientist. He offered some tips for approaching and completing year-end financial planning.

For you listening, thank you for joining me today. If you liked this episode, please be sure to subscribe, rate and review the podcast, and tell friends and family about it.

And if you have a question for me or a suggestion for this podcast, email me at DoThat@Truist.com

I’ll be back soon for another episode of “I’ve Been Meaning To Do That,” the podcast that gets you moving toward fulfilling your purpose and achieving your financial goals. Talk to you soon.