Stuff You Should Know - Are we obsessed with goals?

Episode Date: May 24, 2012

We've all been brought up to keep our eyes on the prize and our pedal to the medal when we go for that brass ring, but does the Western interest in goals verge on an insane obsession? Learn how goals work (and if they're healthy) with Chuck and Josh. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and he's here because he decided to be here and he met that goal. You're a successful human being, Chuck. I wake up every day and I set goals for myself.

Do you like just getting out of bed? Get out of bed. Take that shower. Take it across from Josh again. Clean those armpits, Chuck. Done. Good going, Chuck. You're a real go-getter. Yes. I have a bit of an intro. Okay. Slightly anecdotal. It's not necessarily newsy. Maybe this time last year it was newsy. But, Chuck, you heard of the Occupy movement, of course. Yeah. If you go down West Peachtree, you'll see like maybe 14 stout-hearted people. Are they still there? They're still there, man. Wow. Yeah, hats off to them. But the whole Occupy movement, one of the big criticisms of it that I remember, and I think is still floated pretty

frequently because I was just discussing this with my aunt and Yumi, right? My aunt's an old lefty, and she has like very pronounced ideas about the Occupy movement. What a great thing it is and all that, right? Yeah. And she was saying, we were talking about whether or not it's successful. And one of the criticisms of the Occupy movement is that they didn't have any goals. They were goal-less. Yeah. And so how could you ever even think about being successful if there's no goals, right? So my aunt was saying, well, no, they were successful in like spreading awareness that there's like a plutocracy and, you know, there's this 1% and they're in charge. So they were successful like that. They didn't need a goal. And that's kind of part of the point. Yumi made the

point that the Arab Spring that it was based on all had goals. They had a stated goal and mostly it was getting this one person out of power. So there was a measure of success or failure, and most of the time it was a success, right? Or at least it was an ongoing continued goal. So when I said that, though, when I was like, well, you know, they didn't have any goals, I felt like such a schmo like just a corporate like dude. Yeah. It's like, well, they didn't have any goals. So they failed at it. And I'm curious, like, I feel like we in this country are very much obsessed with goals. You're right. And we are we equate success with goals, reaching your goals. Yeah. And not just here. No, but it seems like the West. The West. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. I think we should explore that. Okay. Without any research whatsoever. Let's just start talking right now. Well, I was I was it was interesting reading in this research, because I was I was kind of all over the place. Like part of me was like, because we're going to talk about like, sometimes goals are great. Sometimes there's a downside to them. And here's sometimes you can achieve them, right? Sometimes you won't. Yeah. I was vacillating all over the place with it. Yeah. Emotionally, it was I was on a roller coaster. Yeah. I was like, man, goals aren't that great to set. Sometimes you should just be mindful and prideful about doing great. No, you can't be prideful if you're a religious type,

because pride is a sin. What's that to do with the goals? Well, you're saying you have to be prideful. You can't be prideful. You're hamstrung if you're religious right out of the gate. Okay. Yeah. I was talking about myself. Oh, got you. And then other parts of me said, no, you know, goals are great. And so I think where I landed was sometimes goals are great. Sometimes they shouldn't be around. Yeah. I guess that it probably is context specific and individual specific in a lot of cases too. But at the same time, I think part of the problem is like with this obsession is that there's we try to figure out how to streamline things, whether it's achieving goals or whatever. And so we try to shovel one size fits all thing down

people's throats. And in this case with goals, it's set goals and achieve them or be unsuccessful. Yeah. And there's also sort of two parts to this, which will be intermingled, which is personal goals and like corporate type goals. Right. And it's interesting if you look up goals on the internet, you got to go a long way to get past financial advice. Right. Almost everything is like financial goals, financial goals. If you're 20, you can think about retirement. Yeah, stuff like that. Or you run into that guy who's like, go. And for those of you who are like blinking and disbelief, yes, we're talking about goals. G O A L S. Yeah. And let's define what we're talking about. And everyone has an idea of goals, but we don't want it to get confused

with something like drive ambition. Right. Intention. Sure. So say, Chuck, you are, you're like, oh, I want to, I want to be a guitar player. That's an intention, right? Yeah. I want to be a good guitar player. Saying no, a good guitar player would be a goal that would I guess, but you want to play guitar. Okay. We'll just say that's an intention. Okay. Saying I want to be, you know, a, I want to be able, I want to be a performing quality guitar player within the next six months. That's a goal. Right. That's a stated goal. Or I want to learn the solo for carry on my wayward son by next Thursday night. You better, man. You've got that show in my Kansas cover band. You've been,

you've been talking a lot of smack. You better be able to deliver my Kansas cover band is actually called wayward son. Well, yeah. Yeah. Every Kansas cover band is called wayward son. Yeah, we have a club. Uh, so where should we start? Should we start with the downside of goals and then some of the more positives and like how to achieve them? Or let's talk about goals and how to achieve them. Okay. There are, this has been a tremendous amount of studies since the seventies and eighties, especially in organizational psychology. Sure. The field of psychology is to blame for a goal obsession. I guess a lot of people say. Yeah. And especially in the seventies and eighties, not just starting there, but that was when people were way into that kind of thing.

Yeah. Um, my family has this book, you know, the family bookshelf from like stuff like that, like what color is your parachute? Yeah. Um, there's one that I still have never, I've never been brave enough to crack it open because I don't want to like accidentally just get the snippet of information and I'm ruined as a creative person, but it's called, um, becoming a more creative person. You could tell it's like a goal oriented self-help book to become more creative. Is this at your dad's house? Yeah. It's at my house now. I adopted it. Maybe it's like full of cash. You know, it's one of those books that's hollowed out in the center. I've never opened it up. Yeah. So, um, I bring up psychology because there's a lot, there's been a decent amount of study that

under certain circumstances, you know, goals, setting goals can be helpful. Sure. Right. The problem is if you go to the internet or you get one of those self-help books or you start listening to self-help gurus, you're going to get a lot of information and not all of it is good. Um, but of course, all you can do is sort of study and ask questions on people who do reach their goals. Right. Uh, so it's kind of hard to determine what is good advice, but, um, I thought this one article in particular was pretty good because they listed out 10 things, only about half of which were good advice, but you will find these 10 things listed commonly. And they are? Should we just go through them? Yeah. Uh, number one, step by step plan, make a step by step plan.

Two, motivate yourself by focusing on someone else who has achieved a similar goal. Right. Like, look at Josh, he quit smoking and he lost a lot of weight. And think about me all the time. All the time. Drive yourself mad. Uh, number three, tell other people about your goal. You hear that a lot. Yeah. So you're sort of publicly accountable. Right. Um, think about bad things that will happen if you do not achieve the goal. I think that's negative. Okay, go ahead. Uh, number five, talk about the good things that happen if you do achieve the goal. Um, number six, suppress unhelpful or negative thoughts about your goal. Right. Uh, number seven, reward yourself for making progress. Number eight, rely on willpower. Number nine, record your progress. Number 10,

fantasize or visualize how great your life is going to be when you achieve that goal. So those are 10 that probably the top 10 techniques, according to a psychologist named Richard Wiseman, who, uh, wrote a book, I believe in 2010 called 59 seconds about goal setting and goal achievement. Right. Yeah. Those are the top 10 techniques cold from thousands of people. Yes. You wanted to give them the big surprise, the big twist to that list. That list has a twist to it, Chuck. Now you go ahead. Half of them are proven to make goal achievement harder. That's right. Uh, the even numbered ones were ones that, uh, people who try those techniques usually don't succeed at meeting their goals. The odd number ones were proven techniques that, um, that Wiseman found, uh, were commonly used by

people who set a goal and met it. Right. And sadly in his study of the thousands of participants who had like stated goals, like quitting smoking, losing X amount of weight, whatever it was, um, only 10% of them met their goals. But of those 10%, those odd numbered, uh, techniques were the ones that, that were, that proved successful. Right. And he goes on to point out that you can't prove that that caused, it's one of those causation things. Or it's correlated. Yeah. But correlated does not prove causation. That's right. Uh, so quickly, again, the odd number ones, these are ones that should help you out, uh, make the step by step plan. Um, and there's all kinds of, uh, articles on comp being concrete with your goals. Yeah.

And also it breaks them down into, um, sub goals or something smaller in bite size. So like this big amorphous goal, like becoming a good guitar player in six months, right, becomes, you know, I don't know anything about guitars, but learning this chord today. Yeah. And then this, and when you put it all together and you've been keeping track and writing it down, it's, it's controllable. Exactly. Your control freak for doing this in the first place. And now you are able to graphically display that habit. That's right. Uh, so make the plan. Tell other people about your goal. They say that's a good thing to do. Um, think about the good things that will happen, but they say to draw the line at like fantasy land. Right. Don't do that. No.

Like when, when you find yourself bathing in a lake of chocolate, you've gone too far. And also I want to say, um, telling other people about your goal. Yeah. You know, there's like whole websites set up to like publicly shame you really to keep you, uh, on track when you're sending, uh, when you're doing a goal, there's this guy, uh, wish I could remember his name. He did, he came up with basically the Twitter diet. Yeah. Where you tweet to your followers, okay, I'm going to do this. And then every day you weigh yourself and you tweet the results. And then if you've gained a little weight, everybody piles on you and calls you a loser or whatever. Wow. Keeps you on your, on, on track. And apparently it's been proven to work.

There's other ones where you, you log in and you track your progress. And as long as you're not a liar, it shows that it, it, it keeps you on track. Um, for things like quitting smoking or something like that. If you go and say, Oh, I had a cigarette today or whatever. Yeah. This thing will actually deduct an, a certain amount from your bank account that's connected to it, to PayPal. Wow. And they just take your money. Like say, every time I have a cigarette, I have to pay 20 bucks. And when you go on and, and keep track of this thing, just take your money out of your account and it's been shown to work. Hmm. Isn't that interesting? Because people like money. Exactly. Wow. Love money.

The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. My name is Adelita Paz, or as some like to call me, the modern day Selena. Sonoro and my culture represent Adelita changing the key.

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You know, I've thought about declaring something like on a weight loss plan to like the stuff you should know, Army, because that's a good. They keep you honest for sure. Well, but they're too supportive almost. People will be like, oh, it's okay, Chuck, you had an eclair like, don't worry about it. We still love you. It's like no one would hold my feet to the fire. You think? You know, you do pose a pretty, that is, I think you might be right. I mean, people would be very encouraging, but I think they would. Right. No, I see. I see what you mean. You need some sort of, it's too bad that we don't have like, I don't know, like a fitness podcast or something like that. Those people really hold you to it.

Well, I got it. Dude, give it a shot. Oh, I don't know. Give it a shot. America, Chuck, Chuck is going to need his feet held to the fire and you're going to do it. Well, on that note, though, what I'm doing now is I found that a poundage goal is just in getting on that scale is no good. So I'm working on like literally weekly and daily goals. Like I've got my little calendar up on my refrigerator and my little marker next to it. And I mark publicly in my household if I went to the gym that day and the goal each week is, you know, four times a week. Good for you. And the week said, I don't go four times. It's, I'm sitting there looking at it and it's shaming. I, I think you and I are going to go in together and get Emily a riding crop

to smack your thighs with every time you, uh, you don't get, then you don't reach your daily goal. Yeah. The poundage goal just, I had someone tell me, it's like, don't get on a scale. Just like, well, if you want a way to obsess, yeah, like there you have it right there. But it also, it works for some people and we're coming around right here. Like if that makes sense to you, right, right. And you then do that, but it works for some people for other people. It's just a little too much. Okay. So quickly, the remaining odd things that should help you reward yourself for making progress. Um, and that doesn't mean if you're dieting and trying to lose weight, you reward yourself with like the hot fudge Sunday necessarily. Yeah. Um, and then record

your progress. And that all ties into the accountability and writing stuff down instead of just visualizing and thinking about things. They say to be really concrete, like write it down, look at it, make it physical and real. Right. And that's why they think that goals work when they work. Yeah. Is they take things out of the subjective and put them into the objective. So, um, the, there was a study from the seventies, Bandura and Simon, and I can't remember Bandura's name, but his name is really familiar to me. He came up with something else. I guess it was habit formation, but, um, they, uh, they figured out that I guess they took a bunch of severely obese people and divided them into so the control group was told

to just do their best at losing weight. The other group, um, were, were told like you need to lose X number of pounds by this week and X number of pounds by this week, they're, they set goals. Right. And, um, they lost something like 50% twice or no, twice as much. The people who said the goals lost twice as much as the people who were just told to do their best. And I think it's probably because it's just saying, I have something to focus on to pay attention to quantify my progress rather than, you know, what is doing your best mean? Well, there's ambiguity there because someone might say, well, I did my best and my best just isn't good enough. Well, yeah, we'll get to that in a little bit. That's, that's absolutely correct.

And then now, not just with weight loss. I mean, like people during this whole goal obsessed seventies and eighties, um, there, there were studies of how setting goals could reduce like accidents in the workplace. Sure. Um, how they could reduce sick days. Like it became an obsession with companies. Yeah, still is. Yeah. Um, to basically say like, Hey, everybody set a goal and we're going to make a bunch of money. Yeah. Um, and there's, there's also this thing called stretch goals. Yeah, I'd never heard of that. I hadn't either. And I was like, that's smacks of corporate buzz speak. Oh yeah. I'm going to look that up. And in fact, hanging fruit. It was, yeah. Stretch goals was coined by the legendary, um, GE CEO, Jack Welch. Oh, okay. And he, he basically

said, like a stretch goal is something that you, some virtually unattainable goal that you give to your employees to shake them out of their, out of their ruts, basically. Which isn't great. People are finding out. No, but it's companies at least. It does bring us to a, uh, to a question though, Chuck, like this whole, the whole point of what we're talking about is there is, there is, why don't, why can't we just achieve our goals when we're the only obstacle? Well, there's been a little research done on the brain. Yes. And research does show that the brain tries to protect you from change. Really? Yeah. Um, like anything that's scary or fearful, which could be any kind of change in your patterns and your daily habits is threatening

basically, but not only that, like even remember when we were talking about chunking and habit formation on the video podcast? Yeah. Same thing. The brain is looking for a way to streamline a process so that it can use up the least amount of energy possible and carrying out something. And the way to do that is just get you to do the same thing over and over again. Yeah. Habit formation. Right. So our brains are naturally inclined. We think at this point in the, this, this point in neuroscience to finding the path of least resistance in carrying out something. So that's habit formation. Aubrey Daniels has a book called oops, uh, 13 management practices that waste time and money. And, uh, he argues that these stretch goals are not good for your company

because, um, he's decided studies that when people in departments fail to reach their goals, then there's a performance decline afterward. So you set up these almost unattainable goals and it's sort of a big bummer for everyone when you don't reach them. Yeah, especially if they've, they've been really, really working hard to achieve them. I imagine there's like an aftermath where you're just like, well, what's the point in any of this? If we're going to work our tails off and still fail. Well, and that's one of the points is that with goals, it's sort of looked at as a past fail thing. You could, I mean, I guess some, some managers are better at saying, well, we, we got 85% toward our goal and that's really great, but most of the time it's, we didn't

reach our goals. So we failed. Right. And that's, um, that's an inherent problem with goals is what we were talking about with subjectivity and objectivity where just do your best or raise $100,000 in six months. Sure. Right. Um, the, the good thing about goals is that they take away that subjectivity, but at the same time, like you were saying, they set you up for the, the measure of success is perfection. Yeah. And, um, that can be a problem for losers. Adam Galinsky is a professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and he is a co-author of a book called Goals Gone Wild. Yeah. Very clever. But he has a quote in here I thought was really relevant and he says that a goal setting has been treated like an over the counter medication when it should really

be treated with more care as a prescription strength medication. Yeah. And I think we're too willy-nilly with it. Right. Well, yeah, it's, it seems like a way to, uh, solve a big problem all at once. And there is a dude named Sim, uh, Sitkin at Duke who did a study of companies that do stretch goals and a stretch goal, um, a way to quantify it, say is to, uh, to be like the number 11 in-flight magazine in the country and to say, uh, you're, you're going to be number one in two quarters. We're going to be the number one in-flight magazine in the country in two quarters. The Apple Sky Mall? Yeah. Wow. That's a, that's a huge stretch goal. Sure. And they found, uh, Sim Sitkin, who's got one of the better, uh, business school professors' names

of all time, um, found that companies that engage in stretch goals typically are already desperate and embattled. And, um, if they fail at the stretch goal, they're in big trouble. Like, it's a last ditch thing. Right. And it's a lot to ask of your employees. And it's kind of unfair rather than saying, okay, you know, what's wrong with our organization that led us to this point. How else can, how can we do this incrementally? It's kind of like a Hail Mary pass as a stretch goal. Right. Uh, interestingly too, they've also found out that, um, setting goals that people don't meet, lead people to unethical behavior. Like when they're tasked to keep track of their own goals and report, they will lie, um, when they don't reach their goals. Yeah. Just to say they

have reached that, you know, ethereal goal. But it's also you're asking somebody in as many words and not so many words. Did, are you a success or are you a failure? Right. When you're saying, did you reach your goal or not? And, um, the other, the other aspect of, um, unethical behavior related to goal setting is this, um, the idea that when you focus on a goal, it's your, it's easier to compromise your everyday morality to achieve that goal. Oh, sure. And apparently, like that's, that's a, that's a possible outcome of, of goal setting is that people just start kind of cutting corners and cheating and doing whatever they need to to achieve that goal slash be successful. Well, or do weird and dangerous things like my father who like ate soup every

day for like a year and that's it. Like a bowl of soup and wore like one of those plastic suits around in the like July heat in Atlanta. Yeah. Uh, or, you know, I just won't eat anymore or although he, I think he ate like cabbage soup for literally like six or eight months straight. Wow. And it's just not like it's not healthy, you know. No, that's a great example. Yeah. It's something he otherwise wouldn't have done. That's kind of dangerous. Um, it's also, uh, so it's dangerous. It can lead to unethical behavior. Another downside that people have suggested about goals is that, um, they, they can keep you from learning. Yeah. You're so focused on this goal. Yeah. And then you're combined with the fact that your brain is in a habit

formation. So it's trying to figure out the easiest way to do this. One thing that you end up with tunnel vision and you possibly miss all sorts of other opportunities or ways of learning to do this thing better. That may have nothing to do with the goal, but we'd achieve that goal because you, you have blinders. I'm cool. Goal setting often is related to blinders like keep your eyes on the prize. Yeah. And we're kind of slipping here in and out of, um, organizational goals and personal goals. Um, but they do, they do share some common downsides. Yeah. What I liked in this research was toward the end of it, where, uh, some more forward thinking companies are concentrating less on, uh, a number goal that everyone has to meet and more on what's called

mindfulness, um, being in the moment, being present rather than focusing on the future. So this part stunk of positive psychology to me. Yeah, but I kind of like it. I think mindfulness and, uh, personal, like your goal for me, like, I don't set goals like with the podcast other than do an awesome job. Like I don't, uh, we, I don't, we don't have like, no wonder we've been lagging lately in the ratings. Chuck, like the ratings are nice, but you and I don't sit down and say, like, we want to be number five this week or we want this many downloads. It's more like you wake up and you just like, I want to do a great job today and be mindful and in the moment of that. And I know that's all hippie-dippy, but it's hippie talk. Um, okay. So for those of you who do want

to keep your eye on the ball and you do carry out goals and you set goals, right? Yeah. What, what are, in addition to those, you know, um, steps you just gave to setting goals, one of the things that they have to overcome, it feels like is a procrastination. Yeah. I thought this was interesting. Yeah. This is a really good interjection here was, um, one of the things that keeps you from achieving a goal, um, is just putting off, taking it up, right? And that whole like journey of a thousand miles begins with one step kind of thing. If that's not working, you've tried the tree falling in the woods thing, no Buddhist like, um, slogan, yeah, are working. Um, um, you should hear about this effect, the zygarnik effect. Yeah. Or zygarnik. Uh, this was named for

a Russian psychologist, Bluma zygarnik. Uh, although I said that like she was German. I don't do a good Russian. At least you didn't do a British accent for that. Yeah. Thanks. Um, she noticed something, uh, while she was, uh, eating at a restaurant in Vienna, reportedly, she saw, and I'm not quite sure I understand how it initially dawned on her, but she saw that waiters only seemed to remember orders, which were in process of being served once they were completed. They forgot about them. Yeah. Like if, if you went up to a waiter, uh, after they took the order and was waiting on another table and asked them about the order they just took, they could repeat it to you. Sure. But after they brought the food out and maybe the was made,

if you asked the waiter what that order was, they would have no idea or they came back and they were like, how is your steak? And you're like, I had the chicken. Yeah. And they go commit seppuku. So she did a little studying on this and some other people, uh, and this was in the 1920s. And then later on Kenneth McGraw, um, 60 years later, did some studies on the zygarnik effect, basically asking people to do puzzles and string beads together and do certain tasks. And then they would interrupt them sometimes. Right. And then quiz them afterward on what they remembered doing. And I think more people remembered who had been interrupted than who had completed the tasks. Right. And yes. So that's significant, equally significant in that Kenneth

McGraw study was that, um, something like 90% of the people who were interrupted in the task and told that they were done, they didn't have to complete it, continued to complete it anyway. That would be me. Yes. That would drive me nuts. If I like, if they gave me a puzzle to do and they're like 10 pieces left and he said, no, get on out of here. I would freak out. I would obsess about that the rest of the day. Right. So, and then forget about it. The whole, the whole point of this is that we have some sort of drive to complete a task once we've started it. So the key to overcoming procrastination as it relates to the zygarnik effect, um, is to just dive in somewhere, anywhere, anything, depending on, and they found and follow up studies, um, that if this,

if the goal is just too lofty, or if you really couldn't care less about the goal, um, the zygarnik effect is likely to not have that much of an effect. Sure. But if you do, you know, you're, you're taking an order for money and you need to remember it. Um, and you're interrupted, you're going to remember this, right? Yeah. Um, to get around procrastination, you, um, just dive in and start. And it sounds like a cop out to say the trick to not procrastinating is just to start, but it's true. And they point out that a lot of people can be frozen in and I was sort of like this with my backyard when we moved into my house. It was like, it looked like a junk yard, right? Like a barren dirt junk yard. And it was literally one of those things where I walked

back when we first moved in and I was just like, where do I start? Right? I was paralyzed. I was like, I don't know what to do. And then you pulled that first weed and within two hours, you had a brand new backyard. Well, that's the point though is start small and be like, you know what, just let me do this one thing. Right. And as long as you get that ball rolling, chances are you will continue little by little and eventually look back and be like, wow, I've actually gotten a lot done over the past six years. And apparently it doesn't even have to be at the, you don't even have to start at the beginning. True. Like you didn't have to start at the specific corner. You could have walked in the middle and started messing with whatever. Yeah. So the there's some traps.

We talked earlier about the techniques that don't work. Apparently some techniques, not only don't, don't help you achieve your goals, they actually are detrimental. All right. They're deletrious to you achieving your goals. I'm sorry, they're detrious to you achieving your goals. So for example, if you make a goal way too specific, you might get stuck on that one aspect of it rather and forget the overall part. Right. So let's say you wanted to be a better guitar player and that was your overall goal. But your goal was to be able to play carry on my wayward son. Yeah. And you focus on, you focus on it's just not working. It's just not working. Perhaps you just wasted a bunch of time working on a stairway to heaven

that you would have mastered very quickly and gain confidence from and then explored. Right. And rather you're just facing frustration after frustration. Right. You also don't want to have too many goals at once because then you're just, that's just pie in the sky stuff. Sure. And then you also don't want your goals to be too terribly short term. Okay. So like you want to be a better guitar player. Right. That's pretty good. Why not be playing sold out arenas eventually? And then an even better goal, loser? Mm hmm. It is. Okay. Or actually a good example of that is with my little plan now with the weight thing. Yeah. Like the weekly thing. There is an overarching two month and four

month goal. So it's sort of that sort of lines up with that. Yeah. Like it's not just week to week. It's week to week with a two month and a four month in mind, but not just two month and four month. Like I have to break down. I can't set a goal for a year out. Yeah. I've got to break it down. But I wonder if, if you set a goal for two months or three months. Yeah. And it was to like lose X amount of weight or go to the gym X number of times or whatever. But then you said it after you said those goals, a larger overarching goal to be, you know, to have like some better, better, a better cholesterol score a year from now or something like that. Sure. Would that work or would it set you personally, would it set you back

in your two shorter term goals? If you then made a longer term goal after this, the shorter ones were made. So like if I met the two month and the four month, if I made one for like a year after that. Yeah. Or you didn't even meet them. You were just like in the midst of them, you started to have them kind of like under control and you're like, Oh, okay, I might actually meet these. I'm, I'm in the thick of them. Why not just maybe set a longer term goal. I think that would work. Yeah. Which goes fits in the model of achieving goals can gain gain you confidence. Well, I just got my degree in organizational psychology just now. You watched it happen. Very nice. Yeah. Tricky son of a, you know what? The war on drugs impacts everyone whether or not

you take America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer for it.

Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. My name is Adelita Paz or as some like to call me the modern day Selena. Sonoro and my culture represent Adelita changing the key. A podcast series about the crossover dream of a Tejano superstar starring Diane Guerrero and Anna Ortiz. And there comes a time when you must decide whose dreams you will fulfill. What would you do for the world of pop music to know your name? Would you just risk it all

or play it safe? Do you have any idea how many artists have attempted to do just that? Adelita changing the key is the story of Adelita Paz and the compromises she must make to get to where she wants. Listen to Adelita changing the key as part of the Micultura podcast network available on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's see. What else, Chuck? Well, I know that people talk about the younger generation, people in their like 20s and early 30s are actually a little more goal oriented now than maybe perhaps they were 10 years ago. And is that right? Yeah. And I think people, especially women, there's a big movement for

turning 30 is like a big, big thing now. And it's always been a big thing. But like, there are all these blogs now where these women have these goals where I want to do this by the time I'm 30 or I'm turning turning, you know, I'm 29, I'm turning 30, and I want to get this done in the next year, like sort of a pre middle age bucket list type of thing. Gotcha. And I think that Eat, Pray, Love book had something to do with that. And that movie, The Bucket List. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, another guy, I think he wrote it. Wow. He was a fellow PA with me in L.A. Oh, yeah. And now he's like some big time movie guy. That's pretty big time. He had a technical who's pulling the strings of Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. Yeah. Yeah.

But we know a girl actually a girl who worked on our TV pilot, Laura has a blog 29 turning 30, where she wanted to do something new every day for a year. And I read it from time to time, and things kind of cool. And they're not always huge things like one might be like make a make a turk, bake a turkey for Thanksgiving. Okay. Like something she had never done before. In the middle of July. Or one might be go skydiving like there are larger ones, but every single day she wants to do something every day. Huh? Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, it's kind of interesting. And that's both short term and long term. But also, I wonder though, like what will be done with that? I see what you're saying now, when you reference the bucket list that we have become

like the 70s and 80s, it was very goal oriented, but it seemed more organizational. And now it seems like it's transition more to personal goal setting, like traveling and not just doing a bunch of stuff. I guess the point is what will be done when you know, that person turns 30. What will be done when somebody finishes a bucket list, and then they're kind of sitting around like waiting to die. Like there's a there's in this article that you put together. It was, you know, there's the pro goal setting. There was the goal can be goal setting can be good and bad. And there was kind of the anti goal setting. Yeah. And one of the things from the anti goal setting seem to suggest like, do we even need goals? Do we do we need to set them? Or is it

really actually kind of a bad psychotic thing to set goals, especially as like a regular habit? You know, if you are overweight and you want to lose weight and you want to lose weight, maybe goal setting is a good thing. But if throughout your normal day or your normal life, is goal setting a good thing? And I really think we kind of tapped it on the shoulder at the beginning. Yeah. When we said it's kind of tailored to the individual. It is with the weight thing. Some people might do very well with the poundage goal and not do crazy things. Some people might do better with, you know what, I'm going to start out this week by not eating sweets and go into the gym three times.

Right. But isn't there also a voice in there somewhere? And it seems like there's not these days, especially in the West for the people who said, I'm happy being fat. Well, yeah, that is one of the things one of these psychologists points out as the detriment of goals is it sort of puts a taint on personal acceptance, right? You know, yeah, because the idea is if I didn't meet my goal, that means I have failed and that I'm not good enough as I was, right? And still not good enough because I didn't reach that goal. Yeah. But even beyond setting a goal and failing, is there a place in this world and for people who don't set goals who are not not like shaggy from Scooby-Doo. Yeah.

But somebody who like, you know, has a job, goes to work, but isn't like out there like, I'm going to make an extra 50 K this year. I'm going to have three kids in one year. Watch this. It's crazy. You know, that kind of thing. Like just setting goals that like, like this is my life and it has to lurch forward. Yeah. Somebody's just like, I'm pretty happy. I've got cable TV. It keeps me pretty happy all the time. I, my car's a beater, but I mean, it still gets me tuned from work. I kind of like my boss. I don't want his job, but I'm pretty happy where I am. My wife and kids love me. I love them. We get to go on really, you know, poor vacations, but we go on vacations together and I spend time with them. Like those people are being edged out

by goal setting in this country. That was me and still is to a large part. Oh yeah, definitely. But at the same time, I feel like you have struck something of a healthy balance there too. I feel like you can make your life progress by leaps and bounds by setting goals and achieving them. But I think we should all be aware that there is a cost to that and it's frequently your comfort. Yeah. You know, good stuff. I wasn't sure about this one. You put together, you did a good job, I was sure of it. You said lots of words. No. Let's see. If you want to learn more about goals, I don't know where you'd learn them on this site. Do you? No, but we'd love to hear from you if you have encountered your own like 20s to 30s, young bucket list experience. Chuck does at least.

Sure. You can learn all about psychology at howstuffworks.com. We've got stuff on positive psychology, happiness, all sorts of crazy stuff. Just type psychology into the search bar at howstuffworks.com and I said search bar, which means it's time to plug our happiness audiobook. That's right. That is a goal. We recorded a happiness audiobook a while ago and I think it's pretty good interviews. It's got, which is different for us. We normally don't do interviews. It is good. We put some time and effort into it. Sure. My niece speaks. She quotes the dolly llama at the beginning and we got an email from somebody saying that tiered the listener up when they heard my niece saying that and I was like, yeah, that's cool. But it's good. Yeah, we have

professionals and it goes all over the map, man. We explore whether happiness is a good thing, whether it's a bad thing. It was just good. I'm proud of it. I like it. There's also our Superstuff Guide to the Economy right next to it. Yeah. Is that still relevant? Yes, because it was about economics. Okay. It wasn't, we didn't even mention the bailout. That's true. It was fairly evergreen. It was about the money supply. It was about supply and demand. It was about classical versus Keynesian economics. Yeah, you're right. It was good. Okay. They're both worth it. And they're both what, like four or five bucks? I think so. We're working on getting them elsewhere, hopefully, but you can definitely get them on iTunes right now

if you look hard enough. That's right. Just go to iTunes in the store and search Stuff You Should Know Superstuff Guide and they'll bring both of them up. That's right. If you want to get in touch with me and Chuck with your bucket list, you can tweet to us. A very short bucket list at SYSK Podcast. You can go on Facebook. Sure. Facebook.com. You should know. The new timeline page that I hate. Which you love. I don't know anybody that likes that. No, some people did. Some people were like, you're just old. You were just at the change. I'm like, what? That's crazy. Like, no, it's kind of clunky and weird. These are the same people who tell you it's okay to have

that extra eclair, huh? That's right. You can also set a goal to email us and you can achieve it by addressing it to StuffPodcast at Discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being

robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Wins the Friday on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.