Page 150 - Hard Goals

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solved X problems per block. Now we want you to improve your
performance by 20 percent.” And the “do your best” group was
told . . . well, you know. Amazingly, on the very next round of
arithmetic problems, 31 percent of the group that was given the
20 percent more diffi cult goal actually hit that goal. But fewer
than 9 percent of the “do your best” crowd improved their per-
formance by 20 percent.
I don’t want to overdo the examples, but I do want to reiter-
ate the point that having diffi cult goals will increase your per-
formance. Whether you’re growing a business, losing weight,
training for the Olympics, quitting smoking, advancing your
career, loading logging trucks, doing math, or rehabbing follow-
ing a brain injury, the more diffi cult the goal, the better your
performance will be.

WHY DO DIFFICULT GOALS WORK?

Diffi cult goals work because they force us to pay attention; we
can’t simply sleepwalk through them. Now maybe they arouse
our attention because they’re a little scary, or really exciting, or
they’re just a big departure from our normal daily routine. But
whatever the reason, they get our brains worked up. And molec-
ular biologist John Medina tells us explicitly that “the more the
brain pays attention to a given stimulus, the more elaborately
the information will be encoded—and retained.” 5
It also helps to remember that your brain is getting bom-
barded with requests for attention all day long. Maybe even
as you’re reading this book an e-mail comes in, a friend texts
you, your boss walks into your offi ce, or your kids call you for