Goals and Governors: how your brain shapes what you achieve

We all have goals. Some are ambitious, others are not. But what I am about to tell you is applicable regardless of your ambition.

Your brain has a governor or brake.

The brake kicks in, depending on who you want to believe, anywhere between 40% to 70% of your goal.

Here is the funny thing. It is a percentage of whatever the goal you set for yourself.

Let us use the 70% mark for our discussion.

So if you said you will walk for an hour, you will feel tired around the 42 minute mark. But if you had said you would walk for half an hour, you would feel fatigue at the 21 minute mark.

If you don’t believe me, try it yourself.

Your brain has a protective mechanism that works to regulate your effort. It has only one goal.

To ensure you don’t strain yourself to within an inch of death.

Except, the same mechanism also kicks in to prevent you from over exerting yourself for the goal you set.

What if you forget that you wanted to walk only for an hour?

So how can you use the feedback loop to your advantage?

Use it to create stretch goals for yourself. Use it to get more done.

Remember, this law applies to emotional, mental and physical goals. So what ever the nature of the goal, your brain will kick in to reign you in once you start to get there.

So you might as well set big goals.

There is a catch.

If the goal is completely unrealistic, your brain will dismiss it as wishful thinking. It needs to be concrete and thoughful.

So you cant tell your brain my goal is to walk for twenty-four hours, without having walked ten minutes.

This is where art meets science.

Finding a goal that is big enough but one that is also realistic enough to get done. What do you want to get done?

Reach out to me on twitter @rbawri Instagram @riteshbawriofficial and YouTube at www.youtube.com/breatheagain