279. How to Achieve More Goals by Doing Less (Harvard Method)

How To Achieve More Goals by Doing Less (Harvard Method)

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00:00 - Why Most Goals Fail

00:20 - The Secret to Mastering Your Goals

00:39 - Insights from Dr. Srini Pillay

00:58 - Super Taskers & Context Switching

01:23 - Emergency Room Analogy

02:43 - The Handshake Analogy

05:10 - Reprogramming Your Brain

06:48 - The Power of Personas

07:48 - The Hidden Force: Your Unconscious Mind

08:29 - Working With Your Unconscious

09:57 - Cultivating Success

10:25 - Ways to Apply These Principles

Video Transcript (This transcript has been auto-generated. Artificial Intelligence is still in the process of perfecting itself. There may be some errors in transcription):

Ash Roy:

Have you ever set yourself a goal you truly wanted to achieve but just didn't follow through? What if the real reason for failure wasn't lack of motivation, but rather your unconscious mind secretly sabotaging you? In this video, you'll learn why most goals fail and how to design a structure that actually works for you, not against you.

The secret to mastering your goals and how to stop overthinking and finally. Three practical ways to reprogram your brain for effortless success. I recently spoke to Dr. Srini Pillay from Harvard Medical School, and he shared a hilarious handshake analogy that changed the way I thought about goal setting.

And by the way, there's a surprising connection between what Dr. Pillay shared and what Todd Herman, the author of the Alter Ego Effect, shared with me on this very YouTube channel. More on that shortly.

This is part of an ongoing series with Dr. Srini Pillay, a Harvard trained psychiatrist, where we are exploring neuroscience.

And how to use your unconscious mind to achieve your biggest goals. Let's do this. So the first thing I wanna talk about is why most goals fail the super tasker revelation. Now, Dr. Srini told me something that blew my mind, that only 2.5% of the population are actually super taskers. They can do two or more things effectively and do them really well.

But this number isn't about multitasking per se. It's about how they handle multiple goals. You see, most of us think we are really focused, but a high proportion of the time we are context switching chaotically between priorities. Dr. Piller explained there's a big difference. Between chaotic context switching and planned context switching.

He uses the emergency room doctor analogy for the large majority of the population. Context switching is problematic. However, 2.5% of the population are actually super taskers. So, for example, if you contact switching, because you have to, so if you're in an emergency room, for example, mm-hmm. And you have three, three people who need different stages of treatment, but you can't just.

Finish one person go from the beginning to end. Then by the time you get to the other person, the person may actually be dead, is actually going in. Quickly evaluate someone, put up a drip, say, I'll come back to you in a second. 'cause there's someone else who needs a drip. And then you go to another patient.

So that way you're actually going back and forth in a way that that's useful. Context switching is particularly helpful if it's done in a planned way. Now, if you handle your goals in the same way, deliberately switching focus between planning, execution, and reflection, you will see compounding progress without the burnout.

So the first lesson here is. Stop blaming, lack of willpower. Stop blaming yourself and remember that structure isn't about rigid routines, but rather about cultivating a mindset that allows you to move fluidly between priorities and enables you to follow through on the biggest ones. So, you can kick your biggest goals.

Part two, how mastery really works. The handshake analogy, this is a brilliant metaphor that Dr. Palle shared and it honestly cracked me up. The overt example that I described is, is the handshake. If you came to me and I was gonna shake your hand, imagine how weird it would be if I was like, oh my God, I don't know where his hand is, so I'm gonna like stop staring at his hand.

And so if I stretch my hand out and I was like, oh, I, I have to look at you 'cause I've gotta be conscious of where your hand is. Right. You know, you would look at strangely, that'd be really weird. Yeah. Yeah. So, and that's because in the brain there are seeing neurons, which allow me to see where your hand is.

And there are guiding neurons, right? So my brain can detect a position in space, and at some level you have to trust. The guiding neurons so that when my, when I extend my handout, my hand is going to go to approximately where your hand is and your hand is going to go to approximately where my hand is.

And that switch to what that is, is I think, a great metaphor for surrender. Like if you talk to anybody who's, who's sort of in the flow, for example. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not, they're not grasping onto things. We talk about people who are sort of in the moment of their day. And who are really loving what they're doing.

It, it doesn't even necessarily have to do with the task at hand. A lot of times it has to do with the fact that they have mastered the art of surrender. First, you build competence through repetition, and then you learn to surrender and trust your unconscious mind. Now, most of us sabotage our goals.

Because we don't trust the process. We overanalyze every move. But when you've built skill, the key is to get out of the way. That's what elite performers do. They practice consciously and then perform unconsciously. Let me say that again. They practice consciously and then. Unconsciously. So the action step here is to practice consciously master the process, and then let go of the results and just focus on the process and get out of your own way.

Don't get hung up on the results. I know this is easier said than done, but the more you learn to enjoy the journey. And not be obsessed with the destination, the more happy you are likely to be and the more successful over the long term. Okay, part three, this is about reprogramming the brain. Dr. Pilley calls this psychological Halloween, and honestly, it's a lot simpler than it sounds.

Let me explain. Dr. Pilley explained that researchers gave participants in this experiment a simple creativity test in one minute. I asked them to list as many users as you could for a break in one instance. They asked the group to imagine themselves as an eccentric poet and in another as a rigid librarian.

Guess what? The people who imagined that they were a poet scored significantly higher on creativity than those who imagined they were the librarian. Dr. Pilley said it was fascinating that the same person could reverse the result just by switching characters. Now remember at the start of this video, I talked about Todd Herman's research in his book called The Auto Ego Effect.

Well, he called this enclosed. Cognition. You can check out the link to the full conversation in the description of this YouTube video below. So here's your action step. If you are stuck on a business challenge or any kind of challenge in your life, ask yourself, how would an eccentric artist perform this task?

How would Steve Jobs do this? How would Bill Gates approach this? How would a detective think about this? And each of these personas you adopt as a filter. For your actions, activate a different neural network, unlocking new pathways to achieving your goal. Try it once a week. Become somebody else mentally for just a few minutes.

You'll be surprised at how often that shift gives you the breakthrough you've been chasing. Let me know what you discover in the comments below. I'd love to hear how you go. Okay. Section four, the Hidden Force actually running the show. Here's the interesting thing. Dr. Pele told me only about two to 8% of our mental activity is conscious.

The rest is unconscious. That's huge. He explains if you want to achieve something consciously, but your daily habits, your fears and self-talk quietly pull you in the opposite direction, you've got no chance because your unconscious mind is driving a lot more of your decisions and your actions than you probably realize.

Once you understand this goal, achievement becomes more about working with your unconscious mind rather than pushing harder and using willpower. I'll give you a simple example. Have you noticed that your best ideas hit you when you are in the shower or going for a walk? That's because your unconscious mind is free to unlock the creativity and the resourcefulness that your brain already has because you are getting out of your own way and you are allowing success to happen.

So our job is to feed the right inputs and give your brain this. Space to work. I love how James Clear explained it in our conversation where he talked about cultivating the soil around a seed. When you plant a seed, you don't yell at the seed and scream at it and expect it to grow. You nurture the environment and you allow the plant to grow.

Link to the full conversation with James. Clear in the description below. One of the best conversations I've had in a long time, part five. Here are three ways. You can apply these principles right now. One switch personas. Adopt the alter ego effect. When you're stuck, embody a different archetype for 60 seconds if you have to.

The innovator, the strategist, the artist, and your brain rewires instantly unlocks resourcefulness. That you otherwise couldn't access because you're unlocking neural pathways that are already there waiting to execute and free you from your trapped mind. The second way, strategic unfocus, after an intense work sprint, say 50 minutes or 25 minutes long, give yourself.

10 or 15 minutes to allow your mind to wander after first priming your mind with what you want to achieve in that wandering period. This isn't procrastination. It's priming your unconscious mind to connect the dots. By the way, we do these productive sprints in our membership community every Tuesday and Thursday.

And if you'd like to learn more about that link in the description below. And the third trick is to trust your training. Trust the process. Once you've done the conscious work and you've mastered the process, stop micromanaging yourself. Get outta your own way. Let your unconscious competence take over.

Like in the handshake analogy, these three steps will help you to achieve your goals with less friction. Because you're no longer fighting your brain, you are harnessing your unconscious mind. Now if you've found these tips useful, you should check out the full conversation right here with Dr. Sw, which was an absolute masterclass on how to harness your unconscious mind.

We'll add a link to the conversation in the description below as well. Your action step for this week, pick one goal you're struggling with and think about it as three different personas. The artist, the strategist, a polymath, summon your Steve Jobs, and then let your unconscious mind do the heavy lifting.

I'm Roy, an ex-banker with a CPA and an MBA, and these days I love helping small business owners to grow their businesses using AI based digital marketing strategies, which help them to attract better quality clients. And raise their prices over time. I hope you found this video useful. If you did, please do share it with somebody else who might benefit.

Do consider liking and subscribing and I'll see you on the next one. Ciao for now.