Kate Henry [00:00:08]:

Welcome to Honing In, a podcast for creative thinkers where we’ll hone our skills, explore our passions, and nurture our dream projects into being. Hey everyone, it’s Dr. Kate Henry, and today’s episode is a solo episode. I’m going to be talking to you about aspirational goal setting, why we do it, what we can do about it if we want to do something else, and I suspect by the end of the episode today, you may want to do something else. I wanted to talk about this because it’s a topic that comes up over and over with my clients and in the workshops I teach, and also in my own experience, even as a productivity scholar who’s been researching productivity for 8 years now, I still encounter struggles with setting goals that are a little too aspirational. As I prepped for today’s podcast, I wanted to make sure that it was fun for you to listen to and that it was helpful for you. So I dove into the literature to prep for this one, and I’ll be citing my sources for that in my show notes on my website.

 

Kate Henry [00:01:48]:

When we set goals to achieve our projects, we want it to go swiftly and smoothly and strategically. But if we have a negative experience that we hadn’t predicted, we can feel like we are a failure and we failed to catch something. We might fall into comparing ourselves to others or experience negative self-talk, and it can be a pretty terrible thing to experience. I know this because I’ve experienced this. So what do we do about it? Well, we identify why we’re doing this, and then we see if we can find alternative ways to move through it smoothly and with more compassion. Today I want to talk to you about a couple of cognitive biases, and a cognitive bias occurs when we construct a reality in our head about something that might not totally align with the input we’re getting. I want to start by talking about the optimism bias, which is where we underestimate the potential for a negative experience, and then on the other side of the coin, we may potentially inflate the likelihood that we’re going to have a positive experience. This was first described and demonstrated by psychologist Neil Weinstein, and Weinstein talked about the optimism bias in terms of college students’ estimation of how likely they were to encounter a positive experience compared to their classmates, as well as how unlikely they thought they were to experience a negative outcome compared to their classmates.

 

Kate Henry [00:03:20]:

For example, if we’re talking about college students, the optimism bias comes up if we say, how likely do you think you are to score in the top 5% of grades in this class? If 50% of the students say that they are going to score in the top 5% of the class, obviously this is not mathematically possible, but some students may say, yes, I am going to work hard. Of course, I’m going to achieve that high score. I really like this framing for the optimism bias from psychosocial rehabilitation specialist Kendra Cherry, who calls the optimism bias the illusion of invulnerability, and this one’s even more fun: a personal fable. So a little creative, poetic way to think about these psychological and scientific terms. An illusion of invulnerability. This illusion can be good in some cases. Some of the scholarship I read said that this can help us to promote lower stress, and the optimism bias could actually help to have better health outcomes. So for example, if you’re optimistic that you’re going to have a successful recovery after a medical procedure, you might be more likely to actually make choices and take actions that are going to support you in achieving that goal.

 

Kate Henry [00:04:46]:

So the optimism bias can be helpful for us, but it still is counter to realism in some ways. It can actually lead us to underestimate the risks from our behavior if we think that we’re going to be the lucky ones who aren’t affected by something. So for example, in the case of climate change, folks might underestimate the negative personal impacts on themselves in the future. Or in the case of parents who think their children will be better off catching an illness and think they won’t die from it, so they forego vaccines. In that case, the optimism bias might not be harmless. It could be harmful if it prompts us to ignore the real likelihood that something negative could happen to us as an individual, which can have a systemic negative effect on others around us. So even if we think, oh, it’s not going to affect me, but it is going to affect the world around us, then it is going to actually affect you. So the optimism bias can lead us to underestimate risks from their behavior, which can not be good.

 

Kate Henry [00:05:53]:

Something interesting I came across in my research was that not everyone is going to experience the optimism bias in the same way. Our brains are actually going to respond differently when confronted with the option to choose an optimistic or a pessimistic response. And this is particularly experienced with folks who live with major depression. How their brain updates their perspective is going to function differently due to the actual way that parts of the brain function. This is very fascinating, and I’m going to link to it in the show notes. An example of the optimism bias is the planning fallacy. This is a cognitive bias where we underestimate how long something is going to take us to complete, or you’ll hear some of the scholars talk as well around underestimate the amount of money or underestimate how large a budget will become when you’re working on something. Because we’re talking about personal productivity here, let’s think about it in terms of time.

 

Kate Henry [00:06:54]:

This is a tool that I love to teach because I find that folks can have an easy aha moment when they learn about the planning fallacy. It’s something that once we’ve realized we do it, we can start to make some other choices. It was identified by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. And something that I think is particularly interesting about the planning fallacy is that we think we are making a good plan because we have this inside view. Another language for the inside view is singular information. This is information where we’re just thinking about our specific case of doing this project. And this is commonly what we do with productivity. And I often encourage folks to think of this.

 

Kate Henry [00:07:37]:

What are the steps you need to take for for this project in order to complete it. It’s also important, however, to think about the outside view, or another phrase for this is distributional information. This is when we’re thinking about things that have happened in the past or other experiences that we’ve had with similar projects. I also would add to this, and when I’m working with folks individually or in a group, I encourage them to think about not just the inside, what do we need to do, step 1, 2, 3 for the project we’re working on, but what are the other projects that we are working on outside of this project, and how is that going to affect our time, our energy, or our focus? Again, we’re thinking about the best-case scenarios, and when we do that, we’re actually ignoring our previous experiences, which is why the planning fallacy can happen without us even realizing we’re doing it, because it could feel good to say, “Oh, heck yeah, I’ll get that thing to you tomorrow,” right? Because we’re not thinking about all of the times in the past when it’s really cost us hell to try to get something to someone tomorrow. The optimism bias is about looking ahead and assuming that we’ll be more likely to experience something good. And the planning fallacy is when we’re only remembering previous experiences that went positively and we’re forgetting the experiences when things took longer. An example I like to use when I’m teaching this is when I was in grad school and working on my comprehensive exams. For my comprehensive exams, I had to read 60 texts and I had to write 2 15-page papers.

 

Kate Henry [00:09:16]:

I thought I would finish this in like 2 to 3 weeks. And if you’ve ever done comprehensive exams, you probably just spat out your coffee and you’re laughing maniacally because that is pretty ridiculous to think that someone could finish their comprehensive exams that quickly. But I thought I could do it because of the planning fallacy. I thought, oh, I can write a 15-page paper in a weekend and I mean, I’m used to reading texts pretty quickly. I have to skim like 10 texts a week in order to talk about them in class, and that always goes really well. But the reality was I needed to engage with these texts on a much deeper level than I had planned, and I needed to first come up with a list of the texts and get them approved. I had to read them and take a lot of notes and figure out how I wanted to take notes. I had to draft and revise and draft and revise, and then I also had to prepare for my comprehensive exam defense, I hadn’t even thought about that when I was thinking, yeah, I can write 30 pages.

 

Kate Henry [00:10:15]:

So obviously my comprehensive exams took me a lot longer, but because I was just thinking of this inside view for them and the steps I had to take to do them, which was write 15 pages, I was not having a realistic take on the comprehensive exams. Like all the productivity tools I research and I teach, I encourage you to take what works and leave the rest and to hack the tool to make it work for you. So yes, the optimism bias and the planning fallacy are cognitive biases, but we’re all going to experience them in really unique ways. I reached out to my friend, Dr. Taylor Allbright, who is an ADHD coach, because I wanted to pick her brain about the ways that folks with ADHD might experience the optimism bias or planning fallacy in a unique way. She encouraged me to think about how folks with ADHD might experience hyperfocus, which means you are in a real deep state of focused flow with a task, and you may spend more time on it than you had planned. It can also be hard to just snap out of hyperfocus when you’re deep in it. So this is one of the reasons it might be challenging to estimate how much time something could take.

 

Kate Henry [00:11:28]:

Dr. Allbright also encouraged me to think about the reward pathways in our brain. And if you have ADHD, the reward pathways in your brain are going to function in unique ways. So it could be hard to predict how motivated you’re actually going to feel later to work on particular tasks. You might think now, as you are just planning out, you know, inside view, what do I do first, next, last? You might think that you’re going to be motivated to do something, but the actual interest and reward pathway might not support that decision later. I’m going to link to some great resources that Dr. Allbright shared with me when we chatted, but thanks again, Taylor, for your help here. So we’ve learned about the optimism bias.

 

Kate Henry [00:12:14]:

We’ve learned about the planning fallacy. You’re probably saying, oh no, Kate, I do these all the time. What should I do about it? I want to teach you a framework that I came up with a few years ago that I call the proactive plans and acute actions framework. And I came up with this because I wanted a way to help myself and others that I know avoid the pitfalls with their productivity, like the planning fallacy or the optimism bias. I tend to work with clients for many years at a time. And so I get to know them quite well and I get to know their patterns. And in that case, the proactive plans and acute actions framework is very helpful because we are addressing it towards someone’s particular pitfalls that they happen to encounter. It’s a 3-step process.

 

Kate Henry [00:12:58]:

And I’m gonna walk you through this 3 steps today. And I’m also gonna share some information on my website about this in the show notes. If you wanna practice this yourself later, I’ll share some prompts there. Step 1 is to reflect on your previous experience and to identify patterns when it comes to particular challenges. When you’re working on a new project or a goal, it’s important to notice what your patterns were in the past with similar goals. This is taking that outside view. Now that you know what the optimism bias is and you know what the planning fallacy is, you can probably see why it’s important to base your project plan and timelines on your actual lived experience and instead of some idealized optimistic version. I’m going to use an example from my current life for this.

 

Kate Henry [00:13:49]:

I’m working on a speech for a keynote I’m going to be giving in a couple of months. To practice the proactive plans and acute action framework here, I could reflect on previous speeches that I’ve prepared for, but I could also reflect on tasks that were similar, like when I was solicited to write an article or solicited to write a chapter. Because I know I’m going to be writing this speech before I am practicing giving it out loud. I could also reflect on how I’ve prepared for workshops for corporate clients, because that was when I was speaking to a large audience of people who hadn’t necessarily self-selected to listen to me, so I knew I wanted to be entertaining as well as educational. The goal here, when we are doing step 1, is to reflect on similar experiences in the past. And if they’re precisely the same, like you’re doing a grant proposal now and you’ve done grant proposals in the past, great. But no pressure if you are thinking about more general ways that you have encountered obstacles. So for example, you might just ask yourself, what worked when I did projects like this? What didn’t work? What did I enjoy? What stressed me out? Or you could complete this with a focus on a specific tool.

 

Kate Henry [00:15:06]:

And in our cases, we’re talking about the optimism bias and the planning fallacy. So let’s use that. When in the past have you underestimated how many resources like time or energy or focus or money a project was going to take you to complete? When have you overestimated your likelihood to have a good experience and it actually kind of bit you in the ass? You thought you’d have a good experience. Maybe you’re a little too haughty for it and, uh-oh, you ran into a challenge you hadn’t planned for. I know it’s happened to me. The goal here is not yet to come up with solutions. Instead, I just want you to notice what comes up in your reflections. For me, thinking about my keynote that’s coming up, I know I like to chip away at a project over many work sessions instead of binging it right before.

 

Kate Henry [00:15:58]:

But at the same time, I do know that I like to use the time before I’m giving a talk or giving a workshop to practice doing the presentation. When I’ve approached my work in the past, you know, just my business as usual work, I found myself feeling crunched and stressed, not just for working on that big project, but also because of the regular weekly tasks that I needed to do for my business. Not to mention the self-care or the hanging out with my partner or the taking my dog for a walk. All of those things need to happen as well. Step 2 is to develop some proactive plans. And the next step here is to examine this list of obstacles that you’ve written and use it to identify anything you can do now to help navigate or avoid obstacles in the future. So this is the proactive plans. The goal here is to set up some support based on your unique strengths, your unique needs, and the goal is also to increase efficiency effectiveness, but also to hopefully enjoy the process while you’re working on it.

 

Kate Henry [00:17:14]:

For me, with practicing my new keynote speech, I’m going to need to plan times to practice it in person for different groups. And I’m also going to be doing a Q&A with the speech. So I want to make sure that I can actually take questions from a live audience. That’s not something I’m going to be able to just rustle up a couple of weeks before the event. It’s something I want to schedule ahead of time. Because I know that I’m going to need time to prep and practice the speech, it means I need to be really strategic around taking on any additional big responsibilities between now and when I give this speech in a few months. This means it’s going to help me to identify some criteria ahead of time around what would be a yes or what would be a no if I am asked to take on a new opportunity. This also means I’m going to want to prep some of my weekly work ahead of time, which means I’m going to have to prerecord some podcast episodes and schedule them to release, or maybe I can batch some newsletters ahead of time.

 

Kate Henry [00:18:16]:

So I’m not going to need to create as much new content in the weeks leading up to giving this keynote speech. I’m taking an outside view here. I’m not just looking at the hours that I need to put into preparing my talk or step 1, 2, and 3 just for the talk. I’m also considering other projects and tasks in my life that I’m going to need to account for in order to have a strategic approach to this. Also, my spouse is going to be traveling a lot for work, so I’m going to need to take on more responsibilities at home and with care for our pets and doing cooking and cleaning while they’re away. So I need to plan for that too. I’m actually really good that I’m using this example for the exercise right now, because I know after I record this episode, I’m going to want to go in and block off some time in my schedule for this stuff. Step 3 is to develop a list of acute actions you can reach for in the moment if you do find that you’re running into an issue.

 

Kate Henry [00:19:22]:

I don’t want us to fall into the optimism bias here and pretend that we’re not going to experience these obstacles Even though I think we’re doing a great job of setting up some proactive plans, let’s also not pretend that we’re going to predict how we’re going to feel every day, or that every day is going to be a 10 out of 10 day. The goal in step 3 here is to streamline our decision-making later when we do run into an obstacle, whether that obstacle is something we can predict now or something that we can’t predict. We want to still have a list of things, these acute actions we could choose acutely in the moment. So we can get back to work more quickly and we can trust that we are making a good decision that’s based in our actual patterns. And again, not some idealized version of ourselves. The obstacles that I suspect I might run into regardless of my careful planning are days when I’m going to have long screen days and I might get screen headaches. This is just something that happens to me. I know this.

 

Kate Henry [00:20:27]:

And I’m not going to be able to work on screen. So if I do want to work, I’ll need to have something that I can do on paper, or I’m going to need a list of things that I can easily reach for so I can take breaks. So I know I’m taking time away from my screens. I also know that regardless of my best intentions to batch my newsletters ahead, which is something I just planned in step 2, I’ve never really been able to batch more than 2 ahead of time. So I still wanna do it. I wanna endeavor to try it. But I don’t want to be overly optimistic and think I’m going to have like 4 newsletters prepped ahead of time because that’s just not something I’ve ever been able to do. I’m not expecting myself to move mountains, and honestly, I’d rather plan to do less than to do more, if at all possible.

 

Kate Henry [00:21:14]:

So perhaps I’m going to give myself permission to do things that will make writing newsletters even easier or more streamlined. So maybe I’m going to give myself permission to write newsletters that are more heavy on the list. Instead of the personal narrative, because that’s a little bit easier for me to create. So today we’ve learned being optimistic can be good. We’re all going to approach being optimistic about our time and our energy and our effort expenditure in different ways. I hope that now that you’ve listened to me share my example and talk to you about the proactive plans and acute actions framework, that when you are starting a new project, you will pause and reflect on what your previous experiences have been with similar projects, and that you will set up a plan that is going to offer you spaciousness and going to help you to navigate obstacles if they do come up. If you liked learning about these tools today, and you’d like me to come talk to your organization about how we can use them to navigate obstacles as individuals and as groups, reach out to me through my website, and I’d be happy to chat with you. Thanks for all of your attention today.

 

Kate Henry [00:22:28]:

May you be optimistic, but also realistic. Thanks so much for joining me. You can learn more about Honing In and my work as a productivity coach on my website, katehenry.com.