Why is setting goals so important?
- Aidan Mong
- Oct 12
- 4 min read
When I was younger, my teachers thought it was really important that the entire class took at least 30 minutes to write out our long-term and short-term goals and how we would achieve them. Being in my rebellious “I don’t care” era, I found that whole activity to be incredibly stupid and useless. As a kid, it was hard for me to think that far ahead, but now, setting goals and making plans have become increasingly important.
To come up with my personal goals, I didn’t set a specific time to sit down and think about it. One day, I kind of just said to myself, “This is what I want to do,” and the steps I needed to take to get there fell into place. Of course, I did research to figure out the best path to take to reach my goal, and of course, my goal could still change. But, I find it super helpful to have a plan. My goals keep me grounded and they serve as a reminder that working hard right now will help me get there.
Over the past couple weeks, I got curious about the neuroscience behind goal-setting, so I started digging into research. From what I’ve been seeing, research has split the neuroscience of goals into two main pieces: executive function (neuroscience of the “way”) and motivation (neuroscience of the “will”).
Executive functions include attention, memory, and planning. These functions require a lot of effort and conscious decision making, mostly occurring in the lateral prefrontal cortex, parietal cortex, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). These areas of the brain are used in focused decision making,and the dACC weighs the risk vs. reward of an action or plan. Basically, what all of this means, is that the planning and actual choosing of a goal occurs in these areas of your brain.
Motivation stems from “wanting” something. For example, if I want cookies, I’m going to be more motivated to bake the cookies (or drive to the store to get them). Motivation relies on the mesolimbic dopamine system, which comprises the areas of your brain that will make you happy to achieve something (reward). In goal setting, the primary active areas of this system are the ventral striatum and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), which are important in reward prediction. The vmPFC compels decision making and interacts with the lateral prefrontal cortex, thereby integrating motivation and executive function. The combination of motivation and cognitive control leads to the actual act of setting a goal and making a plan to achieve it.
So let’s go back to the cookie example. I really want cookies, so my vmPFC will activate and tell my lateral prefrontal cortex that I want cookies. That’s the motivation piece. Then, the lateral prefrontal cortex will interact with my dACC. The dACC will weigh going to the store against baking the cookies myself, making a plan to get cookies one way or the other. In this case, I decide to bake the cookies myself because I would rather spend time than money on cookies. The regions of my brain for executive function and cognitive control will then work together to make a plan that includes finding a recipe, gathering the ingredients, and following the steps of the recipe. Finally, when my goal of having cookies is achieved, I will get dopamine from the reward system in my brain.
This is a super simple example of setting a goal and taking the steps to achieve it, and while the actions you take are task-specific, the basic neuroscience is similar across goals.
So what does this mean for us?
It doesn’t mean that you have to take thirty minutes to make a goal and a plan, but it does mean that having a goal will increase cognitive function and dopamine levels in your brain. Thinking about something you really want, even if you don’t have it right now, is going to make you happy. Where we start to experience problems, though, is burn-out and negative thinking.
Burn-out occurs when we limit ourselves psychologically. When we only focus on one thing for too long, our motivational pathways are going to get tired, and this psychological fatigue leads to burn-out. It’s important to remember that even though you really want to achieve your goal, taking time to take care of yourself and have fun is also really important. The cookie example won’t really work in this scenario, but say you want to get straight A’s in your classes this year. That’s going to take a lot of hard work, and you know that, so you only focus on school. You study for six hours a day on top of classes and you don’t leave yourself any time for friends or other activities. You get tired, and suddenly, trying to achieve that goal doesn’t make you happy anymore. That’s burn-out.
The other thing that can happen is negative self-talk. I’m a really ambitious person, so some of my goals are really lofty. There’s a part of me that tells me that maybe I can’t achieve my goals. That I’m not good enough. These thoughts come from cognitive distortion, which can occur when you catastrophize or filter out positive experiences. Catastrophizing is defined as seeing the worst in a situation. I’m definitely guilty of this one, but that’s okay. With the straight A’s example, if you get a B on one test in your biology class, you start thinking that you’ll never get straight A’s because you’re going to fail biology. That’s not necessarily true. You just have to remind yourself that it’s one test, and you’re not failing the class. If you get a B on that one test, but you’ve gotten A’s on all the other ones in that class, you’re filtering out the positive experiences. That’s when you ignore everything good that’s happening and only focus on the bad. In that case, you have to remind yourself that you’re actually doing quite well in the class and bring the focus back to the positive.
So, yes, setting goals is important, and your third-grade teacher was right to remind you of that. But taking time for yourself is equally important. As a senior applying to college, I have some big goals for myself, and I’m sure you do, too. So good luck, and trust the process.
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