Own Your ONE Thing

The science of goal setting & achievement tells us:
1) Visualize success at the start.
2) Visualize failure consequences to maintain ongoing motivation.
3) Don’t reward every milestone. (make it random)
4) Learn to extend visual focus (blinks OK) to enhance mental focus.
- Andrew Huberman


One of the most interesting research findings regarding mental visualization is that when we rehearse a procedure in our mind’s eye, we tend to do it at the same speed as happens in the real world! In other words, if you are rehearsing a golf swing, your imaginary swing will take about the same time as a real swing. So for learning mechanical skills, there is a repeatable process that will help to augment your real world practice:

1). View the swing from first person and keep the picture super simple!
2). Perform at real world speed.
3). Swing 3-4 times in a row and then rest.
4). Repeat these epochs approximately 20 times for a total practice session.

This type of structured mental training and visualization can enhance neural machinery and increase the probability of proper execution by capturing many of the same features of real-world behavior and perceptions.

• Consciously moving your eyes in the direction of the thing you are trying to visualize can enhance the effectiveness of mental training and visualization, according to the five principles established from scientific research literature.

• Mental training and visualization can enhance the accuracy and frequency of skills that one has already demonstrated some degree of proficiency at in the real world, but it is not the best augment to real world training until one is able to perform it successfully in the real world.

• Put simple text based labels onto your visualizations, almost like a science textbook diagramming your success! Hear the “Mr Science” voice dramatically describing each label of your goal success.

But what about goals that are not directly linked to a physical performance outcome? It’s here that the minds ability to move through motion in “real time” can be manipulated to generate outcomes that happen faster than “normal”.

When thinking about the timing of your ONE Thing, you are not limited by the analogous “speed of your golf swing”. In other words - by accelerating and embracing the visualization of goal success and pulling that vision forward in calendar time - you can accelerate the actual realization of your goals faster than might be traditionally expected. Obviously the ability to put “visual rocket boosters” on your goal process will vary from case to case - but the principle is very important to grasp: All else being equal, visualize your goal arriving much sooner than would be “reasonably” be expected.

One simple technique to is to picture the squares of your calendar as Rocket Landing pads. Instead of your goal landing on a day three or four months from now, imagine it landing in three or four weeks, or even three or four days from now. In fact, in your minds eye, fill up the next 30 days of your calendar with as many “goal landings” as possible! As described above, keep imagining your goals arriving “ahead of schedule” multiple times over in a concentrated session, then let it go for a couple days and then repeat the visualization.

This bias for pulling “landing times” forward in your mental rehearsal sessions will pay off in all kinds of surprising ways - your significant other will be surprised how quickly chores are done, your colleagues will appreciate the steady stream of rapid fire task completion, and your goals will list will start getting crossed off faster than ever before!

Inevitably, your finances, health and relationships will all benefit by simply landing more goals much sooner! Just imagine it!