Dr. Kentaro Fujita

But this suggests to us is that there may be a bias that when people are saying, okay, I want to go on a diet, I want to exercise more, I want to do whatever, they might be defaulting to abstinence when in fact they might be better off doing some version of moderation.

I think one of the things that, you know, one of the ideas that we've been playing around with is this notion that there might be sort of two modes of goal pursuit that people have.

One of them is the single goal.

Like here's the most important thing in my life and I'm going to sacrifice everything for it.

And again, that's very effective for getting things done.

And I think some of the most highly productive, highly successful people specialize in that mode.

And I think our society is actually really good at advancing that idea.

Like they say, like, you know, study when you're young, throw everything into it.

That's not important.

Put your effort into this.

We're really a very goal-directed society.

I think we raise our... I think, you know, we're really raising our kids to be that way, saying like, you know...

You got to do X, Y, Z. So if you want to be an athlete, you have to do this, this, this, this, this.

If you want to be a scientist, you have to do this, this, this.

If you're a doctor, this, this, this, this.

So we kind of track them really quickly and then everything becomes about that singular goal.

But humans, we never pursue one goal at a time.

The truth is we are pursuing in our lives multiple goals.

So

I have a goal to spend time with, you know, to work obviously, but I also want to spend time with family and friends.