Orbitofrontal Cortex -  The ability to understand the link between actions and outcomes is vital for identifying effective strategies, and to flexibly update and refine your strategy as you learn and get closer to your goal.

Make A Plan A specific goal is better than a vague goal. But in the quest to set the perfect goal, we often miss one crucial detail—all goals are surprisingly useless without a certain type of plan. 

Imagine The Worst In order to take consistent action and stay motivated with your goals over the long run, it might be useful to experiment with going somewhere slightly darker. Dr. Huberman explains that it’s actually very motivating to think about what it will be like if you fail.

In other words, you should be failing about 15% of the time despite your best efforts. Why? Because it’s at this level of difficulty that you unleash peak motivation, focus, and growth.

Assessing Value -  When your brain is assessing value it is calculating the rewards and punishments associated with taking or avoiding a specific course of action and ultimately decides which actions are worth pursuing.

Procrastinate with Other Tasks Here’s why some pre-task multitasking can work:“It probably reflects some adaptive mechanism where you use action and somewhat varied multitasking action in order to generate adrenaline in your system, because adrenaline just gets you into action.”

Outsmart Your Obstacles Taking the time to identify potential obstacles ahead of time and then planning out how to defeat them can make you happier and more productive.

Bilateral Prefrontal Cortex -  Like any good CEO, your BLPFC helps you make plans, think across different timescales, and override habitual behavior—essential functions for goal setting.

Controlling Action -  When your brain is controlling action it is determining which actions you’ll need to take in order to accomplish your goals and which actions you need to avoid or resist.