The Power of Setting Challenging Goals to Combat Mental Fatigue

Setting challenging goals can reduce mental fatigue

Posted 2024.03.11 22:05 Posted 2024.03.11 22:05 Modified 2024.03.11 14:25 Views 0

Is it possible for people to engage in mental tasks without feeling fatigued? [사진=게티이미지뱅크]Even if you haven’t done much physical exertion, such as working at night, you may feel dizzy, distracted, and exhausted after a long project. Regarding this phenomenon, some scholars have argued that just as physical activity causes muscle fatigue, mental effort depletes the limited energy reserve and causes fatigue. This is because the brain consumes energy in the form of glucose and may later become insufficient.

According to the non-profit academic media The Conversation, this mental fatigue is primarily a psychological phenomenon and can be corrected by setting goals.

World War II psychologists studied why soldiers monitoring radar lost concentration during shifts. Psychologist Norman Macworth asked military participants to look at a large clock on the wall for up to two hours. The second hand ticked at regular intervals, but occasionally jumped two spaces unpredictably. Participants were asked to detect these changes in the second hand.

Within the first 30 minutes, participants’ detection abilities decreased significantly. But thereafter it continued to decline gradually. In response to this, psychologists called the necessary mental concentration “vigilance” and concluded that vigilance in humans is fundamentally limited.

Since then, decades of research have confirmed that it is difficult to maintain vigilance even for a short period of time. Studies have shown that people report feeling stressed and tired even after short tasks that put them on alert. Another study found that blood flow through the brain decreases during periods of alertness.

Is it possible for people to engage in mental tasks without feeling fatigued? The researchers conducted three experiments to study whether goal setting can improve mental focus. In the first experiment, 108 college students were shown a screen with four blank white boxes on a gray background. Every 1-3 seconds an X appeared in one of the four boxes. Participants were asked to indicate as quickly as possible where the symbol appeared. During the 26-minute test, participants were periodically asked to rate their mental state as task-focused, distracted, or wandering.

Additionally, specific goals were randomly presented to half of the participants. The goal was to keep reaction times under 400 milliseconds while maintaining the highest possible precision.

The study found that people who were given specific goals did not experience as many slow reaction times. However, having a goal did not increase top speed. Additionally, the frequency with which people felt distracted did not change.

The second experiment involved assigning goals to half of the 112 new participants and not assigning goals to the other half. This time, as the experiment progressed, the target difficulty was increased from 450 milliseconds to 400 milliseconds and in the final block to 350 milliseconds. Studies have shown that setting more difficult goals over time has a significant impact on performance.

Compared to participants who were given hard goals in the first experiment, reaction times were on average 45 milliseconds faster for participants who were given increasingly difficult goals in the second experiment. Participants in the second experiment also reported fewer instances of mind wandering and showed no slowing of reaction times during the experiment. In other words, they showed no signs of mental fatigue. The third experiment was a repeat of the second experiment and the results were the same.

Ultimately, people are more motivated when they work toward specific, hard-to-achieve goals and don’t feel exhausted by mental tasks.

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