Goal Architecture: Building Goals the Way Our Brains Learn

As someone who spent more than a decade in school and a lifetime in sport, the lead-up to September has always felt like a fresh start.

Every fall, athletes are either setting goals like making the team, winning a championship, or earning a scholarship, or they are reflecting on the end of the season and have begun to prepare for next year. These goals matter because they give us direction and reflect the experiences we hope to have, but they are only part of the picture.

Outcomes are often weeks or months away, influenced by countless factors outside our control, and provide relatively infrequent feedback about whether we're moving in the right direction. From a neuroscience perspective, that's an inefficient way to support learning. Learning depends on feedback. The more frequent and specific the feedback, the more opportunities the brain has to update its predictions, refine behaviour, and improve future performance.

The brain adapts through continuous cycles of prediction, feedback, and adjustment. Every movement, every decision, and every repetition provides information that can help refine future performance. This process unfolds continuously, often in fractions of a second. When our goals provide only delayed or infrequent feedback, they fail to capitalize on the way the brain naturally learns.

Given that's how our brains learn and perform, shouldn't our goals capitalize on that biology?

Outcome-based goals serve an important purpose: they give us a destination. The problem is that they don't provide the blueprint for how to get there.

Instead of relying on an outcome goal, I encourage athletes to build their goal architecture. Like any well-designed structure, each component serves a different purpose and together they create the conditions that make the outcome more likely.

Figure 1. The Goal Architecture Framework. Outcome goals identify the destination, while performance domains and process goals provide the structure through which learning, adaptation, and performance occur. Frequent opportunities for feedback allow the brain to continually refine behaviour, increasing the likelihood of achieving the desired outcome. Click image to download pdf version.

At the centre sits the outcome: making the team, earning a starting position, qualifying for tours, matching to residency, or landing the job. Around that outcome are the domains that make success possible. Depending on your sport or profession, those domains might include technical skill, physical preparation, tactical understanding, psychological skills, recovery, communication, leadership, or lifestyle habits.

Once those domains have been identified, each can be translated into specific process goals—the daily and weekly behaviours that move you toward the larger objective.

For example, "make the team" isn't something your brain can directly execute. Completing your pre-performance routine before every practice is. Resetting after mistakes is. Consistently communicating with teammates and coaches is. Arriving well-rested and prepared is.

Breaking a complex goal into its component parts creates frequent opportunities for feedback. Rather than waiting months to discover whether you've achieved your outcome, your brain receives hundreds of opportunities each week to evaluate performance, adjust behaviour, and strengthen the habits that matter most.

This approach also changes the psychological experience of pursuing a goal. Instead of feeling at the mercy of selection decisions, rankings, or results, your attention shifts toward variables you can directly influence. Progress becomes visible long before the final outcome is known, making it easier to sustain motivation when setbacks occur and to remain open to feedback because we know it’s a tool for improvement rather than a marker of our success or failure.

Angela Duckworth describes grit as the sustained pursuit of long-term goals. I would expand on that by suggesting that one of the reasons gritty people persist is that they don't wait for distant outcomes to tell them whether they're succeeding. They build systems that generate meaningful feedback every day.

Professionals aren't distinguished by their ability to pursue a goal without changing course. They're distinguished by their ability to continually adjust their behaviour while remaining committed to the destination.

As you prepare for this season, keep your outcome goal. Let it provide direction, but recognize that adding process goals creates a more robust training environment and, ultimately, makes you better prepared to achieve the outcome you're pursuing.

Take the time to identify the behaviours that will get you there and the specific actions required to develop them. Build goals that allow your brain to learn, adapt, and improve every day, regardless of whether it's on the field of play or not. This creates a framework that keeps motivation consistent, feedback frequent, and progress front and centre. These conditions greatly increase the likelihood of earning the opportunity you are pursuing, whether that's a spot on the team, a position in the boardroom, or a place on the unit.

Championships, roster spots, scholarships, and careers are the cumulative product of thousands of predictions, adjustments, and repetitions that, over time, shape both the person and the brain that got them there.

Our lives are shaped by the habits we build. Process goals don't simply improve the likelihood of achieving our outcome goals—they shape the person capable of sustaining them.

Goal Architecture in Practice.

To illustrate how this framework works, I've included a completed example using one of my own current goals. Although this example focuses on training my dog, Rudy, as a therapy dog, the same approach can be applied to athletic performance, career development, education, or any other long-term pursuit.

Figure 2. A concrete example of how the Goal Architecture Model can be used to translate a complex outcome into meaningful performance domains and actionable process goals.

The Cost of Overthinking During Competition

Open your calculator app.

Think back to the last mistake you made during competition. How long did it actually last? Half a second? Two seconds? Five?

Now estimate how long you've spent thinking about that mistake. Thirty seconds? Ten minutes? Three days?

How many times longer have you spent thinking about the mistake than actually making it? Do the math.

What number do you get?

You've probably spent dozens—or even hundreds—of times longer thinking about the mistake than in making the mistake itself.

Now ask yourself one question: Does that seem like a wise investment of your attention?

The problem isn't that mistakes capture our attention. The problem is how long we allow them to keep it.

A common thing we hear from our clients is, "I struggle to reset after a mistake." Or, "I can deal with one mistake, but if I make another one, I might as well just go home."

Mistakes matter. They're how we learn, and every athlete wants to improve. We need to notice our mistakes if we're going to benefit from them.

In other words, focusing on the mistake means your brain is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

Our brains are remarkably good at detecting errors. In fact, neuroscientists have named this response an Error-Related Negativity (ERN). Within a fraction of a second of a mistake, your brain automatically generates an ERN signal. You don't consciously choose this—it happens automatically. Think of it as an internal alarm that something didn't go according to plan and deserves your attention.

Noticing our mistakes is essential if we're going to learn from them. The challenge is that the ERN tells us somethingwent wrong, but it doesn't tell us how long to spend focused on it.

When we hold ourselves to high standards, mistakes can feel especially significant because they violate our expectations. That can make it difficult to disengage our attention, even when it's no longer helping us perform.

Once you've identified what happened and what you want to do differently next time, continuing to replay the same mistake rarely produces new insight. Save the replay for film—when it's actually useful. During competition, notice the error, extract whatever lesson you can in a few seconds. If the solution isn't immediately obvious, save it for later. Then redirect your attention toward the performance that's unfolding around you.

Performance follows attention

Once we've learned what we can from the mistake, the question changes:

Where does our attention go next?

When athletes tell me they're stuck on the last play, they're rarely thinking about the play itself anymore. They're thinking about what it means.

What if I do it again? What if I let my team down? I just cost us the game.

Their attention has shifted away from the task in front of them and toward imagined consequences. That's a problem because attention is one of your most valuable performance resources. Like any limited resource, where you invest it matters.

If your attention is tied up replaying the last shift, the missed putt, the turnover, or the shot that didn't go where you wanted, it isn't available for the next decision you need to make.

The competition keeps moving. If you're stuck on your last mistake, your attention doesn't move with it. You're still playing the last play instead of the one that's unfolding in front of you. That's rarely a recipe for success.

When you notice you've become stuck, simply recognize where your attention has gone and deliberately choose where it needs to be instead.

You don't need to stop thinking

One of the biggest misconceptions in sport psychology is that mentally tough athletes don't have distracting thoughts. They do. The difference is that they're quicker to redirect their attention toward the current objective.

The very best athletes don't ignore mistakes. They revisit them later using a structured process they've refined over years of practice. They learn everything they can from the error—just not while they're still trying to perform.

During competition, the goal isn't to empty your mind. The goal is to recognize when your attention has drifted somewhere unhelpful and invite it back to what matters right now.

A simple question can help: How should I spend my attention right now?

Whether you're leading the competition or trying to recover after a mistake, only one moment is still under your control.

The next one.

One final thought

Go back to your calculator.

This time, divide the length of the mistake by the total length of your competition.

Is that really the moment that defines your performance?

If not, why are you allowing it to define your attention?

Every second you spend replaying the last mistake is a second you're not investing in the next opportunity. Mistakes are part of sport. Learning from them is essential. Living in them is optional.

POSITIVE VS. NEGATIVE SELF-TALK: YOUR BRAIN PERFORMS WHAT YOU REHEARSE

In our previous post, we explored the role of perspective during self-talk and how using your own name can create psychological distance. Now, we're looking at what you're saying to yourself.

If you've spent any time around people, you've probably heard someone holler some version of:

"Don't **** it up!"

The intention is good, but the impact probably wasn't.

Most discussions about self-talk frame it as a dichotomy between being positive or negative. Although this can be a helpful distinction, it's actually more nuanced than simply being an optimist or pessimist. Another way to conceptualize self-talk is as directing your attention either toward the action you want to perform (an efficient use of brain power) or toward the outcome you hope to avoid (an unnecessary expenditure of mental energy).

WHY NEGATIVE SELF-TALK CAN WORK AGAINST US

You've probably heard someone say that "the brain doesn't care about the word don't." In fact, I've said it myself.

Your brain absolutely understands negation, but it has to construct the thing it's negating before it can do so.

Imagine I say:

"Don't picture a red porsche."

What happened?

Most people immediately pictured one.

The same thing happens when we give ourselves performance instructions.

"Don't hit the water."

"Don't flub it."

"Don't choke."

Before you can avoid those outcomes, your brain has already represented them.

This function has been tied to the posterior parietal cortex which plays an important role in representing intended actions and transforming sensory information into motor plans. It works closely with premotor regions to prepare movements before they are executed. In other words, our brains are constantly building internal representations of the actions we are considering performing. And if we are considering not doing something, the brain must first construct a representation of that action before it can inhibit or redirect it.

When your self-talk repeatedly emphasizes the mistake you're trying to avoid, you're repeatedly activating a representation of that mistake before you ever shift your attention toward what you want to do. If we follow the adage that "neurons that fire together, wire together," we are spending energy reinforcing the opposite of what we're trying to accomplish.

So, should we spend valuable mental resources rehearsing an action that isn't our goal, or should we invest those resources into building the neural sequence we'd actually like to execute?

BUILDING BETTER MENTAL PLANS

Imagine a skier approaching a gap between two trees.

Their internal dialogue could be:

"Don't hit the tree."

or

"Ski the line between the trees."

The physical outcome they're trying to achieve is the same, but only one instruction provides a clear action plan.

By giving ourselves positive instructions—that is, telling ourselves what to do rather than what not to do—we move more efficiently from incoming information to loading the preferred motor sequence for execution.

Beautiful efficiency.

The same principle applies whether you're competing, giving a presentation, performing surgery, taking an exam, or having a difficult conversation.

Instead of:

"Don't panic."

Try:

"Slow your breathing."

Instead of:

"Don't rush."

Try:

"One sentence at a time."

Instead of:

"Don't choke."

Try:

"Do it like you practiced."

Our goal isn't simply to be "more positive." Our goal is to direct attention toward a behaviour we can actually perform.

Positive self-talk isn't about pretending everything will go perfectly. In fact, there is interesting research suggesting that the effectiveness of positive statements depends, in part, on our existing level of confidence.

Effective self-talk is believable, specific, and actionable.

Sometimes it's motivational:

"You've prepared for this."

Sometimes it's instructional:

"Eyes up."

"Smooth follow-through."

"Commit to the first step."

The common thread is that effective self-talk gives your brain something useful to organize behaviour around.

THE TAKEAWAY

Your brain is constantly preparing for action.

The question is:

What action are you asking it to prepare for?

Rather than asking your brain to load and unload the motor patterns you hope to avoid, practice directing your attention toward the movement, behaviour, or process you want to execute. While there is certainly a time and place for strategizing or practicing how you'll respond when things don't go your way, game day isn't it.

Mental skill development requires repetition.

Self-talk is a skill.

Pay attention to the instructions you give yourself during workouts, meetings, conversations, or everyday challenges. Practice giving yourself clear, actionable cues before the stakes are high. Under pressure, we tend to fall back on what we've rehearsed—so rehearse the instructions you want to follow.

How Third-Person Self-Talk Can Help You Overcome Nerves and Perform Under Pressure

The Voice Inside Your Head: Why How You Talk to Yourself Matters

Most of us spend more time talking to ourselves than we do talking to anyone else.

And this running commentary follows us into boardrooms, onto playing fields, through difficult conversations, and into moments of self-doubt. Yet despite the power of this internal dialogue, most people pay surprisingly little attention to how they speak to themselves and pay the price when it works against them.

When people think about self-talk, they often focus on whether their thoughts are positive or negative. While the content of our self-talk matters (an important topic we'll explore in a future post—research suggests there may be an even more important question:

What perspective are you speaking from?

The Difference Between First-Person and Third-Person Self-Talk

Imagine you are preparing for an important presentation or game.

Let’s compare:

"I'm nervous. What if I mess this up? I need to calm down."

vs.

"Erin, you’re nervous and you've prepared for this. You know your material. Just focus on delivering the message."

Notice that the content is similar, but the perspective changes. A lot.

Rather than speaking from within the experience, third-person self-talk involves using your own name or the pronoun "you" when talking to yourself. At first glance, this can feel strange. However, a growing body of research suggests that this small linguistic shift can have surprisingly powerful effects. First-Person self talk tends to keep us immersed in our current state. Stated simply, we are less effective at managing anything when we don’t have sufficient space to evaluate and respond.

Why Third-Person Self-Talk Works

Psychologist Ethan Kross and colleagues have spent years studying what they call distanced self-talk. (Dr. Kross’ book Chatter is a great way to dive deeper on this topic). Kross’ research suggests that using your own name rather than saying “I'“ creates psychological distance from an emotional situation. Instead of becoming immersed in anxiety, frustration, an impulse, or self-doubt, you begin to view the situation more like an observer—or like a coach speaking to an athlete.

This distance matters because most of us are far better at giving advice to others than we are at giving advice to ourselves. When a friend is struggling, we tend to be thoughtful, compassionate, and rational. When we are struggling, we often become critical, emotional, and reactive. Distanced self-talk helps bridge that gap.

the Research

In a series of studies, participants were asked to reflect on stressful experiences using either first-person language ("I") or their own name.

Researchers found that third-person self-talk reduced emotional reactivity while requiring very little additional mental effort. Brain imaging studies showed reduced activity in regions associated with self-focused emotional processing, without increased activation of areas associated with effortful cognitive control. In other words, people appeared to regulate their emotions more effectively without having to work harder to do so.

Other studies have found that non-first-person self-talk can improve performance under pressure, reduce distress before stressful tasks, and decrease unhelpful rumination after challenging experiences. Participants preparing for public speaking tasks performed better and experienced less anxiety when they used non-first-person language compared with traditional first-person self-talk.

More recent research suggests that distanced self-talk may be particularly useful in preparatory situations—moments when we are getting ready for a difficult conversation, competition, presentation, or performance challenge.

Imagine an athlete standing on the starting line of an important race.

First-person self-talk might sound like:

"I'm so nervous. What if I don't perform well?"

Distanced self-talk might sound like:

"You've trained for this. Stay focused. Trust the process."

It’s counterproductive to focus on eliminating nerves. Feelings of nervousness are there to tell us that the thing matters to us. And it’s important to do things that matter to us, but we want to make sure we are able to stay connected to the importance without being swept up by anxiety. Rather than elimination (incredibly difficult to do), aiming to create enough psychological distance to respond to those nerves effectively is a more effective use of our mental efforts (because it can be readily achieved with a bit of practice).

The same principle applies to executives preparing for presentations, students writing exams, talking to your crush, families navigating difficult conversations, or anyone facing a meaningful challenge.

The Takeaway

Many people assume that confidence comes from eliminating doubt.

In reality, confidence often comes from changing our relationship with doubt.

The next time you find yourself overwhelmed by anxiety, frustration, or self-criticism, try a simple experiment. Speak to yourself the way you would speak to someone you care about. Use your own name. Take the perspective of a coach rather than a critic. Even better, be a mentor.

It may feel unusual at first. But the research suggests that a small shift in language can create enough distance to help you think more clearly, regulate emotions more effectively, and perform at your best when it matters most.

Everyone who knows me has heard some version of “practice under low pressure so we can execute when pressure is high”.

Self talk is a tool. And we use tools we know more effectively than those we don’t. Practice using distanced self talk in situations where you find yourself a bit elevated so you can get a sense of what it’s like to do so. That way, when the stakes are high, you'll be ready to giver.

References

Kross, E., Bruehlman-Senecal, E., Park, J., et al. (2014). Self-talk as a regulatory mechanism: How you do it matters. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(2), 304–324.

Moser, J. S., Dougherty, A. E., Mattson, W. I., Katz, B., & Moran, T. P. (2017). Third-person self-talk facilitates emotion regulation without engaging cognitive control: Converging evidence from ERP and fMRI. Scientific Reports, 7, 4519.

Gainsburg, I., & Kross, E. (2022). Distanced self-talk increases rational self-interest. Scientific Reports, 12, 119.