It can be hard to align a meaningful life with the human craving for instant gratification. Many of the goals we care about most require planning and effort to achieve, yet our brains are configured to pursue rewards that come as soon as possible. Even deciding how to spend a weekend can feel like an impossible negotiation of trade-offs: Work or family? Save money or go out with friends? Rest or show up for a cause you care about?
Understanding how our brains weigh these decisions can help us bridge what feels good now with what truly matters. Recalibrating our decision-making process can help. That means making time to identify our bigger goals and thinking through clear and specific steps toward them. Then we can find ways to make small choices feel rewarding in both the near and the long term. Seeking out social rewards, reframing our choices and making small changes to how we consider each decision can help. This can make it easier to take action — even when challenges feel overwhelming.
Humans weigh choices in a brain network called the valuation system. It’s where we identify the options we’re choosing between, calculate the likely reward for each and make a choice. Close-to-home rewards ignite the system that pushes us to act. But when the rewards are distant or vague — such as influencing a sweeping government policy or making a major life change — the brain struggles to see the payoff, and motivation falters. That’s why doughnuts can win out over our health goals and why we might binge-watch a show instead of going to a town meeting, even if we’d say that the latter actions are more compatible with who we want to be.
In brain scans, neuroscientists like me can see these processes unfold. Rewards that are far in the future, situations that are geographically far removed or events happening to someone else are all represented in similar ways; future you is akin to an acquaintance. The less vividly we imagine a reward, the less weight it gets in our value calculations. But when we try to motivate ourselves, we often focus on long-term benefits rather than nearer-term rewards. We’re working against our brains when we try to motivate ourselves this way.
This year, I found myself in a situation that tested my ability to align how I was spending my energy day to day with things I care about deeply. The Trump administration cut billions of dollars in science, health and defense research investments to universities, which directly affects my lab at the University of Pennsylvania. This was part of a larger effort to cut health and science funding that will result in enormous economic pain, leave patients without care and make it harder to develop treatments for diseases like cancer, heart disease, dementia and depression.
I’ve lost loved ones to these diseases. I know the people whose jobs are at stake. And I know the cost of halting a clinical trial midway through. Despite understanding the stakes of these cuts, when the news first arrived about Penn, I felt paralyzed. I was unable to see how anything I could possibly do would help the situation. I’d lay in bed, doomscrolling — stress, after all, changes how the valuation system functions.
Taking a step back to reflect on what matters most to us makes our brains more receptive to new ideas. I had a brilliant team beside me. But I couldn’t take advantage of key tools if I acted in a silo. When we imagine we’re acting alone, we give up one of the most important and powerful sources of reward and resilience: our connections to others. Our brains are equipped with a social processing system that is engaged in thinking about other people’s minds and helps us understand and connect with them — including people who have labored on similar causes before us. When we feel connected, it immediately produces activation in the reward system and changes our value calculations.
My research team and I use social rewards in the lab all the time: For instance, we set aside time to do our least favorite tasks together. The commitment to show up for someone else makes it easier to start a task, being together makes the task more fun and seeing the people who will appreciate and benefit from that work provides meaning. Those achievements can then help motivate us to attain future successes. Now our team is using social rewards to help address our funding crisis, working together to build a website that tracks research cuts nationwide, and bring others to the table as we take broader action. Critically, just as other people influence us, our decisions influence them, spreading the choices we value.
Experiment after experiment shows that when the people around us care about something, our valuation system is inclined to value it more, too. People make healthier eating choices, get more exercise, choose to donate more to charity and are more likely to vote when they see that others value those decisions. The same tools work for other decisions as well. For instance, it’s easier to swap social media for reading when you have a regularly scheduled book club with friends.
Another tool that helps reframe decision-making is comparing where you are with where you want to be, and then using if/then planning to bridge the gap. If I want to be more physically fit, then I might decide to bike to work — and to facilitate that goal, I can decide that if it isn’t raining in the morning, then I’ll ride my bike instead of driving. This creates a concrete cue, making the immediate decision easier while helping achieve a longer-term ambition.
Other small shifts in how we think about our decisions can also make meaningful change easier and more sustainable. You could reframe your goal to stay healthy so you’re focused on the tastiness of foods that are also good for you, rather than just focusing on the physical consequences. Similarly, letting children read books they like and that interest them may be more motivating than focusing solely on their long-term academic prospects.
It is worth taking time to find these double wins — actions that are rewarding now and meaningful later. Sometimes the right choice is to rest or have a treat, but it’s critical to have the tools to make high-stakes choices, too. You don’t have to do everything, and there’s no single correct way to take action. But by making choices based on your goals and values, you’ll influence not just yourself but also those around you. Achieving hard things and experiencing joy in the process can go hand in hand, especially when we work together.
Emily Falk is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of “What We Value: The Neuroscience of Choice and Change.”
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
The post How to Decide, According to Neuroscience appeared first on New York Times.
