Rational economics doesn’t always govern how we make decisions about our money in the real world. As part of our series Brain Drain with Marketplace’s Wealth and Poverty desk, we’re exploring the ways in which our minds are rigged to cost us money. 

The second topic in our series: Goal setting. 

Run three miles a day, write 10 pages a week, make $50,000 per year. Hard targets can help us stick to a plan, but are they efficient? Colin Camerer, a professor of behavioral finance and economics at the California Institute of Technology, explains how adhering too closely to an objective can cost us.

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