Goal Setting – The Power of Writing Down Your Goal

Goal Setting involves setting specific, measurable and time targeted objectives. On a personal level, Goal Setting is a process that allows people to specify, then work towards, their own objectives – most commonly with financial or career-based goals. Goal setting is a major component of Personal Development.

Importance of writing down your goal!

Goal Setting really is far more effective, when specific steps are integrated with written time frames and dates to document our thinking.
Reality: Written goals clarify thinking, objectify their potential, and reinforce commitment.

Another secret of successful people is that they keep their written goals visible, and review them daily. One famous study from Yale in 1953 said that the 3% of Yale graduates who had written goals had more wealth years later than the other 97% of the class combined. To reinforce the study conducted by Yale, l read a book recently, titled Look Within or Do Without by Tom Bay. According to him, Harvard Business School did a study on the financial status of its students 10 years after graduation and found that:

As many as 27% of them needed financial assistance.
A whopping 60% of them were living paycheck to paycheck.
A mere 10% of them were living comfortably.
And only 3% of them were financially independent.

The study also looked at goal setting and found these correlations.

The 27% that needed financial assistance had absolutely no goal setting in their lives.
The 60% that were living paycheck to paycheck had basic survival goals (such as managing to live paycheck to paycheck)
The 10% that were living comfortably had general goals.
The 3% that were financially independent had written out their goals and the steps needed to reach them.

Now, the results of this study seem to be suspiciously perfect, but l’m not suprised at the overall implication. From personal experience, my life was shambolic until l begin to set goals and write them down, as well as planning my days. Then l started to witness significant improvements in my life and family. Without goal setting, I was working more and getting less in return for my effort. Why? The answer was simple: no direction and focus.

I can understand why people would not want to write down their goals. Writing down goals seems contrived. Banal. You think it might work fine for someone less intelligent & much less individualistic, but it’s not for you.

That’s what l used to feel. For years, I felt that way about, and made fun of, anything of positive thinking, personal power, or self-help. Then, almost by accident, l stumbled onto Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People and that book changed the way l thought about self-help.

If goal setting works for Harvard Business School graduates, couldn’t it work for you too? Let me leave you with this Joseph Addison quotation,
“There is nothing we receive with so much reluctance as advice”.