Keep Your Goals to Yourself

Here’s some interesting advice – in the video below, Derek Sivers explains that psychologists have shown that telling people about your goals makes you less likely to do the work necessary to achieve them. This goes against the traditional thinking where we’ve been told that its good to tell a friend about our goal so that they can hold us accountable.

From my personal experience, I tend to agree to with Derek’s view. I’ve always kept my biggest goals over the last 10 years to myself. Not because I knew about these psychology studies but because one of my fears is being ridiculed about them.

I’ve also experienced what Derek talked about in his video. For example, there was a few times when I shared a tweet or posted on Facebook that I’m going to work on something that I was excited about. To which some friends would reply with accolades and encouragement as friends do. And then the motivation I feel is diminished because the social “reward” albeit undeserved has already been had. Has this ever happened to you?

My conclusion is that this is actually pretty darn good advice. I do think that if you have big goals, write them down, live them everyday in your mind but don’t ever, ever tell people about them until AFTER you’ve achieved them.

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Tags: achieving goals, derek sivers, Goal Setting, ted