Goal setting involves setting specific, measurable, and time-specific goals. In an organizational or business context, it can be an effective tool for progress by ensuring that participants are clearly aware of what is expected of them if a goal is to be achieved. On a personal level, goal setting is a process that allows people to specify and then work to achieve their own goals, most commonly financial or career-based goals. Goal setting is an important component of personal development.
Importance of writing down your goal!
Goal setting is much more effective when specific steps are integrated with written deadlines and dates to document our thinking. Reality: Written goals clarify thinking, objectify your potential, and reinforce commitment. Another secret of successful people is that they keep their goals written down.
view and review them daily. A famous Yale study 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 done by Yale, I read a book recently titled “Look In or Out” by Tom Bay. According to Mr. Bay, Harvard Business School conducted a study on the financial status of its students 10 years after graduation and found that:
– Up to 27% of them needed financial assistance.
– A whopping 60% of them lived paycheck to paycheck.
– A mere 10% of them lived comfortably.
– And only 3% of them were financially independent.
The study also looked at goal setting and found these interesting correlations.
– The 27% who needed financial assistance had absolutely no goal setting process in their lives.
– The 60% who lived paycheck to paycheck had basic survival goals, such as living paycheck to paycheck.
– The 10% who lived comfortably had general goals. They thought they knew where they were going to be in the next five years.
– 3% who were financially independent had written down their goals and the steps needed to achieve them.
Yes, the result of this study seems too perfect, but I am not surprised by the general participation. From personal experience, my life was in shambles until I started setting goals and writing them down, as well as planning my days, I began to witness significant improvements and success in my life and family. Then, without setting goals, I would work more and get less for my effort. Because? The answer is simple! Without direction and focus.
I understand why you wouldn’t want to write down your goals. Writing goals seems so contrived. so banal You think it might work well for someone less intelligent, much less individualistic, but that’s not for you.
That’s what I used to feel. For years, she felt that way and scoffed at anything related to positive thinking, personal power, or self-help. Then, quite by accident, I came across Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People program, and it changed the way I think about self-help.
If goal setting can work for Harvard Business School graduates, shouldn’t it work for you too? And let me live you with this quote from Joseph Addison “There is nothing we receive so reluctantly as advice.”