The Power of Written Goals + Accountability

Hi, I'm George Kao. So there is a famous study of Harvard alumni, the class of, I think it's 1953, where half of the alumni wrote down their goals, specific goals for their life and their career. And the other half, the alumni didn't write them down or they weren't asked to write them down. They just maybe thought about the goals and they checked in with the alumni 10 years later and they found out that the alumni group that had written down their specific goals ten years earlier, and I think the idea was to review them on a regular basis, achieved two times as much in their career and in life satisfaction than the alumni who did not write down their goals. That's a famous study that's been taught by a lot of personal development teachers. Well, I, I did some research and turns out that there was no such study, or at least I couldn't in my Internet search find that exact study. But there actually has been a goals study done by Dominican University, a professor there. And in the notes of this video, I will link to that, to the summary of that study where she did invite adults from, I think it was dozens of different careers. And she put them into five groups. Basically the first group did not write down their goals, but merely thought about their goals. And you know, then the second group wrote down their goals specifically and then the third group, I think wrote them down as well as write some action commitments in the fourth group, etc. And the fifth group finally not only wrote down their goals, wrote down some action commitments, but also sent their goals to a regular accountability partner and sent a report about how they did with their goals and their action commitments. And here's the surprising results. Compared to the group that did not write down their goals, just merely thought about them, the goal, the group that wrote it down, wrote down what their action commitments were and checked in with their accountability partner, achieved 77% more, okay, 77% more than the group that merely thought about their goals. And they had various balance checks and balances in the research. But it's fascinating. So what this, what this means is if you want to achieve 77% more or if you want to achieve more basically in your life, okay, with, without having to do much more, but simply to write your goals down, write your action commitments, and here's the key to have an accountability, the dedicated accountability partner to check in with and about the progress of your goals, you're going to achieve a lot more. And so I really recommend if you can have a dedicated friend who's willing to do this or a lot of times sort of doing this with a friend, it kind of falls apart eventually. Get a coach. Get a business coach or a life coach of some kind that is willing to do this with you. A business coach would be someone who has business expertise and can really guide you in your business besides just being an accountability partner. A life coach, someone who guides you with life strategies. But get a coach if you can. And if you can't, at least get a dedicated friend to do this with. So I highly recommend you try this again. I'll attach more information in the notes connected to this video. And until the next video, I wish you well. And by the way, this is the Moraga tiled steps just a few minutes from my home. And it's just a beautiful set of. These are little tiles and they're sponsored by the community. So the people who help to. To create this, they're. Some of their names are here. So anyway, it's pretty cool. All right. Until the next video, I wish you well.