In this solo podcast, George Kao examines the popular but unverified story of a Harvard alumni class that supposedly achieved twice the success by writing down their goals. He reveals that no such study exists, and instead points listeners to a real experiment conducted by a professor at Dominican University. The study divided adult participants into five groups ranging from merely thinking about goals to writing goals, specifying action commitments, and regularly reporting progress to an accountability partner. The group that combined written goals, action commitments, and accountability reporting outperformed the “thought‑only” group by 77% in achievement. George interprets this as evidence that simply documenting goals, defining concrete actions, and having a dedicated accountability partner can dramatically boost results. He recommends securing a business or life coach—or at minimum a committed friend—to serve as that partner, emphasizing the added value of expertise a coach brings. The episode concludes with a brief note about recording at the community‑sponsored Moraga Tiled Steps and a promise to link the study details in the show notes.
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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 of 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 10 years earlier, and I think the idea was to review them on a regular basis, achieved 2 times as much in their career and in life satisfaction than the alumni who did not write down their goals. So 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, uh, and she put them into 5 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. And the fourth group, et cetera. 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 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, 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, in your business besides just being 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 it's sponsored by the community. So the people who helped to create this, there some of their names are here. So anyway, it's pretty cool. All right, until the next video, I wish you well.
