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...except that announcing your goals makes you less likely to follow through with them. This TED talk by Derek Sivers explains it far more eloquently than I cou
by kilian 16y ago
...except that announcing your goals makes you less likely to follow through with them. This TED talk by Derek Sivers explains it far more eloquently than I could: http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_yourself.html http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_you...
- dhh 16y agoGood pitch, I haven't personally found this to be true with the goals I've shared with other people. I get much more fired up to prove that I'm actually going to do it once it's out there. But obviously the science shows that might not be true for all.
- zck 16y agoIt makes a difference that you're a polarizing person -- there will be people next week mocking you because 37signals isn't a $100million company yet, so you have more impetus to actually achieve it compared to a person who tells his or her friends, who will be supportive and forgetful of failures.
- oscardelben 16y agoI guess it depends on people. For me announcing goals make them a lot more likely to happen. Also, from what I remember about that TED video, the studies were not really convincing to me. Anyway, see what works for you, that's what's important.
- hasenj 16y agoDidn't watch the video yet (I'm at work and no ear phones atm), but I think it depends on your personality type. Announcing your goal might work for some people, probably the extroverted ones. For me I think it won't work. Announcing my goals always drains my energy; I will have to argue with people and tell them how full of shit they are, and I have to listen to them ridiculing my ideas, etc. I just hate doing that.
- xenophanes 16y ago> announcing your goals makes you less likely to follow through with them But people aren't probabilities. Our destiny is a matter of choices not random chance. So that doesn't really make sense.
- lionhearted 16y ago> ...except that announcing your goals makes you less likely to follow through with them. Not exactly. I know that study, and I've seen that Sivers article/talk, and it's good. The worst thing you can do for goal-setting is to casually talk about your goals like they're inevitable. Public commitments do help motivate, though. The best might be publicly committing while acknowledging that you're not there. When I talk about my goals, you'll often hear me say, "This is neurosis-inducing, because I'm behind schedule." That, of course, leads to lower happiness levels and higher neurosis levels, but I get a lot more done than most people do. I agree with Derek not to talk about your goals casually to other people. I think public commitments, especially emphasizing that you've still got a lot of work in front of you - I think doing it that way is a net gain.
- hasenj 16y agoWell, after watching the video, I have two notes: first, putting the ad after the video is a brilliant idea. :) now about the talk, I don't believe in controlled psychological/sociological experiments very much, the real world is way too different from a room with 30 people working for one hour, the conclusions just don't scale to the real world. In the real world, people don't generally accept your goals or congratulate you on them. Like if you tell someone that you want to quit your day job to start a startup, they would think you're crazy. Also, in the real world, people will call it out on you if it doesn't look like you've achieved anything after a while.
- thewordpainter 16y agoi fully believe in quiet confidence as the best mentality. in fact, if you always under-promise & over-deliver, you can't go wrong ;)