I’m a great believer in writing down your goals or in my field, your marketing objectives. For three reasons:
- You clarify want you want to achieve
- You become motivated to achieve them
- You get real sense of success when you do achieve them
There is a story about a study done at Harvard between 1979 and 1989. Graduates of the MBA program were asked “Have you set clear written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” Only 3% had written goals and plans, 13% had goals but not in writing and 84% had no specific goals at all.
10 years later Harvard interviewed the members of that class again. They found the 13% who had goals but not in writing were earning on average twice as much as the 84% of those who had no goals at all. The 3% who had clear, written goals were earning on average 10 times as much as the other 97% of graduates all together. The only difference between the groups was the clarity of the goals they had for themselves.
Apparently it’s an urban myth but it’s still a good story.
There is however a piece of research carried out by Gail Matthews at the Dominican University which does support the positive effect of written goals, concluding “those who wrote their goals accomplished significantly more than those who did not write their goals.”
Write you goals and objectives down make them SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timed) and look forward to seeing your dream parked in your drive.
