When it comes to tips for achieving goals, sometimes we need to look outside the box.
If you’ve been studying goals, goal setting, and goal achievement for any period of time, you’ve likely heard that sharing your goals – committing to them publicly – is an important part of success.
For example, if you want to lose weight, you announce to the world that you’re going to lose 20 pounds. If you want to learn Mandarin, you announce that too. Same for taking a trip to Tahiti over next Christmas.
It’s common advice, but is it good advice?
Sharing your goals publicly has several advantages:
- It makes you more accountable. The most compelling argument for sharing your goals is that it keeps you accountable to action. Speaking your goal out loud to another person makes you AT LEAST 10% more likely to achieve your goal – just by saying what you’re going to do out loud! Sharing your goals can also add extra incentive to accomplish them. (When you add in other elements found in Goal Setting Theory, you can increase the likelihood you’ll achieve goals up to 85%.)
- It makes your goals real. Most of us keep our goals inside, which makes them feel less tangible – more like a dream than a goal. Once you put them out there for the whole world to see, your goals are transformed from a mere thought to something real.
- It keeps you focused. Knowing that there are those who are holding you accountable, or even asking about your progress, keeps your attention focused. If you routinely have trouble focusing, sharing your goals could prove to be helpful.
- You stay motivated. Your motivation is likely to stay higher when you share your goals. Sustained motivation is a challenge for most people.
While evidence and science-backed research proves that sharing goals makes you more likely to achieve them, there may be times when you want to keep your goals under wraps.
In these scenarios, you might want to keep goals private:
- Some goals might feel personal. Whatever they are, it’s perfectly fine and normal to want to keep some goals to yourself.
- Worrying about what others think about you can be intimidating. Sharing your progress with another person can seem unnatural if you’re typically a private person.
- Questions can be discouraging. Questions about your goals can seem harmless, but sometimes they aren’t. A simple statement like, “Are you sure you want to run a marathon? Don’t you have bad feet?” can really take the wind out of your sails.
4WRD lets you share your goals publicly or keep them private—whatever works for you!
4WRD is the perfect place to share your goals and your goal progress with others. You can share when you complete an action, updates on your progress, and even images of you completing your goals! Sharing your progress keeps you accountable and focused!
4WRD is also the perfect place to pursue your goals with the private goal feature! All of your goal progress, completed actions, associated images, and the entire action plan are completely private!
Whether you decide to share your goals or keep them to yourself, 4WRD is the perfect tool to help you achieve all of your personal and professional goals!
