Why you should keep your goals secret

[snorri]

I like reading other's blogs and goals, so I hope no one take this too seriously.

I found this post very interesting. Previously, I'd been one of the people who took it as a given that public commitment can be good thing, but it seems if it gives you more sense of progress than is warranted, it may not be the best way.

I doubt I can use this on my own performance review at work. Too bad. It would be fun to write, "I'm sorry, but research shows that it's better if I don't tell you what my goals are or make any commitments that you're aware of."

[Boidhre]

Science hat on: Eh, looks to me like someone taking one study that agrees with their viewpoint and running with it. Until that study is confirmed by findings in other studies it means little right now (actually preferably a meta study). Whenever someone quotes just one study in something like psychology and its not a meta study, be very suspicious.

Speculation: For some people, definitely keeping things private is a good idea. No question. Whether this can be generalised to everybody or whether we can even talk about goal setting for people in general is a very complicated question.

We can break the issue down into two sections:

a) Should we set goals? If so, what kind of goals?

b) Should those goals be public or private?


a) I say yes and I'll borrow from the therapy I've gotten and say they should be SMART goals: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria (comes from management theory originally but has found its way into psychology it seems)

b) I think it comes down to your personality and mood. If you enjoy discussing your goals and you progress towards them then it makes sense to be public about them. If the fear of not achieving them makes you very embarassed then not going public makes a lot of sense (but I'd argue that going public might not be a bad idea so you can see that failing a goal isn't the end of the world). I think going public also keeps you grounded in reality too to a fair extent as if you start setting obscenely ambitious goals people will call you on it. This is important as setting practically impossible to achieve goals is not a good idea for all but the most resilient and driven people.

TL;DR: Set goals, make them public, learn that failing is ok and not the end of the world, dust yourself off and set more realisitc goals and you'll have learned something valuable about how to deal with life. It's all too easy to start beating yourself up if you keep your goals and your self-recrimination private. Just as people will call you on it if you're overly ambitious, they'll call you on it if you're being overly negative too. At least if you're in a nice community anyway.

[daal]

Before hearing about this study, I had never considered the idea of not declaring my goals. Whether it is right or wrong, I like having the new option to try out - which in fact I did yesterday. Nope, not telling.

[Joaz Banbeck]

In theory when you tell your friends that you intend to, say, dig over the garden, or quit smoking, or take up carpentry, it should increase your accountability. You've told a friend, so in theory you are more committed to it.

I think that this depends heavily on what kind of friends you have.

[tapir]

Ten years ago I was talking for about a year about learning Italian but I never even started. Then I stopped talking about it and learned a completely different language I never talked about.

Let us make a poll among "go progress bloggers" - do they really feel their progress blog helps them? In my opinion people who need to trick themselves into commitment like "all my friends already know about it" more often than not lack the intrinsic motivation to follow through. For the same reasons I have my doubts about marriage...

[Boidhre]

Let us make a poll among "go progress bloggers" - do they really feel their progress blog helps them?

Does me saying Goal = X help me or harm me? No idea, I find it helps me to write my goals down in general, whether I do it publicly or not doesn't seem to make much difference. Do all the game reviews help? Yes, I think so. Do I find reading other people's "blogs" motivational? Yes, definitely.

[SoDesuNe]

I eventually followed the vast majority of my proclaimed activities but I did not always meet the time schedule. The biggest issue was always the difference between thinking, what is needed to meet a goal and what it really takes in the end.
If I now read my first posting in my Go progress blog here, it kind of makes me laugh that I thought this would be enough to reach Shodan.

On the other side, I never followed anything through when I kept it to myself (and as I really like to study something new, the list is veeeeeery long). The biggest motivation for me is close competition (within three ranks), though.

[CnP]

this came up a while ago here:

http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=86136#p86136

personally though I think if you have will-power, focus, drive etc it won't matter whether you tell people or not. If you don't have those things then there's not much hope anyway though I can see the benefit of people saying "shut up and come back when you've actually done it" - for me anyway.

[Bill Spight]

I have thought a little about this, and I think that Joaz is on to something. I know that my own experience of telling friends and relations about my plans is generally a lukewarm reception with mild encouragement.

Humans are social creatures. Perhaps the problem with announcing your goals is not the announcement per se, but the lack of support in response. After all, the announcement implies a request for support, and if you do not get it, your motivation drops. (Not that that is so bad, either. )

When I was in high school I read Napoleon Hill's book, Think and Grow Rich. The only thing I remember from the book is his advice to form your own Brain Trust. OC, doing so gives you social support.

[ez4u]

...
personally though I think if you have will-power, focus, drive etc it won't matter whether you tell people or not...

ROFL, I think in my case this is the 'all other things being different' argument, as opposed to the more common 'all other things being equal'. (btw, if the latter is 'Ceteris paribus', what would be a Latin version of the former?)

[SoDesuNe]

...
personally though I think if you have will-power, focus, drive etc it won't matter whether you tell people or not...

ROFL, I think in my case this is the 'all other things being different' argument, as opposed to the more common 'all other things being equal'. (btw, if the latter is 'Ceteris paribus', what would be a Latin version of the former?)

Ceteris disparibus? ; )

"Par" means equal. "Dispar" means unequal.