Why You Should Write Down Your Goals

Do you know that people who have clear written goals accomplish 5 to 10 times more than people who don’t? Writing down goals is the first and most significant step you can take towards achieving success in life.

David J. Schwartz in his fantastic book, The Magic of Thinking Big wrote: When you write a thought on paper, your full attention is automatically focused on that thought. That’s because the mind is not designed to think one thought and write another at the same time. And when you write on paper, you “write” on your mind, too. Tests prove conclusively that you remember something much longer and much more exactly if you write the thought on paper.

Read below to know why you should write down your goals.

Mark McCormack in his book What They Don’t Teach You In The Harvard Business School tells of a Harvard study conducted between 1979 and 1989. In 1979, the graduates of the MBA program at Harvard were asked, “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” It turned out that only 3% of the graduates had written goals and plans. 13% had goals, but they were not in writing. Fully 84% had no specific goals at all, aside from getting out of school and enjoying the summer. Ten years later, in 1989, they interviewed the members of that class again. They found that the 13% who had goals, but which were not in writing were earning on average twice as much as the 84% of students who had had no goals at all. But most surprisingly, they found that the 3% of graduates who had clear, written goals when they left Harvard were earning, on average, ten 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 when they started out. (Source: Goals by Brian Tracy)

“The difference between a goal and a dream is the written word.” – Gene Donohue

SEE ALSO: The Power of Setting Goals