Your 2017 Goals

Last Sunday my husband and I hunted down an open coffee shop (not easy to do on New Year’s Day) and spent 90 minutes talking through the goals we set for 2016, and then created new ones for 2017. We go through this exercise every year—sometimes right at the start of January, other times not until March or so. But at some point, it happens.

Part of me loves this exercise because I get to sit with my significant other and talk about our life together, from our deepest hopes to our most frustrating challenges to our most rewarding accomplishments. Another part of me digs it because writing down goals works.

The Harvard study you may have heard about, where three percent of graduates who wrote down their goals achieved ten times more than their fellow students, ultimately turned out to be an urban myth. But there is another study, conducted by clinical psychologist Gail Matthews at Dominican University, which provides useful evidence on this topic.

In her study, Matthews asked 150 people ranging in age from mid-20s to mid-70s, from five countries and several professions, what they wanted to accomplish in the next month. She then broke them into groups—those without any written goals; those with written goals; those with goals and written action items; those with written goals, action items, and a commitment to a friend that they’d achieve them; and finally, those with written goals, action items, a commitment, and weekly progress reports.

At the end of the month, those with no written goals achieved 42.8% of their list. Those with the documented goals, action items, a commitment and weekly progress reports achieved almost double the results—not too surprising, considering all of their focused effort. Yet the most valuable finding for me came from the group who had simply written down their goals. They achieved 30% more than those who didn’t.

Thirty percent! That’s a pretty big payoff for just a little time and effort jotting down your intentions. So if you haven’t done so yet, now may be a good time to get writing.