Goal Setting Powerhouse – Lesson 3

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Lesson 3

Effective Goals Are Always Written

In the last chapter, you learned about the difference between short-term and long-term goals, as well as how attaining short-term goals can give you added momentum and motivation to help you achieve your long-term goals. In this chapter, you will learn why writing down your goals are so important in successfully achieving them.

When many people set goals, they think in their minds of a goal they want to achieve, then go about attempting to achieve it. As was already mentioned earlier in this book, you really need to analyze the goal to see how you can break it down into more manageable and more easily attainable parts (i.e. short- term goals) so that you can attain the ultimate goal (i.e. long-term goals) you want. Most successful people actually write down the goals they want to achieve.

You may wonder, “Why do I need to write down the goal? I know what my goal is.” Yes, you may know what your goal is, but the problem is that, by just having your goal in mind and not writing it down, you can more easily make excuses on why you are not making as much progress toward your goal and even persuade yourself that certain actions you’re taking are helping you to reach your goal when in reality, they aren’t really doing anything to help you reach it.

Additionally, when you write down a goal, you are actually committing to it. If you write down the goal on a piece of paper and put it on your work space, that piece of paper is always right there, reminding you of what your goal is. You see it, and your mind is immediately reminded of the goal you set, giving yourself a boost of motivation and determination to redouble your efforts to achieve that goal. Similarly, if you write down the goal in a Notepad file or similar program file, it will always be right there (provided you have the file open, of course), reminding you of what the goal is and giving you a “boost” in terms of redoubling your efforts to achieve that goal.

In addition, it’s much harder to dismiss a piece of paper or a Notepad file than it is to just move the goal to the far reaches of your mind and not think about it; this is why most successful people actually write down the goal they have in mind before beginning work to achieve it.

Writing down your goal can also lead you to breaking down the goal into more manageable parts as we discussed in the last chapter. Many long-term goals seem to impossible to achieve on the surface, but when we break them down into more manageable, short-term goals, the long-term goal seems more attainable than at first glance.

All of these reasons show the importance of writing down your goals. You may think that writing down a goal doesn’t do much, but it actually commits you to achieving that goal because you took the time to write it down, and the fact you can’t easily dismiss a piece of paper or text file as easily as you can a thought in your head makes it harder to make excuses over why you are not making as much progress or doing actions that really aren’t helping you to reach your long- term goal.

Therefore, in this chapter, you have learned why it’s important to write down your goals, including committing to the goal, not being able to easily dismiss it as you can a thought, and the fact that you can easily break the goal down into more manageable parts (i.e. short-term goals) when you write down the long- term goal on a piece of paper or in a text file. In the next chapter, you will learn how to define your goals so that you know what you want to achieve and so that you can achieve them.

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