Being a fan of settings goals,  it’s interesting to explore the multitude of methods.

There are good ways to achieving goals, like clearly mapping out bite-size actions, and bad ways, like setting a new years resolution.

This week, I discovered some new insights on goal setting when watching a TEDx talk on why you should keep your goals to yourself.

It’s not every day that your current ideas or thoughts are challenged. However, it’s a very valuable thing for your ideas and beliefs to be constantly put to the test. This serves the purpose of reevaluating, observing biases and identifying possible assumptions you are functioning off of.

The key point of interest in this talk was the results of a study done by Peter Gollwitzer.

163 people each wrote down a personal goal. Half of the attendees told someone about the goal, the other half didn’t tell anyone about the goal.

Everyone was given 45 min where they could choose to do work that would directly lead them toward their goal and that they can stop at any time.

Those who kept their mouth shut worked the entire 45 min on average and said they “felt they had a long way to go.” Those who announced their goal worked an average of 33 min and felt “much closer to achieving goals.”

This was a good reminder of how feeding off of the approval of others instead of working to achieve the actual results can lead to laziness.

Instead of worrying about the approval of others, and performing to improve how you think they perceive you – work on being the person you want to be.

At the end of the day, actually being the person you want to take much more skill than performing and vocalizing about the person you want other people to think of you as.