Why Setting Goals is the Key to Achieving Your Dreams
I’ve been working on my book for some time now, and was looking for some strong statistics to make a few key points about goals and statistics around achievement of them.
The purpose of writing out goals totally makes sense because:
- Clarity: When you have goals and put them to paper, you’ll need to clarify exactly what your goal will achieve. This clarity helps you think through what steps will be needed.
- Accountability: When you put the work into writing your goals, they become real. This keeps you accountable and motivated to complete the appropriate tasks.
- Prioritization: Once everything is written out and clear, it’s much easy to rank or rate your goals against others. The easiest way to get your most important priority goals completed is to eliminate or postpone goals that are low priority.
- Memory: Thinking through the details of goals helps you remember them.
The Truth About Goal Setting: Separating Fact from Fiction
So what’s the stats on people who write out goals?
The most used statistic about goal setting is:
In 1979, Harvard MBAs had only 3% of MBA graduates had clear, written goals and plans to accomplish them. When they were interviewed 10 years later in 1989, these 3% made ten times as much as the other 97% put together.
If you dig around searching for “1979 Harvard 3% goals”, you’ll find many articles referencing the statistic in blogs and articles including one on Forbes.
Problem is… that study never happened in 1979 and also didn’t occur in 1953 confirmed by Fast Company.
The second most popular statistic around goals is
8% of people achieve their New Year’s resolutions
This is cited in blogs and articles as well. Again, even Forbes wrote an article on this one.
Problem is… even that study by University of Scraton can’t be found. It appears that Statistic Brain used incorrect data.
Someone finally decided to perform a real study, so Gail Matthews collected 267 participants to do her own study. Matthews found that there was a 50.4% improvement on achieving goals after they’ve been written. Matthews also determined that 70% of participants who sent weekly updates were successful with their goals vs only 35% who kept their goals to themselves.
Effectively, both writing out goals and sharing them with others absolutely increases your ability to be successful.
Data Demystified: Understanding Google Searches
Asking people to set goals and do a study on them doesn’t really make any sense to me. I assume anyone involved in a study about goals would have an extra push to achieve them.
I decided to take another approach to Goals, and take a look into the statistics about Google Search results. I wanted to know how many people are actively looking to improve their lives and improve their productivity.
To do this, I used Google Trends which shows you the actual search data. Google Trends is helpful if you’re providing a new solution and want to validate there is growing interest.
Between June 2021 and March 2023, Americans searched for “Goals”. Have a look at the data.
This shows an increase in people interested in “goals” growing at 70.4% per year. Interesting note: there are big drops in “goals” searches the week of Christmas.
Between June 2021 and March 2023, Americans searched for “Productivity”. Have a look at the data.
This shows an increase in people interested in “goals” growing at 31.5% per year.
Key Takeaways
Personally, I really enjoyed taking a strong statistic and digging into the source. For other data and reference points in my book, it’s been really interesting going all the way to research papers to see how they did their tests and their interesting take-aways. But, be careful citing strong data points without validating references first.
However, regarding “goals” and “productivity”, people are interested, and looking for ways to improve themselves. For sure, it’s best to get clear on what you want, write them out, break them down into achievable tasks, and get support from others. With that, you’re likelihood to achieve your goals is substantially increased.
