Is it better to share goals or keep them private?
Ah yes. 2018 is here!
We all know the drill. On January 1st as we celebrate a new year, billions are making lists of their goals. Things we want to accomplish in the next 365 days. Health, wealth, relationships, career, spirituality.
Common categories full of hope and promise.
I am among that crowd. Several handwritten pages listing my goals for the coming year beam back at me from my journal. I can — and will — review them anytime I want.
For a percentage of goal setters, the temptation to post our lists on social media is now overwhelming.
After all, isn’t the thinking behind sharing our deepest selves part of being more authentic and vulnerable?
Won’t their publicity make us hold ourselves more accountable to achieving what we’ve listed?
Not so fast.
Turns out, announcing our plans makes us less motivated to achieve them. Why? Because our brains are tricked into thinking we’ve already accomplished what we just said we plan to do. Making the announcement gives us instant relief. We have unburdened ourselves from the tension created when we make a goal.
The flip side to this argument is that making our goals public bakes in accountability. Public humiliation is a powerful factor. We don’t want to come back to our audience months later and sheepishly admit we didn’t do what we so vehemently pronounced we were going to do in such a mighty, public way.
In this TED talk, Derek Sivers explains why keeping our goals to ourselves is a really good idea.
Will you resist the temptation to share your goals? Will you go the route of having public accountability for stating what you want to achieve in the next twelve months?
Is it better to share goals or keep them private? I am choosing to keep my goals to myself and will share the results of this experiment in a later post. Regardless of what you decide to do with your 2018 goals, I wish you much success!
Happy New Year!
