Keep your goals to yourself

After hitting on a brilliant new life plan, our first instinct is to tell someone, but Derek Sivers says it's better to keep goals secret. He presents research stretching as far back as the 1920s to show why people who talk about their ambitions may be less likely to achieve them.

Everyone, please think
of your biggest personal goal.

For real -- you can take a second.
You've got to feel this to learn it.

Take a few seconds and think
of your personal biggest goal, okay?

Imagine deciding right now
that you're going to do it.

Imagine telling someone that you
meet today what you're going to do.

Imagine their congratulations,

and their high image of you.

Doesn't it feel good to say it out loud?

Don't you feel one step closer already,

like it's already becoming
part of your identity?

Well, bad news: you should
have kept your mouth shut,

because that good feeling

now will make you less likely to do it.

The repeated psychology tests have proven

that telling someone your goal
makes it less likely to happen.

Any time you have a goal,

there are some steps that need to be done,

some work that needs to be done
in order to achieve it.

Ideally you would not be satisfied
until you'd actually done the work.

But when you tell someone your goal
and they acknowledge it,

psychologists have found
that it's called a "social reality."

The mind is kind of tricked
into feeling that it's already done.

And then because you've felt
that satisfaction,

you're less motivated to do
the actual hard work necessary.

(Laughter)

So this goes against conventional wisdom

that we should tell our friends
our goals, right?

So they hold us to it.

So, let's look at the proof.

1926: Kurt Lewin,
founder of social psychology,

called this "substitution."

1933: Wera Mahler found
when it was acknowledged by others,

it felt real in the mind.

1982, Peter Gollwitzer
wrote a whole book about this,

and in 2009,

he did some new tests that were published.

It goes like this:

163 people across four separate tests.

Everyone wrote down their personal goal.

Then half of them announced
their commitment to this goal to the room,

and half didn't.

Then everyone was given 45 minutes of work

that would directly lead them
towards their goal,

but they were told
that they could stop at any time.

Now, those who kept their mouths shut

worked the entire 45 minutes on average,

and when asked afterward,

said that they felt
that they had a long way to go still

to achieve their goal.

But those who had announced it

quit after only 33 minutes, on average,

and when asked afterward,

said that they felt much closer
to achieving their goal.

So if this is true, what can we do?

Well, you could resist the temptation
to announce your goal.

You can delay the gratification
that the social acknowledgment brings,

and you can understand that your mind
mistakes the talking for the doing.

But if you do need
to talk about something,

you can state it in a way
that gives you no satisfaction,

such as, "I really want
to run this marathon,

so I need to train five times a week

and kick my ass if I don't, okay?"

So audience, next time you're
tempted to tell someone your goal,

what will you say?

(Silence)

Exactly! Well done.

(Laughter)

(Applause)