{"id":898,"date":"2010-09-20T10:01:57","date_gmt":"2010-09-20T17:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/?p=898"},"modified":"2012-06-01T15:03:49","modified_gmt":"2012-06-01T22:03:49","slug":"telling-goals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/newsletter\/telling-goals","title":{"rendered":"Telling your goals to others"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n\n
\n\"\"At \t\tTEDGlobal in July, \t\t Derek Sivers talked about whether it’s a good idea to tell others your \t\tgoals<\/a>.\u00a0 It’s a short video, worth a few minutes of your time.<\/p>\n

But I think he came to the wrong conclusion.<\/p>\n

Derek cited recent research which studied subjects who told their \t\tgoals to researchers.\u00a0 The people who stated their goals worked \t\tless hard toward achieving<\/em> them than others who hadn’t.\u00a0 \t\tThe researchers concluded:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • If you tell someone else your goals, you start imagining taking \t\t\tthe concrete steps in your mind.<\/li>\n
  • That gives you an inner sense of achievement, because imagining \t\t\tprogress is similar to actual real progress.<\/li>\n
  • As a result, you’re less motivated to make real<\/em> progress, because you don’t have so much inner dissatisfaction with \t\t\tyour current situation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Assuming that this was a reasonable study, I can follow the logic and \t\tmight see some validity to it.\u00a0 But there’s a key point that they \t\tmissed which Derek only alluded to at the end of his talk:<\/p>\n

    Telling your goal to a researcher is different \t\tthan telling it to someone you have a relationship with.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Why would this be?\u00a0 Because a researcher essentially provides no \t\tmental pressure for you to achieve your goal.\u00a0 If you tell your \t\tgoal to a friend, it creates a conversation inside your head: “If I \t\tdon’t follow through with this, my friend is going to ask me about it, \t\tI’ll have to admit I didn’t do anything, and they’ll be disappointed in \t\tme.\u00a0 That will weaken our friendship and I won’t be as happy.”<\/p>\n

    It’s that pressure which helps you to work toward your goals, and \t\twill help you to sustain it over time.\u00a0 This is the real “trick” \t\tbehind accountability partners, mastermind groups, and other groups \t\twhere you talk about your plans and achievements.<\/p>\n

    So here’s what we’ve learned about setting goals:<\/p>\n

      \n
    • Create goals which have deeper meaning for you, ones where you \t\t\thave significant reasons for wanting to achieve them.<\/li>\n
    • Work out a process in your mind for working through the steps, \t\t\tin whatever depth will help you to get started.<\/li>\n
    • Tell your goals to a few people who you care about, and who will \t\t\toffer their support and encouragement.\u00a0 Tell them you’d like to \t\t\tcontinue the conversation as you make progress.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n

An important resource<\/h2>\n

I briefly mentioned TED<\/a>, \t\tso I thought I’d talk about that a little more.\u00a0 TED (“Technology – \t\tEntertainment – Design) is a rapidly growing worldwide movement which \t\thelps people to learn from each other, exchange concepts across \t\tdisciplines, and incite entrepreneurial change.\u00a0 The best part is \t\tthat all their (short!) presentations, by some of the most creative \t\tpeople on the planet, are available for free on the \t\tTED website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You can also subscribe to the videos and audios as podcasts, to \t\tdownload to your MP3 player and consume when you have some free time.<\/p>\n

Keep your mind open to new ideas – you never know where your next \t\tcareer inspiration might come from!<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

Carl Dierschow is a Certified \t\tSmall Fish Business Coach<\/a> and \t\tauthor of the career management guide, Mondays Stink! 23 Secrets to \t\tRediscover Delight and Fulfillment in Your Work<\/em>. He is a career \t\tcoach for those going through interesting transitions, and works with \t\tsmall business owners who need to create breakthroughs in achieving \t\ttheir business goals. Find out more at \t\twww.Dierschow.com<\/a> and \t\twww.SmallFish.us<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you are interested in individual career coaching, group coaching, \t\tor other resources which might help you with difficult choices, please \t\tcontact Carl at carl@dierschow.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Connect with Carl on Facebook<\/a> and LinkedIn<\/a> to get timely updates and connections to a broader range of \t\tprofessionals.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

To \t\tsubscribe or unsubscribe to this newsletter, send an e-mail to \t\t newsletter@Dierschow.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2010 Possibilities Partnership LLC<\/td>\n

\"\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At TEDGlobal in July, Derek Sivers talked about whether it’s a good idea to tell others your goals.\u00a0 It’s a short video, worth a few minutes of your time. But […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[15,45,40,18],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-carl","4":"has-more-link","5":"post-898","7":"format-standard","8":"category-newsletter","9":"post_tag-career-coaching","10":"post_tag-goals","11":"post_tag-mastermind-group","12":"post_tag-relationships"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":900,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions\/900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}