Silence: The Surprising Way to Achieve a Goal
Why staying quiet about your personal goals may help you achieve them.
Welcome to Morning Pages, a newsletter sharing inspirations to help you cultivate creativity and fulfillment.
Happy new year! I wish 2021 will be a year of abundance for you.
Last week during a virtual holiday gathering, someone asked on the call: “Let’s share our goals for 2021!”
I didn’t know what to share.
The truth is I’ve learned to stay quiet about my personal goals. It turns out that keeping them to yourself is an effective way to achieve them.
What happens when you announce your goals?
When people share their goals, the common belief is that they will feel accountable.
It turns out that’s not true.
Psychologists have found that, by telling someone your goal, you are actually less likely to achieve it.
The gratifying feeling when you announce your goals to others is called social reality. Your mind is tricked into the feeling that it's already done. Because you've felt that satisfaction, you're less motivated to do the hard part: follow through.
Sharing your goal out loud widens the gap between the goal and the necessary actions.
Why keep quiet about your goals?
Derek Sivers gave a TED talk about the benefits of keeping your goals to yourself, citing four psychology studies since 1926 consistent with this counter-intuitive approach:
1926—Kurt Lewin, considered the father of social psychology, found that sharing your goals became a substitute for doing them. The act of talking relieves some of the tension of doing.
1933—Wera Mahler’s found that acknowledgment of a solution you’ve announced creates a social reality in the brain.
1982—Peter Gollwitzer, a psychology professor at NYU, explored the concept of social reality in his book Symbolic Self-Completion.
2009—Gollwizer published the results of four tests involving 163 people that further validated the theory.
Sivers describes the four Gollwitzer tests from 2009:
“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.”
The participants who announced their goals (1) gave up early and (2) experienced false progress. The other participants remained motivated.
Keeping quiet about your goals helps cultivate a sense of urgency to keep moving forward. You feel like there’s still a lot of work, and you double down on self-discipline and control. You make plans, create to-do lists, and take action.
Caveats to this strategy
Sharing goals intentionally can support us to take consistent actions. The key is to identify the right people to share your goals with. Here are some scenarios:
People who know how to support and challenge you to reach the goal.
Share your fitness goal with a personal trainer.
People who have skin in the game.
Share your financial goal with your partner.
People who have relevant traits or share similar goals.
Share your recurring writing goal in an accountability group.
Final thoughts
It’s possible to invite people to follow along your journey, while staying quiet about the ultimate destination.
Focus solely on doing the work required to achieve your goal. Then, when you get there, talk about your lessons learned along the way. You've earned it.
Work hard in silence. Let success make the noise.
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