What is the difference between a goal in your head and goals that are written down?

Ricky gets Rob to explain the benefits of writing your goals out.

Experts agree the world over that you are more likely to achieve the goals you have written down. In our podcast, Ricky asks Rob why putting your goals to paper could make all the difference?

When it comes to a goal in your head compared to a written down goal, the likelihood of you achieving it becomes so much greater because you have greater clarity. In the podcast, Rob explores how a written down goal suddenly becomes much more important to us. By writing it down, we have committed to it: our thoughts have become crystalized resulting in a more meaningful goal.

Putting your goals to paper has the knock-on effect that we then hold ourselves to account. Sharing goals has advantages too as someone else gets involved. Rob goes onto discuss how written down goals have other benefits as they can be reviewed easily. The goals can be tested and examined to see if they are still the right thing, still achievable and deliverable. The process enables us to sense check the purpose remains relevant. Then there is the question of memory. Many of us are holding multiple tasks and goals in our heads on any given day. By writing goals down, you can capture them.

Ricky goes on to offer some other useful advice. He explains how we can’t rewrite history if the goal is on paper in terms of the original aims. It allows you to be more consistent reducing the chances of drift in terms of timeline, volume or quality. Writing down goals allows us to check there isn’t any duplication in specific areas and has the additional benefit that everyone knows what the organisation is setting out to achieve.

Putting goals to paper increases collaboration and commitment in the workplace and can be a bit like an insurance policy; a useful way to minimise risk. Essentially it all comes back to the issue of clarity and it’s fair to say you get much better value in an organisation if goals are written down.

The Thinking Focus: The Question Is podcast series is available to download on ITunes.

Why do we need to have goals, do they have any effect on what we do, or are they just management mumbo jumbo? In our podcast Paul asks Richard, what is the point of goals?

It might feel like a bit of a Nineties throwback to sit and write down your goals but, as we discuss in our podcast, there’s a reason why putting something down on paper still works.

Goal writing is a useful exercise for lots of reasons. Firstly, it channels our motivation and forces us to think carefully about what’s important to us. In the podcast, Richard and Paul talk about how it’s important to identify not just what you want to achieve but also why.

Richard discusses the process of goal writing and how it can help us prioritise. Setting goals and working out why they’re important to us activates our conscious mind and writing them down can help them seep into the subconscious, which means we start to recognise thoughts and actions that contribute towards our goals, even when we are not actively thinking about them.

So what happens when we’re given a goal that we don’t want? It happens all the time in the workplace but if it’s something we don’t want to do, or don’t feel is important, it may never happen. For a goal to be achievable, we need to believe in it.

What if we write down a bad goal and head off in the wrong direction, channelling your energy and motivation towards it? Paul’s got some useful advice on this too and explains how the process of writing goals helps us focus our thoughts and refine our wish list.

How do we make a start? If we have a blank sheet of paper and no goals, where do we begin? As Paul explains, we all have goals, it’s just that they may simply be ideas at the moment that need a bit of development. On a personal level you might know you want to go on holiday next year but you haven’t thought about the detail such as where you’ll go or when.

We all have goals in our head, we just need to get them down on paper and make them happen.

The Thinking Focus: The Question Is podcast series is available to download on ITunes.