Kaizan on Whether It Helps to Announce Goals Publicly

A recent post on the Kaizan Blog, “Does Telling Everyone About Your Goals Make You More Likely to Achieve Them?” passes on the results of an interesting study about what happens when you make your goals public. Do people feel more motivated to achieve them? In this particular study, the answer was a resounding “No!”, and the Kaizan post delves into the why of that with some useful ideas.

It’s worth noting that this was a small study of a very limited population in a very limited situation, so there might actually be a lot of value to announcing your goals under other circumstances. For instance, I expect announcing a goal is much more motivating if you are going to have to go up and demonstrate how you did on your goal in a certain amount of time, whether you succeeded or not. But I’ll post more on that when I dig up some solid information on that particular point. I’ll be curious to see if what research or other information might be out there.