{"id":906,"date":"2022-04-24T17:13:03","date_gmt":"2022-04-24T16:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/preethinair.com\/site\/?p=906"},"modified":"2022-04-24T17:15:29","modified_gmt":"2022-04-24T16:15:29","slug":"why-you-should-write-down-your-goals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preethinair.com\/site\/why-you-should-write-down-your-goals\/","title":{"rendered":"Why You Should Write Down Your Goals"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A study by Dr Gail Matthews, a Psychology Professor at Dominican University of California, demonstrated that writing down your goals increases the odds of success by 42%.<\/p>\n

My first job after graduating was glorified tea maker to a chain-smoking boss whose favourite word when he spoke to me was, \u201cerror\u201d. The job of \u201cConsultant\u201d had somewhat been mis-sold to me and I should have known having seen the smoke-filled room, the ashtray piled high and the confined space littered with used teabags. However, I took the job and should have left immediately but for various reasons, didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

My boss, let\u2019s call him Harry, would stand over my shoulder as he dictated his letters and shouted \u201cerror\u201d every time I made a grammatical mistake. It was every other sentence and hugely soul-destroying as ironically, I harboured dreams of being a writer.<\/p>\n

However, no job in my career history propelled me like this one. Weirdly, when I feel confined, there is space to dream and one day, when he was at a client meeting, I took out a piece of paper from the printer tray and wrote down my goals. It went something like this:<\/p>\n

* I am a best-selling novelist<\/p>\n

* My books are translated internationally<\/p>\n

* I write films and plays<\/p>\n

* I have my own consultancy where imagination and creativity are at the centre of what I do<\/p>\n

And so it went on\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

I folded the piece of paper and put it in the book that had inspired this process (Stephen Covey\u2019s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People \u2014 <\/em>the chapter on Beginning with the end in mind<\/em>). Very recently, whilst moving house, I came across that list written over twenty years ago, I slowly unfolded it and read it. Pretty much everything had materialised.<\/p>\n

Dr Gail in her study, suggests not just writing goals, but committing to goal-directed actions, and also, creating accountability for those actions.<\/p>\n

I would add:<\/p>\n