Write it down.......

I have for as long I can remember written down my dreams and aspirations and have been intuitively motivated by making progress towards these, perhaps this explains why I enjoy helping other aspirational people work towards achieving the things that matter to them most.

Last week I attended a professional training day and the speaker touched on the importance of goal setting and this was a good reminder and sparked me into action to write this blog.

To begin, here’s the proof that writing down your goals works. In 1979, a Harvard MBA study analysed the graduating class to determine how many had set goals and had a plan to achieve these. Interestingly, the Harvard study in 1979 produced almost identical results to the earlier Yale study in 1953.

So let’s see it, the Harvard graduates were asked one simple question “Have you set written goals and created a plan for their attainment?”

Prior to graduation, it was determined that:

• 84% of the entire class had not set any goals at all
• 13% of the class had set written goals but had not formulated a concrete plan
• 3% of the class had both written goals and concrete plans to achieve them

Drum roll please……… The results 10 years after graduation are:

The 13% of the class that had set written goals but not made a concrete plan to achieve them were earning double the income of the 84% of class that had not set any goals. However, the really interesting statistic is that the 3% of the class who had both written their goals and made a plan, were earning ten times as much as the rest of the 97% of the class. 

I find these statistics very fascinating, not necessarily from a monetary point of view but more so from the fact that those students who wrote down their goals and made a plan not only achieved their goals but were enormously successful in doing so.

There is a wonderful scene in the movie, The Greatest Showman, where High Jackman teaches his daughters the art of dreaming and shares his story from a young child dreaming to turning those dreams into a reality as an adult! Another example, albeit a Hollywood tale, of writing the goal down and having the courage to pursue it.

So where is the link that I am trying to conclude with? We as financial planners help the people we work for, successfully articulate their goals and objectives and things that matter most to them. In doing so we feel as though it provides the best chance of success and it is refreshing to see the data above that illustrates that writing an objective down gives you a much better chance of achieving them.

In conclusion, my advice is to get busy dreaming and take the time to write the picture down. What’s there to lose? Who knows, you may just find that in time your dreams become a reality……