![]() When you create a goal, you want to focus on it and work toward achieving it. That way, not only can you engage your sense of sight, but also your sense of smell and touch.Īnd, when it comes to boosting recall, the more senses that you can engage, the better. Maybe you can draw on an Egyptian flag, or find a piece of papyrus to add to the sheet. You can boost this effect even more by adding in pictures, creating links between related goals, etc. The mind understands that you want to focus more on it and so will be more inclined to recall it later. So, if you read a travel guide to Egypt, for example, and think about going there, your brain might remember.īut, if you then take that travel guide and rewrite the salient points in your own words, your brain knows that this information is more important than the information that you just read. Neuropsychologists call this the “ generation effect” and have found that people have better recall for information that they’ve created themselves than for something that they’ve read. As a result, it is more likely to sink in and be remembered. ![]() How does it know if something is important to you? Well, if your mind sees that it is something that you have written down, it will assign greater importance to it. In the decision-making process, the brain will have to sift through a lot of information. This part of the brain is where the brain decides what is important to store in the long-term memory and what can it can discard. Encoding is what happens in the brain when we see something, and the information gets transferred to the hippocampus for analysis. ![]() You could refer to the notes and instantly remember the lesson.Įncoding is where things get a lot more interesting. That’s part of what made your note-taking such a successful memory aid in school. You’ll put up your list of goals somewhere so you’ll see them every day to be reminded of them daily. Now, external storage is the actual piece of paper that reminds you of the goal you’ve written. There are two basic levels that writing occurs on: encoding and external storage. When you were at school, you no doubt took copious notes during class. So now we know the statistics, let’s have a look at why writing goals down improves your chance of success so drastically. That’s a 1.4 times higher chance of success by just committing your goals to paper! That’s a 1.4 times higher chance of success by just committing your goals to paper! I’ll bet you’re already reaching for a pen and paper to get those goals down, aren’t you? Why is a vivid written description so important? It helps you to picture your goal and this, in turn, makes you up to 1.4 times more likely to succeed than someone who didn’t write anything down. He found that less than one-fifth of respondents put that kind of detail into writing their goals. His point? The goal must be clearly defined and written out. He aimed to make the goal so clear that he could show it to someone else and they’d know what he was trying to achieve. He went on to say that written goals should include pictures, drawings, etc. What we learn from this study is that writing down your goals, and what actions you take to achieve them, and then sharing these and your progress with a friend gives you the best chance of success.Īnother study, called “ The Gender Gap and Goal-Setting” run by Mark Murphy found that all of us need to be much better at writing our goals down. This group had the highest success rate, at 76 percent. The final group did everything the others did, but also sent their friends updates.The fourth group did all of that, and also shared their action commitments with a friend.The third group did the same as the second but also wrote their action commitments down.The second group did the same, but this group wrote the goals down.This group achieved a 43 percent overall success rate or progressed at least part of the way to attaining their goals. The first group had to think about their goals, and rate them according to various factors but not write them down.They divided participants into five groups. What this research made clear is that if you want the best possible results, you need to define your goals and then write them down.Ī study by the Dominican University of California took a slightly different stance. They were three times more likely to succeed than the group who had some plan in mind. Three percent of respondents had written down their goals.The study found that this group was ten times more likely to succeed than those without any goals. Fourteen percent of respondents had plans but had not written them down.Eighty-three percent of respondents had no goals.So, why should you take the extra few steps to write out your goals or create a vision board? How about because a Harvard Business Study found out the following related to goal-setting:
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