Why Writing Down Goals Can Help You Achieve Them Faster

I don’t remember how many times I’ve read about how important goal setting is. Every successful person out there vouches for it and there are numerous studies showing the benefits of writing down your goals. Every person, whether they write their goals down or not, has shared a quote about goals.

The point here is, writing down a goal really does help. Let’s find out why and how.

“A goal is a dream with a deadline.”

-Napoleon Hill

What do you remember the most from college? The stuff you read or the stuff you actually worked on? Definitely, the stuff that you worked on, because you consciously chose to pay attention to it. When you read for an exam you do that only to pass the exam most of the times but when you actually apply it, it is because you want to learn it and that is when you remember. You are an active participant here.

The same logic goes here. We all read the ‘Scientists say’ posts and at least give them the benefit of doubt. Well, here we really have a scientific term to explain why writing down goals help. It is called the generation effect. What it basically means is that, you remember information more when you have generated it with your own mind than when you have read it. There’s no one specific answer to why it happens but a lot of studies have been conducted on it, and this phenomenon is used in quite a few things. You can also use it to help with memory retention, but that is a topic for another day.

“Goals that are not written down are just wishes.”

So, let’s say, setting a goal helps trigger the generation effect because you are the one creating it. There is still no guarantee it will affect you much. Yes, you will remember it better but it will be lost in all the thoughts your mind generates.

To make it worthwhile, we write it down. I have a few things that can explain why it helps us, one of them being that we retain visual cues better. Much of our sensory cortex is devoted to vision, in fact, the part of the brain that processes words is quite small. Visual clues are easier for our brain to remember, which is why most people can sit through hours of TV shows but not finish a book.

Writing down your goal and visiting it every day has that effect on us, it creates a reminder daily that this is something you need to work on. This is something you wish to achieve. When you keep looking at it, you are reminded day after day about what your purpose is and why you wanted to achieve that goal in the first place.

Another thing and an important one at that, is encoding. Our memory has the ability to encode, store, and recall information. By writing your goals down, you are storing it externally by putting it on paper. Now, by visiting it again and again, we are encoding it into our brains. There are few intensively used types of encoding. Two types are at work here, Visual encoding and Elaborative encoding.

Visual encoding is pretty straightforward to understand. For elaborative encoding, a little narrative will be needed. It means actively retaining new information to the knowledge of something that is already present in our memory.

Let’s look at it this way, I write down that I want to buy a new car. Generation effect kicks in. I write it on a post-it note and look at it daily, visual coding kicks in. Now, I remember how my old car keeps giving me trouble, this is when elaborative encoding kicks in because we are going to remember it by how it made us feel. This is connecting the old knowledge of my car giving me trouble with the new information that I need to buy a new car.

This is the scientific support to the claim that works for me. To put it in layman’s term, you remember something you look at daily. It makes you feel guilty the longer you don’t do anything about it and see the sad post-it at the same place every day. One day you decide, enough is enough, and finally get down to doing it.

Basically, writing your goals down helps you increase your motivation, concentrate your efforts, track your progress, filter opportunity, and finally helps you turn it into reality.

At the end of the day, action is what matters. By writing your words down, you make a small mark and set the ball rolling.

“Set ambitious goals and along the way you will discover yourself.”

-Robin Suomi