Goal setting is such a vital part in pursuing any endeavor. Writing down your goals however does a whole lot more. I have found from personal experience that most the time the main reason I have not taken any initiative in achieving the goals which I have set is that i lacked the discipline . Too often I say I will go to the gym and get some exercise done but then It slips out of my mind and two weeks pass without my doing anything and then I go ahead and set the same goal only to have the same result. It is an equivalent scenario to setting your alarm clock for 5 am and then hitting the snooze button 20 times only to wake up two hours or so later. You go on to promise yourself that tomorrow you are definitely going to wake up on the 5am mark but that never happens, again discipline. Discipline tends to be a difficult thing to attain, it is even more difficult when there is no accountability. This is the first and main reason why you should start writing down your goals.
a. Accountability
There is something about writing down information in a notebook, diary or whatever platform you use to write. People who record/write down their goals would know what I mean. There is a sense of responsibility that comes with writing down what exactly it is you want to achieve. Try setting a simple goal, it could be anything really, something you have been struggling to do like waking up earlier tomorrow for instance. Now write it down in a book or on a piece of paper accessible to you when your alarm goes off. So you can put the book or paper next to your phone. Now when you write down your goal, you should clearly state what goal and why you are setting this goal. Do you want to wake up at 5 am so that you have more time to meditate maybe? It really could be any reason as long as the reason gives you some form of value. Now by doing this you are giving yourself accountability for your actions, now you realise that if you do not wake up on time then you are going to lose some value. In this case you will miss out on time for meditation. Having accountability for your actions drives discipline and this is a core requirement if you want to achieve any goal in life.
b. To Remember Them
Life tends to be quite chaotic, you need to finish writing this paper or pick up the kids then do the laundry. It’s all a big mess and keeping up with everything can be quite a hassle. In fact, too many times we end up forgetting to do so many things. Our personal goals in life tend to make that list of forgotten things as well and it’s quite unfortunate that at times the things which we much desired to achieve are thrown into our mental back drawers. A lot of people tend not to give much regard to this important fact, remembering what you wanted to do is vital in doing it. The human mind is easily distracted and it is easy for us people to lose track of our goals. When you write down a goal you not only capture the goal itself but the emotions behind the goal and this can be a very powerful thing because emotions tend to drive the memory better and once you recapture the emotions from your goals you usually can pick up from where you left. Usually when you were thinking about achieving a goal then life gets in the way you forget much of what exactly what you wanted to do. From my own experience I have had goals which I had written down in my book and then one day (weeks or months later) as I am going through my book I rediscovered an old goal, I assure you there is no greater feeling. Being able to remember your goals and the emotions behind them is a good drive to achieving them.
c. Allows you to tap into the power of your subconscious
Your subconscious mind is a great resource especially for the purposes of problem-solving. Your brain has this amazing capacity to solve problems even when you are not consciously aware that it is actually doing so. This resource can be tapped more effectively by specifying a problem exactly in your mind and leaving the brain to do its thing and an obvious and effective way to specify a problem is to write it down. Now I’m sure you can see where I am going with this. Say you have a goal which you want to achieve but you are not sure how to achieve it, maybe you want to make an extra $10 this week or maybe $100.If you truly had no idea how to do this then try writing down the goal, sooner or later you will find yourself connecting bits of information which would culminate into a solution at times even without much effort. Suddenly you’ll realise that all the lemons in your lemon tree which no one wants can be used to make lemonade, you could sell a couple of glasses of lemonade and make your $10.Ofcourse this is a very vague example with little substance but the point is that your subconscious is starting to give you ideas on how to achieve something you want to achieve. The subconscious mind is a very powerful resource and writing down goals allows us to tap into it.
d. Builds confidence
When an idea is just roaming inside your head it usually does so without much in terms of inspiration. I think you know what I am talking about, that idea, plan or goal which you’ve been telling yourself you will get around to implementing for weeks, months or years even but you never quite have enough energy to pull through. Sometimes this can be a product of the fact that you are not so clear about what it is you wish to achieve and therefore your confidence in your pursuit will be lacking. Writing down things tends to enable them by giving some form of clarity which cannot be had otherwise and this builds confidence in your goals. I personally have found that sometimes I set seeming unrealistic goals but the minute I write them down these seemingly unrealistic goals start to seem approachable with adjustments here and there. I usually tend to be more confident of my capacity to achieve a goal once I have it on paper. This is one of those things you have to experience for yourself if you are not already in the culture of goal setting.
e. Creates and maintains value
Writing down your goals give them a form of importance. Why do we write down information in a lecture? Because it's important and must be reviewed later. This is the same thing with our goals in life, they are important and hence must be written down. If you were sitting in a lecture and an important point was raised which you didn’t bother to note it, is it possible that you will forget and lose this important information? The answer is a hard yes, it has happened to me countless times. Unless you have a photographic memory you will tend to lose the information you have at this moment and hence its value.