Why Writing down Your Goals Improves Productivity
If you want to supercharge your productivity, don’t just think about your goals, write them down too! In this article Charles Ebert looks at why writing down your goals is so important
Our astute editor Edith has recently finished reading a book on goals and how they lead to happiness. She can’t keep calm; she will always mention it in every conversation with us! The premise of the book was that people get to the state of happiness by doing two things which are working towards some set goals and achieving them.
When closely analyzing the premise of that book, the message is true and accurate. Happiness can be derived from pursuing and achieving goals. Statistics even show that happy employees improve their productivity by 12%. But we tend to think that identifying your goals in the first instance and writing them down is where the magic happens. Here’s why we believe that writing down your goals is enough motivation and ultimately improves productivity.
It Stimulates Your Brain
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A sufficient explanation of why writing down our goals improves productivity is closely tied to how our brains work. The human brain has two sides, the left, and the right hemisphere. These two sides are connected by some neural fibers known as the corpus callosum, which act as the medium through which the two sides communicate. When these two sides communicate, your whole body gets involved, and your thoughts transform into reality through your consciousness.
The left brain is the literal part of the brain whereas the right one is the imaginative part. When you think of something, perhaps a goal, aspiration or desire, you only use your imaginative part. However, when you make the thought literal through some action such as writing, your literal part of the brain comes into play, and the two sides of your brain communicate. You bring yourself to a consciousness that you want to actualize the thought into a reality.
Therefore, always write down your goals, ambitions, dreams, objectives, and aspirations. Your brain will do the rest. You will find yourself working sub-consciously to achieve the written goal. Your productivity will improve as your whole body will be geared to realizing the goal in question.
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It Improves Focus
It takes a lot of effort to come up with a goal and eventually write it down. At the point of writing it, you’ve engaged yourself mentally to achieve the goal. The written goal will serve as a reminder of the ends that you want to achieve, therefore, removing all possible distractions to achieving them. It’s easy to get distracted from achieving our goals. Surprisingly, the subtle things are the ones that distract us, for example, office politics. A few minutes of indulging in office politics could lead to a few hours of the same. Next thing, before you know it, office politicking is your favorite past time. In a few months’ time, you become the center of the office political scene. In all these, your sense of direction with regard to your goals gets off course. You lose sight of your goal.
But what if you had written it down and pasted it on the wall near your desk? You will always have sight of it. You will automatically cultivate in yourself the necessary focus and attitudes needed to achieve the goals. In essence, you will improve your productivity as far as achieving the goal is concerned.
It Identifies and Helps You Achieve Targets
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When you write down a goal, you come to the realization that you need to set some specific targets that will enable you to achieve. Depending on the aim at hand, the targets will vary. But in all goals, the targets are normally some small stepping stones that ultimately get you on top of achieving your aims. It could be likened to kaizen, a Japanese philosophy. It literally means changing for the better. It is used to show the possibility of achieving a big goal by doing small things every day to build upon the big goal. Eventually, the small things will end up bringing to the realization of the big purpose.
Just like writing compare contrast topics, these small things could be likened to targets that we continuously achieve on say, a daily basis. Achieving these targets gets us closer to realizing our goals. Thus, it gets us motivated to achieve the goal at hand ultimately. When we are properly motivated, our productivity automatically improves thereby getting us closer to achieving our goals.
You Get a Sense of Purpose
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A person, who has goals, lives a purposeful life. This is because they have something to live for, an ambition to pursue and objectives to achieve. They avoid everyday work monotony. They also avoid just going through the motions of daily life. Such people don’t suffer burnout when working. They are always productive since they are striving to achieve some predetermined goal.
If your work involves some repetitive stuff or some operations that are routine and need no creativity, you are bound to get bored. What’s worse is if you have no sense of direction, purpose or ambition. You will hate your job, and your life will generally be dull. Your productivity will plunge since you lack purpose in your work and life in general.
To remedy this, write some goal that you want to achieve, say becoming a unit manager. You can start by setting targets that you want to achieve in the short term. For example, you may want to climb the career ladder in the next three years. At first, you could work towards being a team leader; then you progress to be a supervisor and ultimately the manager. You will get a sense of purpose in everything that you do. Your productivity will automatically improve in order to fast track the journey of reaching your goals.
Conclusion
Writing your goals indeed has a profound effect on your productivity. It gears your mind and body to be proactive in achieving the written goals. To take advantage of this phenomenon, always write the goals that you truly want to achieve. Write the goals that resonate with your thoughts and feelings. As you write them, ensure that you are realistic in your approach. In the end, you will improve your productivity, and you will be highly motivated to achieve the written goals.
Have you found this article informative? Let us know of some goals that you want to achieve in the comments.
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