Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)
sivers.org
sivers.org
Perhaps this explains some of the startup wannabe-isms. The most successful startup founders I've worked with didn't have time to blog, tweet, etc. They didn't derive much comfort from being Founders. They were just trying to fight the next fire to keep things going.
Personally I don't like to state my plans, I do better work in stealth mode (or do I just enjoy it more ?) ; but my SO hates backing out of her own words and I noticed it's a good incentive for her to push things through.
In this case, the author explains that the rationale is that telling your plans satisfies your self identity enough. I think the degree of "enough" is likely what's driven by personality differences (which are in turn driven by socio- cultural- etc.)
For me, I know that when I tell people stuff (and this also depends on what the "stuff" is, telling people I'm going to eat Chipotle doesn't mean I'll do it) I become very motivated to do it to avoid "losing face."
Shallow, yes. But so far it's worked for me.
1) Social pressure to fail. Let's say you announce your plans to lose weight -- to your best friend who is also overweight and who bonds with you over burgers and beer on a regular basis. Or to your thin sibling who likes being "the attractive, thin sibling." Or someone else who has some reason to want you to not succeed, whether to preserve the current relationship or to preserve the pecking order (oh, god, how I loathe pecking order). You have just opened the door to letting them subtly sabotage you.
2) You don't really, truly want a promotion/weight loss/whatever, you just want other people to think highly of you. Announcing it can achieve the social recognition piece of it (in the short term -- until people decide you are a loser and failure for not doing it). In a case like this, it may have nothing to do with undermining your own actual goals. The whole point may be to get others off your back because you don't really want to do those things but you want to be liked, esteemed, whatever.
3) Announcing a goal to potential competitors who, again, have reason to want to undermine you or best you. So announcing a goal to get promoted at work to coworkers who are potential competitors can also result in opening yourself to sabotage or notifying someone else they need to work harder than you to beat you to it. If you want to get promoted, tell friends and family and maybe your boss but don't tell "the competition." Same with business goals or other goals where your success depends in part on outdoing someone else and where stating your goals may provide valuable intelligence to the enemy.
4) Situations where it looks like some kind of bragging because you are announcing something that seems like a really huge goal. People may undermine you out of spite or jealousy or just because they think you are talking BS.
I find it helps to talk to people about my goals in situations where such discussions help me move forward -- help me problem solve in some way. I find that ANNOUNCING -- LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME -- doesn't help. I mostly don't look for "emotional support" for my goals. If you need "emotional support" for your goals, yes, just announcing it may get you the warm fuzzies you were looking for without doing anything further. I look for practical support, not a cheerleading squad. I think that's probably the difference.
It's very rare that I solve a problem for myself only and then never share the solution with nobody else. When I tell other people my plans, I read their faces and sort of try to mentally calculate what they would look like if they were pleased by the solution I am trying to craft. Without that end goal of trying to improve something for someone else like a friend or a customer, projects tend to have less meaning and are harder to finish.
I guess it depends on what drives you.
"Don't tell nobody what you really want because they could / tell everybody else what you really want then you're f####d / so act like it's for yourself or it's all yours and they go and / tell everybody else that you're really great. we are just people"
Sorry if this is a little off-topic, but it's a great song and i think the lyric's focus on the social results expands upon the article's thesis a bit.
song link: http://youtu.be/Lh3Kqh_EW2A?t=3m18s
One important lesson is to physically write down your intentions, but never to speak of them to another. Speaking them spends your will and releases your actual intent from being held internally and motivating you to create that goal into reality.
But you need to read these goals again daily. Build your will power to manifesting them.
Left to their own devices, many people will often try to boil oceans.
The mechanism Gollwitzer proposes is that presenting your plans to others make them a "social reality", which tricks your brain into feeling like you've already completed some steps towards that goal even though you haven''t.
This means this is mostly relevant to tasks whose main goal is to define yourself both in your eyes and in those of others, ie. goals of the form "I want to lose weight", "I want to start a company", "I want to write a book". In these cases, the simple fact of announcing these goals will portray you in as someone who's interested in being fit, an entrepreneur, or a writer -- if you've already convinced yourself and your friends that you're an artist in spirit, why bother going through the pain of actually writing that book? Because in these types of goals you are the one who decides whether you've been successful or not, the fact this social reality already makes you feel like you've accomplished something means you're less likely to judge yourself harshly for not actually following through.
However for goals like "I'm going to deliver XYZ this quarter" the cost of failing to deliver on your promises is potentially much greater than the social benefit you get from looking like the ambitious worker that makes big promises, because the condition of success doesn't depend solely on what you feel, but on the judgement of others. So it's likely that in the workplace the traditional recommendation of making goals explicit is still the way to go in most cases. Note though it's all a matter of incentives: if you derive enjoyment from being the one who underpromises and overdelivers, then the benefit you get from positively surprising your colleagues/superiors/customers might prove a stronger motivation than this last mechanism.
On another note, you shouldn't solely base your decision to announce your goals on this effect: one must also take into account the other benefits of making their goals public, opportunities for emulation, counsel/support, connecting with individuals with similar goals, etc. Often these benefits will far outweigh any potential negative impact on commitment (which can be fairly minor).
PS: While reading up on Gollwitzer's research I found this other tidbit some might find interesting: goals formulated in the form of an "if-then" plan (ie. with an implementation intention) tend to have a higher attainment rate than those that are more abstract [1]
[0] eg Nickerson and Rogers, http://scholar.harvard.edu/todd_rogers/publications/do-you-h...