TEDxBITSGoa had a rather interesting video, where this guy talked about how revealing to others your goals and strategies reduces your chances of actually accomplishing or sticking to them. The psychology being that when you reveal your goals, you trick yourself into believing that you are actually on the way to achieving it. So, instead of working at full steam, you mellow down(and take li8).
What you should be doing instead, is to identify your goal and a strategy you are going to adopt and keep it to yourself. That way, you make an impression on yourself that you are yet to achieve it and need to work diligently in order to get there.
This makes for rather interesting mind fodder right now, as the exams are right on top. Obviously everyone has a target in their minds when it comes to exams; a certain par score which they want to go above. Consider the case when I revealed to my friends the plan to canvas three courses over nine hours of non-stop, intensive mugging, with pauses only for water and leaks.
Surely, making a blog entry after a few hours of sitcom viewing makes the TED talk a fact to be noted...
well, a few of my experiences would speak against the idea of keeping your goal to yourself ..
ReplyDeleteThink of it this way, once you have told people around about your goals, you would feel a failure if you couldn't meet them and that fear could get you on your feet. In the case where you don't tell anyone about it, you could just let go or give up at a stage knowing that no one ever knew that you were even trying.
Although I'm sure things work separately for everyone and nowadays, nothing works for me. Also, sometimes openly challenging someone could get you to work, while a secret challenge isn't as exciting .. ;-)
i think the size of your goal matters here...
ReplyDeleteobviously if your goal is to say, win a grand slam tournament, then it helps if u have support of people...
but simplistic goals like finishing a certain task on a certain day...(or studying) fall under the reverse psychology...