To Proclaim Or Not To Proclaim?

Do you often tell family and friends what your goals are in hopes it will help you accomplish them because you're now accountable for them?

 

How's that working out for you???

I recently watched a video by one of my favorite "motivational" speakers Derek Sivers. (You can watch it here...)

Basically, he asserts that by telling someone else your goal you feel like you have already accomplished something. It turns out, that in study after study, those who tell people what they are going to to in advance tend to give it up quicker than those who don't because their talking has tricked their brain into thinking the work has been done.

There is one small exception he mentions at the end though.  It's a partial picture of real accountability, which I'll have to write more about later. He says something like, if your going to tell a friend your goal, give them permission to kick your a** if you don't do it.

So, we're not just going to be satisfied with talking about all the things we hope or want to do! We are going to do one of two things.

1. Keep our mouths shut and put our nose to the grindstone to get it done. 
2. Or... We're going to give someone permission to pointedly keep us accountable. Not as a harsh task master but perhaps as a very strong advocate for the goal/dream WE decided to pursue.

I think either way is better than the alternative of declaring what we're going to do but not moving toward us. When it comes to the dreams or goals we want to accomplish we want to do as many things as we can that will increase the likelihood of us actually moving in the direction of execution.

So, what have you told friends you were going to do but didn't? Are you going to do things differently in the future???