Please take a few seconds and think of your personal biggest goal. Imagine telling someone you meet today what you're going to do. Imagine their congratulations and their high image of you. Doesn't it feel good to say it out loud? Don't you feel one step closer already? Well, bad news: you should have kept your mouth shut, because that good feeling will make you less likely to do it.
Any time you have a goal, there is some work that needs to be done to achieve it. Ideally, you would not be satisfied until you'd actually done the work. But when you tell someone your goal and he acknowledges(认可)it, psychologists have found it's called a "social reality". The mind is kind of tricked into feeling that it's already done. And then, because you've felt that satisfaction, you're less motivated to do the actual hard work necessary. This goes against the traditional wisdom that we should tell our friends our goals, right?
In 1982, Peter Gollwitzer, a Professor of Psychology, wrote a whole book about this. And in 2009, he did some new tests that were published. It goes like this: 163 people across four separate tests — everyone wrote down their personal goal. Then half of them announced their commitment(许诺)to this goal to the room, and half didn't. Then everyone was given 45 minutes of work that would directly lead them towards their goal, but they were told that they could stop at any time. Now those who kept their mouths shut worked the entire 45 minutes on average, and when asked afterwards, said they felt they had a long way to go to achieve their goal. But those who had announced it quit after only 33 minutes on average, and when asked afterwards, said that they felt much closer to achieving their goal.
