Writing Down Your Goals: Let Me Show You Why

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I’m sure that over the years many people have lectured you on the importance of having goals and why you should write them down. I’d like to take that one step further and not just tell you why, but show you why. Furthermore, I’d like to show you in a way that will make it easy for you to relate to and understand.

Have you ever done the grocery shopping for your household? Do you remember the times you’ve gone grocery shopping with a written list and those times you’ve gone without a list: what’s the difference? Most people say they spend a lot more time and a lot more money without a list. They also tend to buy things they didn’t need and forget some of the things they did need.

So now, let’s sum up: when people head out on a project without a written, focused direction or plan, they end up wasting time, wasting money, taking on a lot of things they did not need and forgetting a lot of things they did need. Oh, by the way, did I mention anything about grocery shopping in that last sentence? No: but that sure could apply to most people’s lives.

Did you ever notice when you go grocery shopping with a list how the shopping just seems to flow? You go aisle by aisle and before you know it, you’re done. On the other hand, when you go without a list, you always seem to be running from one end of the store to the other. You grab something off a shelf, then realize you forgot something from the other end of the store. You can’t say, "I’ll get it later," because you’re afraid if you don’t do it now, you’ll forget.

Better yet, have you ever had a discussion with the peanut butter shelf? You know what I’m talking about: standing in front of the peanut butter shelf, you say to yourself, "Do we have that? I’m sure we ran out. No, no I think there’s a couple of jars in the cabinet. No I’m sure we ran out." Finally, you grab a jar off the shelf and say, "Oh what the heck, I’ll buy a jar!" Then you get home only to find…three jars of peanut butter from the other three conversations you had with the peanut butter shelf.

From surveys of the many audiences I’ve spoken to, the following are the results people observe when they go food shopping with and without lists:

1. It takes people about 10 minutes to write out a shopping list
2. It takes about 1.5 hours to do the shopping (including round trip travel and bagging, loading and unloading the groceries)
3. People waste about 30 minutes extra time shopping
4. They spend about $30 more than they would have

From this we can see that the willingness to take 10 minutes up front to develop a written, focused, direction and plan for something as unimportant as grocery shopping yielded these results within only an hour and a half (the time it takes to shop with a list):

• A 30 minute savings in time or a 300% return on time invested (10 minutes)
• A 300% return on your investment in time and $30 extra in your pocket within 90 minutes in something as unimportant as grocery shopping. Imagine what kind of return on your investment you could get if you did something like this for your life and career. That’s why you write down your goals!