I don’t need studies to know that writing down goals works.  I’ve seen the proof over and over.  Still there is some impressive research surrounding goals and why writing them down makes a difference.

Back in 1979, Harvard researchers supposedly interviewed their graduates and found that 84% had no goals, 13% had goals but hadn’t written them down and 3% had not only written down their goals but had a plan to support them. Ten years later, they interviewed the same people and discovered that those 3% who had written down their goals were earning 10 times as much as all their other classmates.

Years later, wanting to verify that the Harvard study ever existed or had validity, Dr. Gail Matthews, a psychology professor at the Dominican University in California, set out on a study of her own. She gathered 267 people — men and women from all over the world, and from all walks of life, including entrepreneurs, educators, healthcare professionals, artists, lawyers and bankers. The youngest was 23 and the oldest 72.