Fact & Fiction: Goal Setting Studies

You've probably heard of it by now: the famous goal-setting study, conducted in 1979 by the Harvard Business School, or perhaps in 1953 by Yale. It sounds too good to be true—three percent of students earning ten times as much as everyone else, all because they wrote down their goals—and, as it turns out, it is. The American business magazine Forbes sang its praises just last year, unaware that apparently, this particular study never took place. Harvard didn't conduct it, and Yale can find no trace of it.

Does this mean, then, that the theory of goal-setting is all hot air? Not really.

In 2011, motivated by the urban legend, Dr. Gail Matthews at Dominican University conducted a goal-setting study of her own. Completed by 149 participants, her study reports that those who put their goals in writing enjoyed significantly more success than those who didn't. But you don't have to take our word for it—here's a link to the PDF of the research study's summary.