Why should you put yourself through the DEBRA formula? This blog presents just a small but compelling amount of evidence as to why - we share some of the science behind why using a life planning formula and system (like DEBRA) will help you.

A guy named Mark Murphy created a study called "The Gender Gap and Goal-Setting," and this study concluded that we all need to do a much better job of writing down our life goals.

 Study participants in the study were asked to rate this question

“My goal is so vividly described in written form (including pictures, photos, drawings, etc.) that I could literally show it to other people, and they would know exactly what I’m trying to achieve.”

In response to this exercise, fewer than 20% of people said that their goals were written down this vividly.

When we write down or our life desires (goals) happens on two levels, Mark refers to these as external storage and encoding.

WHAT IS EXTERNAL STORAGE?

This is the storing of the information about your life desire (goal) in a location. This might be on your computer, in a file on Google Keep, or on a piece of paper. This practice makes it very easy to access and review at any time.

Some people put their life desires (goals) in a photo frame and hang this on the wall in their home or office. Some put the document on their fridge, or as a bookmark in their diary. It doesn’t take an expert to accept that remembering something is much easier if it is staring at you from your wall or diary every single day.

 WHAT IS ENCODING?

This is the biological process by which the things we think about travel to our brain’s hippocampus, where the thoughts we have are either consciously or subconsciously evaluated.

From there, we make decisions about what gets stored in our short and long-term memory, and what gets totally discarded to our brain's trash bin. The process of writing things down improves this encoding process. In other words, when you write something down, it has a much greater chance of being remembered.

Neuropsychologists have identified what is labelled the “generation effect”. This theorises and concludes that individuals demonstrate better memory for the content they have produced themselves, versus someone else’s material that they have read or watched ona  video. So, when you write down your goal, you get to access the benefits of the “generation effect”

Firstly, when you generate the desire / goal (and you create a visual picture in your mind), and secondly, when you write the desire (goal) down you are essentially reprocessing or regenerating that image.

REMEMBER SCHOOL REVISION?

Many studies reveal that you will remember things better when you write them down. We can all remember our revision days in school, right? We would read the course and study work and write down the key points and read it back until it imprinted in our minds. I used to read my notes onto a recorder and play it back to myself in the car or on walks.

Job interviews reveal a good example of the power of note-taking. Most professional recruitment companies will confirm that writing down the candidate's answers to key ‘criteria-led’ interview questions ensures that key points are not forgotten. Writing down key points down doesn’t just help you remember, it makes your mind more efficient by helping you to accentuate and focus on the truly important subject matter material. Of course, your life goals and desires 100% qualify as truly important material.

ONE OF THE MOST RESPECTED RECENT STUDIES

Professor Gail Matthews also conducted a wonderfully enlightening study. This study isolated the three key steps you can take to ensure greater prospects for success as you set your life and business goals.

The study revealed that one of the focus groups produced a 33 percent greater success rate than the other four groups.

The study method (simplified)

Professor Matthews recruited 267 people from varying backgrounds to participate in this study on how goal achievement in the workplace is influenced by three key actions: 

• Writing goals,

• Committing to goal-directed actions,

• Creating accountability for those actions.

The 267 people were broken into five groups. The participants were all asked to begin by identifying their goals.

All of the groups were then asked to rate each goal according to the level of desire, difficulty and importance. They were also asked ‘to what extent to they had the skills and resources to accomplish the goal’ as well as their levels of commitment and motivation to achieve the goals.

Participants were also asked whether they had pursued the goal before, and how their previous attempts to achieve the goal had faired.

• Group one was told to simply think about their goals, they didn't write them down.

• Groups two through five took progressively greater initiatives to support their efforts.

CONCLUSION

The group that completed, not one or two, but all of the steps reached the highest success rate. This was filtered as either having accomplished their goals or getting at least halfway there. Results grew from a 43 percent success rate in group one and escalated to 76 percent of those in group five.

The three steps below are what Matthews' groups did to achieve their goals, with group five implementing all of them to achieve the greatest success rate. They only added one simple step to master the process. 

• Write your goals down. Otherwise, your brain won't cooperate.

•  Commit to the goal by creating action steps.

•  Build in high levels of accountability.