

Publicly committing to a personal goal considered harmful - beza1e1
http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/10/why-you-should-keep-your-goals-secret.php

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yason
Rule from personal software projects: If you tell other people of your first
release, you won't have a first release, ever. The only thing that works is
"hey, i wrote this and it works, have a try!" -- you'll be hatching your
creation until that and you might actually get to release it.

Note that the first release need not be big and complete, just something that
works. But the game changes after that, so the above rule loses its context.
Running a public project is a different scenario from the initial phase of
development.

~~~
NameNickHN
This is exactly how I do things in general. It's great for when you can't
deliver. Nobody expects things that haven't been promised.

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breadbox
My experience is that it depends a great deal on the types of the goals and
how they're presented. The article mentions vaguely-defined, general self-
improvement goals, like taking up a new hobby. I can see a public commitment
being counterproductive there. But I'd bet that it works differently for more
quantifiable goals, especially ones with a specific starting time, such as
completing Nanowrimo, or telling your boss that you're going find a fix for
bug XXX before Monday.

Quitting smoking? A hell of a lot easier to change your mind about if you
haven't told anyone.

Of course, we're just going on the article. I don't have access to the
original paper, but just reading the abstract already suggests (big surprise
here) that the article is probably not a faithful summary of the study in
question.

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elgenie
The original paper is posted on the the author's site:

[http://www.psych.nyu.edu/gollwitzer/09_Gollwitzer_Sheeran_Se...](http://www.psych.nyu.edu/gollwitzer/09_Gollwitzer_Sheeran_Seifert_Michalski_When_Intentions_.pdf)

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t_hozumi
I got to know this law by Derek Sivers's TED talk[1] and I totally agreed with
him especially about personal programming project. A downside of this approach
is that you cannot get a feedback until you unveil first version.

[1] Derek Sivers: Keep your goals to yourself
[http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/derek_sivers_keep_your_goal...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_yourself.html)

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axefrog
I find it more likely that the harm done to your goal is not caused by public
announcement of that goal, but rather announcing it is evidence that you
aren't as committed to the goal as you are to other goals that you're better
at sticking to. In other words, if you're having trouble with achieving
something in particular, or working towards it, then you are likely to
acknowledge that to yourself in the form of "needing to set a goal" and thus
"announcing it to the world", thus automatically ensuring that announced goals
are less likely to be kept by the very nature of the fact that they needed to
be announced in the first place. If you want something badly enough, you are
more likely to "just do it", thus foregoing the need to announce it to others.

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jessriedel
Had the idea of publicly committing been tested before? I'd be pretty
surprised if this was the first controlled study about this idea.

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xanados
I found beeminder (<https://www.beeminder.com/>) to be a surprisingly
effective commitment utility. The goal has to be measurable, and you have to
trust yourself somewhat enough not to subvert the rules, but since there is a
counter-party most people's sense of personal ethics should be sufficient.

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ypcx
<http://four.livejournal.com/963421.html>

I'd say, only talk about your future plans as much as you are comfortable to.
Sometimes just talking vaguely about your things with other people helps to
keep you interested and motivated.

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youlost_thegame
Well, I'm sorry to say that I believe exactly the opposite. Public committing
means a high level of responsibility and scrutiny, and it is the best
motivator for any task.

In our weelky meetings we write down each task that needs to be done and the
name of the person in charge, then send it by email. Even if there is no
follow-up the next week, we observed that stopping to send the emails leads to
less work done (or, at least, not the work that is expected to be done by the
managers)

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vidarh
Believe what you want, but your belief is directly contradicted by evidence.

Also note that your example is of something very different, as it is not
personal goals of the person being put in charge of the tasks, but tasks put
in place to carry out a duty to someone else.

With personal goals, publicly committing to them will rarely lead to a strong
negative reaction if you fail.

~~~
Travis
I'm not so sure it's so clear (in research) that some form of public
commitment reduces the likelihood of completion.

In fact, Robert Cialdini found that commitment was an excellent form of
motivation. "If people commit, orally or in writing, to an idea or goal, they
are more likely to honor that commitment because of establishing that idea or
goal as being congruent with their self image. Even if the original incentive
or motivation is removed after they have already agreed, they will continue to
honor the agreement. For example, in car sales, suddenly raising the price at
the last moment works because the buyer has already decided to buy."[1]

Cialdini performed his original research several decades ago, but it has been
continued by the Freakonomics/Kahneman/"Nudge" crew. To the best of my
recollection, all of their experiments showed a strong positive effect when
public commitment was added. It's the principle behind StickK.com, as well.

Perhaps there are certain types of improvements (vague self improvement was
mentioned elsewhere in this thread) that are harmed by external reinforcement,
but I think that's more the exception rather than the rule.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini> (also check out his
"psychology of influence" book for more on the topic)

