When you set goals, you want to do anything that helps you be successful. A magical thing happens when you commit your goals to paper: You increase the probability of achieving them. Yet, if you’re like most people, you may have some troubles when it comes to making commitments. You have an important need to commit your goals to paper. Without such a commitment, you might as well be whistling in the wind.Martin Horn, former Senior VP in the Strategic Planning and Research Division in the Chicago office of DDB Needham Worldwide, helps conduct DDB Needham’s lifestyle study, which tracks what drives the American consumer. The study is longitudinal in nature, and it has been on-going since 1975.

Some highly revealing data emerged from the study in the late 1990’s. In essence, the lifestyle study found that Americans wanted gain without pain. Check out these findings:

1. Healthful eating

After years of learning that it’s important to eat more of this and less of that, people are paying less attention to nutrition and diet. For more than 10 years, the percentage of people who make an effort to increase their vitamin intake or fiber content and reduce additives, cholesterol, salt, sugar, and fat has fallen rapidly. While people say they may want or wish to eat more healthfully, the reality is that more people are taking no action and moving in the opposite direction.

2. Fitness

More than half of American men and women think that they’re in good physical condition. That percentage, however, has been falling for more then 20 years. While people indicate that exercise is a good idea, and they should do more of it, “there’s little indication that most people are doing much about it. Most forms of exercise have declined as regular activities,” Marty observes.

3. Environmental issues

At the end of the 1980’s, nearly 70 percent of men and women said they would support pollution standards, “even if it means shutting down some factories.” Ten years later, that number is starting to fall. Twenty years ago, more than 60 percent of men and women said they would accept a lower standard of living to conserve energy. Twenty years later, the numbers have dropped drastically. People may wish to be environmentally conscious, but in truth, they’re taking less action and are actually moving in the opposite direction.

4. Traditional values

Although an overwhelming 85 percent of men and women indicate they have “somewhat old-fashioned tastes and habits,” an increasing number of people support the legalization of marijuana. An increasing number believe couples should live together before marrying, and on many other issues, an increasing number of people have moved away from the “traditional values” they say they embrace.

Marty says the pendulum is swinging toward “satisfying one’s self,” and that’s why people will “embrace traditional values only as long as they don’t interfere with convenience, practicality, or individualism.”

Say One Thing, Do Another

These types of findings indicate far too many people say they want one thing, but then do another. Is it likely that, en masse, they’re going to achieve their goals?

In your own life, if you wish upon a star, or say one thing, but do something entirely different, is it likely you’re going to achieve any of your goals? The answer is a big NO.

Lee Iacocca says that “writing something down is the first step toward making it happen.” In conversation, you can get away with vagueness and nonsense, often without realizing it. But there’s something about putting your thoughts on paper that forces you to get down to specifics. That way, it’s harder to deceive yourself — or anybody else (Forbes Magazine, March 11, 1996).

The Best of Intentions

You can have all kinds of wonderful intentions. You can be willing to. You can want to. You can strongly desire to accomplish something. Unless you put it in writing, your chances of achieving your desired outcome are very small, with one exception.

The one exception is when you have one major goal and nothing else on your mind and the goal is so clear, so much on the front burner of your mind all the time that all of your thoughts and activities propel you in the direction of achieving that goal. Since you’re a multifaceted, complex creature, the chances that you have one major goal and nothing else on your agenda, realistically, are next to nothing.

In his book, How to Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive, business guru Harvey Mackey says that “the palest ink is better than the sharpest memory” when it comes to completing a contract. This goes for anything else that involves commitment and follow-up.

Finding the Quiet to Get it Down on Paper

The former Dean of Management Consultants, Dr. Peter Drucker, observed that most busy executives and managers have, at best, only one or two hours a day to focus on the important tasks that are crucial to accomplishing their goals. With all of the distractions that abound today, being pulled off course can happen easily and routinely. Even harder is carving out the time you need for devising goals in the first place. Drop-in visitors, phone calls, faxes, and e-mail messages all can vigorously compete for your time and attention.

Professionally or personally, having too much to do, attempting to do too much at once, maintaining unrealistic time frames for the tasks currently confronting you, procrastinating, and being disorganized are among the dozens of reasons why carving out even a few minutes here and there to get your goals on paper may seem like a monumental task.

Carve Out Some Quiet

You may find that you do your best goal setting away from your office or place of work. An airplane seat works well. You can take this flight time to examine your existing goals, modify them, and create entirely new ones in ways that you simply can’t sometimes, when you’re back on the ground.

If you don’t fly often, there are other alternative locations, such as a park bench, a seat at your local library, or even a seat in the far corner of your organization’s conference room when no one else is around. Almost no one is good at committing goals to paper when plagued by noise, interruptions, distractions, and in general, chaos.

If you’re fortunate enough to have an administrative assistant or other type of helper, perhaps he or she can schedule quiet time for you. During this time, your phone calls are taken for you. No appointments are made, and no visitors are allowed.

You may find it desirable to schedule some quiet time for each day. It wouldn’t hurt to develop the habit of undertaking regular thinking about what you’re attempting to achieve, what your progress is, what modifications you may need to make to the goals you’ve set, and what new goals you choose to make.

Granted, if someone were to walk by your office with the door open and look in, it wouldn’t look as if you were doing much. After all, when you’re contemplating your goals, nothing much appears to be happening to an outside observer. In your head, however, a couple million neurons are firing in intricate patterns.

So, find a quiet place in your home or office, or anywhere else, and begin contemplating your goals. All you need are a writing implement (or two if you are wordy), some paper, your mind, and a positive attitude. Get ready to embark on your journey toward achieving your goals!