Some of you may know the famous and oft-cited studies about goal setting among Yale and Harvard students. Before writing this article, we wanted to briefly summarize these studies for all our readers.

There is just one problem – after doing some research we realized that these studies are nothing more than a myth with no scientific basis. Not only is there no scholarly work behind it, but none of the student participants supposedly involved in these studies could confirm that they actually happened. Not a big loss though – the results seemed too unrealistic anyway.

Instead we decided to share Dr. Gail Matthews’ research paper on how goal achievement is positively influenced by writing down goals. This study is not just peer-reviewed but has been widely cited by some of the world’s most prominent media companies including TIME, Forbes, Huffington Post, Yahoo News etc.

Matthews’ paper revealed that groups which had written their goals down were altogether 50% more likely to achieve their goals than those groups which had not. In addition, the group that was asked to “formulate action commitments and send their goals, action commitments and weekly progress reports to a supportive friend” was the most successful, being 78% more effective in achieving their goals.

So if you really want to achieve your goals, we recommend finding an “accountability partner” with whom you can share your goals and the steps to achieve them. Regularly analysing your progress is sure to encourage and motivate you.

For us at BePrime, developing a feature that would enable users to share their goals with friends is among the first things on our to-do list.