“If you start by promising what you don’t even have yet, you’ll lose your desire to work towards getting it.” — Paulo Coelho

“You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.” — Carl Jung

“Work hard in silence. Let your work make the noise.”

Announcing your goals can undermine/hinder your overall progress. It releases cheap dopamine and tricks your brain into thinking you’ve already achieved them, which will lower your motivation. Keep your goals to yourself.

Not everything needs to be shared. Let your actions speak louder than words. If you share about your commitments and endeavors even with the nearest ones, you are less likely to succeed. Move in silence.

Announcing our goals creates an illusion of progress. In reality, lasting success comes not from broadcasting our ambitions, but from quietly focusing on the consistent behaviors and systems that drive real results. What you have done is far more important than you have said. Outcome over ego.

Be willing to look stupid / like an idiot until those who called you dumb asks you how you did it!

Journal instead of announce. Write down your goal in detail. This captures the clarity benefit of articulation without the premature reward of social validation.

Early praise kills projects. Being told how great you are (or how great your work is) isn’t always helpful. Maybe it gives you some short-term motivation at first. In that moment, it can feel like you’ve already made it. It leads you to want to shorten the feedback loop as much as possible. Just so you can get that boost of dopamine a bit quicker than last time. And that is the key part of the problem.In the long run, it steers us away from the real work that actually deserves positive feedback; it leads us to lose motivation to actually reach the finish line. So, don’t announce anything until it’s done. A pat on the back after you’ve finished something worthwhile feels a lot better than getting a few cheap likes on social media.

It is generally not a good idea to announce that you are working on a well-known problem before you have a feasible plan for solving it, as this can make it harder to gracefully abandon the problem and refocus your attention in more productive directions in the event that the problem is more difficult than anticipated. […] This is also important in grant proposals; saying things like “I would like to solve [Famous Problem X]” or “I want to develop or use [Famous Theory Y]” does not impress grant reviewers unless there is a coherent plan (e.g. some easier unsolved problems to use as milestones) as well as a proven track record of progress.

However, when trying to forming a good habit, announcing your goal to the crowd might be helpful.

See also: Public Commitment Pledge

Be primarily internally driven with intrinsic motivation