Page 69 - Hard Goals

60 HARD Goals

telling me a picture is worth 1,000 words? (Whatever you do,
don’t tell my publisher. Otherwise they might drop me and just
buy some stock photography.)
All jokes aside, the technical term is “pictorial superiority
effect.” It expresses the idea that concepts are much more likely
to be remembered if presented as pictures rather than as words.
To what extent do we remember more? Well, when we hear only
information, our total recall is about 10 percent when tested 72
hours later. But add a picture, and that number shoots up to 65
1
percent. It’s a pretty substantial difference.
Every goal you’re considering right now is competing for
some fi nite resources: time, energy, attention, memory, and so
forth. An individual—or a company or a country—can only
pursue so many goals at one time. So some goals will get picked
and pursued, while others get dropped like litter on our brains’
highways. And one of the key determinants of whether or not
we choose a goal for pursuit is how clearly and vividly we can
picture that goal in our minds.
When it comes to motivating ourselves or others to achieve
big goals, whoever has the best imagery wins. If your goal is to
lose 30 pounds and you’ve got a vibrant and detailed picture
of how great you’ll look in those skinny jeans seared into your
brain, an image so vivid you see it in your mind’s eye every
time you open the fridge, you’ll probably stick to your diet and
achieve your goal. But if you just can’t picture it—you want
to lose the weight, but you just can’t visualize yourself dieting
or exercising or being skinnier—then it’s more than likely that
your goal will remain unrealized.
Imagine your goal is to double the size of your company. If
it’s easier for your employees to picture the company staying the
same size than it is for them to imagine how great the company
would be 200 percent bigger, they’ll never accept your goal (and