Page 95 - Hard Goals

86 HARD Goals

sions, and so on. There’s a lot of cognitive processing taking
place right there. In essence, you get a double whammy that
really sears the goal into your brain.
Study after study shows you will remember things better
when you write them down. Typically, subjects for these types
of studies are students taking notes in class. However, one
group of researchers looked at people conducting hiring inter-
views. When the interviewers took notes about their interviews
with each of the candidates, they were able to recall about 23
percent more nuggets of information from the interviews than
people who didn’t take notes. Parenthetically, if you’re being
interviewed for a job and you want the interviewer to remember
you, you’d better hope he or she is taking notes.
It’s not just general recall that improves when you write
things down. Doing so will also improve your recall of the
really important information. You know how when you’re in
a classroom setting there’s some stuff the teacher says that’s
really important (it’ll be on the test), and then there’s the not so
important (it won’t be on the test)? Well, one study found that
when people weren’t taking notes in class, they remembered
just as many unimportant facts as they did important facts.
(There’s a recipe for a C grade.) But when people were taking
notes, they remembered many more important facts and many
fewer unimportant facts (and that, my friends, is the secret of
A students). Writing things down doesn’t just help you remem-
ber, it makes your mind more effi cient by helping you focus on
the truly important stuff. And your HARD Goals absolutely
qualify as truly important stuff.
Geena is a radiologist at a busy city hospital. She also has a
physician husband whose social job demands keep her running
and three kids with equally busy schedules to take care of. “Trying
to accomplish anything for myself is almost impossible,” Geena