There’s a fine balance between needing accountability to accomplish our goals and wanting to keep things to ourselves, for whatever reason. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t share all of the things on my bucket list, because I hold some too closely. However, I’ve experienced too many benefits from talking about my goals (online and in real life) to keep them to myself.

Sharing our goals helps us to connect with and get encouragement from other people who want to do (or hear about others doing) similar goals. Together we get to enjoy the excitement of planning, and can exchange tips and ideas to make each experience better.

Sharing goals also keeps me accountable. If you hear me talk about something I plan to do in February, and don’t hear anything else about it and now it’s November, you might ask how it went. And if I haven’t done it yet, I’d be reminded and would follow through, because it’s embarrassing to only talk about doing things yet never actually do them.

But maybe that’s just me.

In the TED talk below, Derek Sivers makes an argument that sharing our goals may make us less likely to accomplish them. Take the 3 minutes to watch the video and let me know: what works best for you? Do you tell people your goals, or keep them to yourself?