Comments on: Why 3% of Harvard MBAs Make Ten Times as Much as the Other 97% Combined

By: 'Gbenga Sesan

'Gbenga Sesan — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 22:37:10 +0000

"Why 3% of Harvard MBAs Make Ten Times as Much as the Other 97% Combined" via http://t.co/qEt0DxID #GoalSetting

By: Famous Quotes About Success – How to Achieve Your Dreams Using 3 Success Quotes | Wealth Without Risk

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 03:33:04 +0000

[...] it from these three guys. Take action, be a person of value and start right now!Create a video blog Michael Lee asked: There are a lot of famous quotes about success that can help you find your direct…br/>Read on to learn more about famous quotes about success and how to apply them in your [...]

By: Savvy Grad Advice | Write Your Life | GenYJourney.com

Savvy Grad Advice | Write Your Life | GenYJourney.com — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 23:52:37 +0000

[...] only 3% of people write down their goals? What is even more amazing about this statistic is that this 3% of the population holds 97% of the world’s wealth. Pretty Impressive huh? This is not to say that by simply writing down goals will make you money, [...]

By: Goal Setting « LifeVantage Team Forum

Goal Setting « LifeVantage Team Forum — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 16:43:09 +0000

[...] from the book What They Don’t Teach You in the Harvard Business School, by Mark McCormack) and http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/why-3-of-harvard-mbas-make-ten-times-as-much-as-the-other…) [...]

By: Starting off Fresh: Setting Goals | Incept Blog

Starting off Fresh: Setting Goals | Incept Blog — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 17:02:01 +0000

[...] my research for this blog post, I uncovered an interesting long-term study from 1979. Harvard University interviewers ended up asking fresh graduates the simple question of ,“Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” The [...]

By: Sid Savara

Sid Savara — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:36:22 +0000

Hi Fred,

Thanks for your comment! I am glad you enjoy this site – please feel free
to link to any of the articles you find useful =)

By: Sid Savara

Sid Savara — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 02:36:22 +0000

Hi Fred,

Thanks for your comment! I am glad you enjoy this site – please feel free
to link to any of the articles you find useful =)

By: Effective Goal Setting: Crash Course | IT Rogers - Starting a Business Tips for Entrepreneurs

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:36:51 +0000

[...] makes desired outcomes more clear, increasing success rate of accomplishment. Need proof? See a study of why writing down clear goals results in a higher rate of [...]

By: Fred Tarantino

Fred Tarantino — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 14:36:40 +0000

Sid, can I post a link up to this article on my website; www.niceadays.com ??
It was just launced a few days ago and this is some great information

By: Dave B

Dave B — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:59:41 +0000

I am in sales, and have constant contact with executive officers, and have discovered that Harvard MBAs are worth virtually nothing more than an aggressive, ambitious public school college graduate.

By: GetAds, Blog

GetAds, Blog — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:45:03 +0000

Goals……

There are all types of goals. I will spare the description of them all and just list some below. I am sure most people have heard the tall tale, of “Why 3% of Harvard MBAs Make Ten Times as Much as the other 97% combined”, and the amazing answe…

By: Sid Savara

Sid Savara — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 06:08:18 +0000

Thanks for your comments Jim!

I agree that writing down goals is essential - I had referenced this study
in an earlier post, to make that exact point, and a reader called me out on
it. I felt it was only right to clear their air.

I have not seen Shawn Achor speak, but I will Google to see if I can find
one of his presentations - I have heard about the class he teaches at
Harvard a few times in various articles. That premise (having the freedom
to pursue the things that interest us most) sounds very Tim Ferris-ish to me
as well =)

By: Jim Littlefield

Jim Littlefield — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:31:17 +0000

Sid, Thanks for sharing the results of your research. I am not familiar with references to the study but still believe writing goals down is essential to achieving them. It's not the act of writing them down that creates the result; it's having a reference point and defining just what it is you want to achieve. Otherwise we get distracted by other things and loose track of the original goal.

I've just found your site today via a twitter search as I was listening to an audio book of "The Secret". So perhaps it was a "Law of Attraction" thing? :-) Anyway, I look forward to reading more of your posts.

What prompted me to leave a comment however was the reference to Harvard graduate. Have you heard Shawn Achor speak. He was the keynote speaker at a conference I attended earlier this year in Rome of all places. You may have heard about his class at Harvard about happiness. His insights were fascinating. His talk wasn't so much about goals but how to achieve happiness in life; Happiness is the ultimate goal we all want to achieve Harvard grad or not.

The core of his presentation was finding happiness is having the freedom to pursue the things that interest us most. It is a deceptively simple idea that evades most of the population, perhaps 97% of us!

By: SidSavara

SidSavara — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 07:48:10 +0000

Hi Robert, I appreciate you taking the time to give such a complete
perspective and comment. I agree that setting goals is worthwhile – I
myself try to write down short term as well as long range goals. However, I
have had a hard time finding proof that the Harvard goal study existed.
There's a happy ending however – in my research, I came upon a written goals
study done recently, and I have provided that PDF and results.

I am glad to hear you have spent time improving yourself – and have
succeeded in earning more, and being happier as a result =)

By: Robert Jackson

Robert Jackson — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 01:47:59 +0000

It makes me sick that so many people want to prove this goals study didn't exist. It's like they're implying that we shouldn't set goals and we shouldn't do what the success gurus teach us. It makes me sick that so many people just want to be negative and cynical and to trash success gurus. I despise negative people who just love to trash everything. I've spent a lot of time studying the teachings of success gurus and it has helped me a lot. I make several times more money than I used to and I'm a lot happier. I also don't work for other people anymore, which I hated to do and which was very detrimental to me. I only work for myself and I also have a lot of passive income now. What is the alternative to setting goals? Being an aimless loser.

By: SidSavara

SidSavara — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 09:26:07 +0000

Adam -

Thanks for reading, and your comments! You're right, there is no guarantee that writing down goals necessarily caused success. I wrote a followup to this post you may be interested in, where I reference a study done that actually put students into various groups, told one group to write down the goals, and other not to, and compared the results. It's pretty interesting, PDF format, and in the followup article to this located at http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/fact…

By: Adam Smith

Adam Smith — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 06:19:33 +0000

Correlation is not causation. It's not at all clear that having written goals _caused_ them to be successful.

By: 10 new blogs about Technlogy and Life Hacking | Axonoid

10 new blogs about Technlogy and Life Hacking | Axonoid — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:15:34 +0000

[...] Why 3% of Harvard MBAs Make Ten Times as Much as the Other 97% Combined [...]

By: Sandra

Sandra — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 06:23:27 +0000

To be totally honest, the main reason I think this story is B.S. is that it stated 84% of Harvard MBA grads had no specific goals. I find that really, really, really hard to believe.

By: SidSavara

SidSavara — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 02:18:45 +0000

Very interesting. I will have to look into this further. As you said, it certainly sounds surprising but perhaps plausible – however, now I want to see if I can find the original study.

By: me

me — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 07:21:14 +0000

I've read many variation of this “study”. It sounds like it should be true, but it's not. There has been no proof of such a study. However, many authors, from Tony Robbins to many others have taken it as faith this study was done and publish it in their book. However, no one has being able to find the original study.

By: SidSavara

SidSavara — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 06:26:09 +0000

Interesting, went and read your blog as well as the Fast Company article. You're right in that even I found the reference in multiple books, but did not come across the actual study. I quoted as close to the source as I could – many books reference that book, which in turn references the study.

Until you pointed this out, I didn't think this was unusual though. Often these scholarly publications and journals don't provide access to the public to the actual papers unless you pay (even IEEE does it with engineering papers, for example).

I guess I will try and research this further and write a follow up about the “truthiness” of the specific example =)

By: The Happy Rock

The Happy Rock — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 06:15:10 +0000

Sid,

From my research I couldn't find any proof of that actual study being real. You can check out my research on my