STUDY FOCUSES ON STRATEGIES FOR ACHIEVING GOALS, RESOLUTIONS

Dr. Gail Matthews - 2015 - Dominican University of California - Ninth Annual International Conference of the Psychology Research Unit of Athens Institute for Education and Research (ATINER) 

Matthews, a professor in Dominican's Department of Psychology in the School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, recruited 267 participants from a wide variety of businesses, organizations, and networking groups throughout the United States and overseas for a study on how goal achievement in the workplace is influenced by writing goals, committing to goal-directed actions, and accountability for those actions. Participants ranged in ages from 23 to 72 and represented a wide spectrum of backgrounds. Matthews found that more than 70 percent of the participants who sent weekly updates to a friend reported successful goal achievement (completely accomplished their goal or were more than half way there), compared to 35 percent of those who kept their goals to themselves, without writing them down.

http://www.dominican.edu/academics/ahss/undergraduate-programs/psych/faculty/assets-gail-matthews/researchsummary2.pdf

How the research is incorporated into Akwai's software

In this study Dr. Gail Matthews explains three levels of goal setting; [1] formulating a goal but failing to write it down, [2] formulating a goal and writing it down and [3] writing a goal down and sending weekly progress reports. The research found that those in the 3rd category had the most success. This wisdom is baked into the fabric of Akwai because every week students are prompted to update the progress on their To-Dos, Tasks, UnProductives, Ratings and Questions. This act covers both bases (writing goals down and sending weekly progress). We even take this a step further by having our artificial intelligence algorithm (AIVC 3.0) produce detailed progress reports in the form of our Portfolios.