Psychology Commons^™

Started From The Future Now We're Here: The Effect Of Planning Direction On Motivation, Kaylee Boulton

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Planning for a future goal in reverse chronological order (i.e., backward planning) can result in increased task motivation for relatively specific, short-term goals, such as academic assignments (Park et al., 2017). Although sometimes backward planning is advocated for shorter-term, concrete event planning (e.g., planning a project timeline), it is also promoted for longer-term, identity-based, “visioning” exercises in which people imagine a desired future-self more generally, then backward plan the path to attaining it. The purpose of the present research was to empirically test this type of applied goal-setting program that promotes the use of backward planning when thinking about one’s …