I do this sometimes, but it doesn't work that well. My problem is that the sort of people that matter to me, the people I'd tell about these goals, are exactly the sort of people who believe in me and support me and won't actually be that disappointed if I fail because they know I'll have tried my best. (Even if I haven't.) So I don't really fear looking like a fool in front of them at all.
Having to eat a nice serving of humble pie after you've told loads of people something's going to happen and it doesn't is unfortunate, but in my experience it mostly happens with things out of my control (job interviews and the like). I can't really empirically say if I've tried harder in a job interview because I told my mum about it or not. :-)
Another drawback of this system is that people really close to you care about what you're doing, so can get too intrusive and keep asking you questions about it. You end up resenting the questions because things aren't going well and you haven't actually started the task, which makes you resent the questioner, even though they mean well by it. It can drive a wedge between friends and obviously depends a lot by personality (one of my friends was like this and after a period of estrangement he learned to back off and I learned to not associate the resentment with him).
Having said that this auto-blackmail does work in specific situations for me, with specific people, but I think with more 'life' stuff than 'work' stuff.
Having to eat a nice serving of humble pie after you've told loads of people something's going to happen and it doesn't is unfortunate, but in my experience it mostly happens with things out of my control (job interviews and the like). I can't really empirically say if I've tried harder in a job interview because I told my mum about it or not. :-)
Another drawback of this system is that people really close to you care about what you're doing, so can get too intrusive and keep asking you questions about it. You end up resenting the questions because things aren't going well and you haven't actually started the task, which makes you resent the questioner, even though they mean well by it. It can drive a wedge between friends and obviously depends a lot by personality (one of my friends was like this and after a period of estrangement he learned to back off and I learned to not associate the resentment with him).
Having said that this auto-blackmail does work in specific situations for me, with specific people, but I think with more 'life' stuff than 'work' stuff.