When Brian Tracy was eighteen, he left school without graduating. He spent his early twenties washing dishes, cleaning floors, working on farms, sawmills, and ships. Often he slept in his car. He had no qualifications and no clear direction. Then one day, while working in commission sales and struggling to survive, he took out a piece of paper and wrote down a goal: to earn one thousand naira-equivalent a month. He folded the paper up and forgot about it. Thirty days later, his life had completely changed. He discovered a sales technique that tripled his income from the very first day. A new owner of his company offered him exactly the income he had written down, to lead the sales team. He accepted. From that moment, his trajectory changed entirely. Tracy does not attribute this to luck. He attributes it to writing down the goal. And he spent the next several decades researching why this works. His central finding is captured in one sentence, offered by a group of self-made millionaires who gathered to discuss the reasons for their success: Success is goals, and all else is commentary. He backs this with one of the most cited studies in personal development. In 1979, Harvard MBA graduates were asked whether they had clear, written goals for their future. Only 3 percent did. Thirteen percent had goals but had not written them down. Eighty-four percent had no specific goals at all. Ten years later, in 1989, the researchers returned. The 13 percent with unwritten goals were earning twice as much as the 84 percent with no goals. But the 3 percent with written goals were earning — on average — ten times as much as the other 97 percent combined. The only measurable difference between the groups at graduation was the clarity and commitment of their goals. For Oluwaseun, sitting in a secondary school classroom in Ibadan: the most consequential decision she could make this year is not which subject to study hardest. It is whether she will write down what she actually wants from her life.