How writing down goals helped Julia Stewart become a CEO

Julia Stewart’s strategy for success is printed on a piece of paper she keeps framed on her desk. It’s a list of “life goals” the 68-year-old CEO has been making, and regularly updating, for roughly five decades now.

“I started my first life goals when I graduated from high school. I’ve changed them, usually, around every 10 years,” says Stewart, who became IHOP’s first-ever female CEO in 2002. She’s spent approximately 20 years as a chief executive and currently serves in that role at Alurx, a wellness company she founded in 2020.

Her goals have always focused on three categories, she says: career, personal life and giving back. Right now, her list contains ten entries, ranging from the family-centric — “love, encourage, and commit to” her husband Tim, “love and nourish” her children — to work goals like “build Alurx to be the #1 wellness app” and “mentor women from all walks of life.”

It also includes personal reminders: Be a great friend, practice gratitude every day, take care “of my body, heart, and soul.”

Early in her career, Stewart’s goals were focused on “getting more responsibility, more accountability” in her job as a marketing executive for restaurant chains like Burger King, she says. Once she became a CEO, part of her focus shifted toward helping others develop their own careers.

“I measure [success] much differently today ... It’s much more about me making certain that, in my day to day, I’m helping others [and] making a difference,” says Stewart. “I’ve been to the mountaintop. It was a nice ride — a good 20 years [as a CEO] — but this is a different mountaintop. And I want to make sure I’m taking a whole bunch of people with me.”

There’s something useful about writing your goals down, experts say — both the short-term and long-term ones.

Doing so can help you think more strategically about what you want to achieve, and make it easier to track your progress — so you can celebrate your accomplishments and hold yourself accountable when you still have work to do. People who write down their goals are more likely to eventually achieve them, some studies show.

Daymond John, an entrepreneur and investor on ABC’s “Shark Tank,”  started writing down his goals at age 16. That simple act, plus sharing your goals with friends and family, can make you more likely to keep working to achieve them, billionaire Richard Branson wrote in a 2018 blog post.

Three parts of Stewart’s list have always been there, she says: the phrase “take care of my mind, body, and soul” and the ideas of “paying it forward” and “always be learning.” The latter two are lessons from her teacher parents, she says.

All three of them relate to key tenets of success — personal fulfillment and enrichment, career development, physical health and mental wellness. Those aspects have stayed present for a reason, even as her goals have evolved over time, says Stewart.

“I’m at the stage in my life where it’s much more about setting [Alurx] up for the long term, building it out, speaking with people who will probably be involved [for a long time],” she says. “It’s also about my family, and making my family a big part of what I do, and how to give back.”

Written by Tom Huddleston.

Published on cnbc.com on June 4th, 2024. Plus, sign up for CNBC Make It’s newsletter to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life.