Chapter 2 · The Architecture of Reality

Burning Desire: The Unspoken Reason Your Goals Are Failing (And How to Rebuild Desire Into a Force)

16 min · April 2026

You have a Definite Major Purpose. You wrote it down. You read it aloud. You know exactly what you want.

And somewhere between month two and month six, the momentum stalled.

Not because you lost belief. Not because the goal changed. Not because something unexpected happened. The stall came because you discovered a gap that none of the goal-setting literature addresses: knowing what you want and actually burning for it are neurologically different things.

Most people have the first. Almost no one has the second. And that gap is where most ambitious projects die—quietly, at the moment when the initial enthusiasm fades and the actual work of sustained effort begins. The business at 80% complete. The book unfinished. The career pivot you decided on and then walked away from.

This post is for the reader who has stalled before. The one who kept almost-succeeding then stopping. The one who has watched their own momentum fade and recognized the pattern. The one who knows that the problem is not discipline or intelligence or even opportunity. The problem is that their desire peaked, and when the peak faded, there was nothing structural underneath to hold them there.

Hill’s diagnosis: your desire has not yet reached “burning” intensity. Not in the motivational sense—that comes and goes. In the structural sense—the sense where your mind has become so focused on a single outcome that pursuing it on the bad days is not a choice, but a physical compulsion. The kind of desire where skipping a day feels like self-betrayal.

This is what Chapter 2 teaches: how to install that burning desire using Hill’s practical protocol.

What Is Burning Desire?

Burning desire is a state of mind fixed on a definite goal with intensity that will not accept defeat. It is distinct from motivation, which fluctuates with mood and circumstance. Burning desire is a structural commitment—the kind that persists on the mornings when you feel nothing at all.

Hill’s core claim: desire is the starting point of all achievement. Not talent. Not education. Not connections. Desire. The kind of desire that is so specific and so consuming that failure becomes impossible not because the obstacles disappear, but because you have reorganized your entire psyche around overcoming them.

Burning desire has three markers:

Specificity. The desire is fixed on an exact, measurable outcome (not “I want more money” but “I want $250,000 by this date through this vehicle”).
Intensity. The desire produces a measurable emotional and physical response—your body responds when you think about it (racing pulse, tightness in chest, surge of focus).
Non-negotiability. The desire is so central to your identity that pursuing it becomes non-optional—deviation feels like self-betrayal.

Most goals fail because they lack all three. This article explains why burning desire works, what blocks it, and how to build it using Hill’s Six-Step Builder.

Why Most Goals Stall (And Why Motivation Is Not the Problem)

The conventional diagnosis is that you lack motivation. You need more discipline. You need a better productivity system. You need to find your “why” and connect to it more deeply.

This is not only wrong—it misdirects you toward a problem that is not actually the problem.

Motivation is a state of feeling. It fluctuates hourly—it responds to sleep, mood, the weather, whether you had coffee, what you read this morning. Most people’s motivation peaks on Day 1 and decays predictably over the following weeks. Motivation cannot be counted on.

Hill does not ask you to feel motivated every day. He asks something harder and more durable: he asks you to want something so badly that you pursue it on the days you feel motivated and on the days you feel nothing at all. On the days when you are tired. When obstacles appear. When a better opportunity comes along and tempts you to pivot.

The distinction is not semantic. It is functional. It determines whether you finish.

A 2001 study by Knutson et al. published in the Journal of Neuroscience tracked how dopamine—the neurochemical driving motivation—responds to anticipated rewards. The finding was counterintuitive: dopamine does not spike when you receive a reward. It spikes before, in proportion to the intensity of anticipation. Larger anticipated rewards produce stronger dopamine signals. Stronger dopamine signals result in more brain resources allocated to pursuit.

What this means: burning desire is the subjective experience of a highly activated dopaminergic system. Tepid desire does not generate enough dopamine to sustain effort through obstacles. Motivation peaks and decays. But the daily reading practice Hill prescribes is a dopamine-maintenance protocol—you are vividly imagining achievement twice daily to trigger dopamine release that keeps your motivational system activated.

On the days when you feel unmotivated (and they will come), the dopamine architecture you have built carries you forward. You are not relying on motivation. You are relying on a neurochemical infrastructure.

This is why people with burning desire finish while people with motivation do not. Motivation comes and goes. Infrastructure remains.

The Fundamental Distinction Hill Makes: Wish vs. Burning Desire

Hill’s most important diagnostic appears early in Chapter 2. Read this carefully:

“Riches come to those whose state of mind is fixed on a definite goal with intensity that will not accept defeat.”

Not to those who wish. Not to those who have clear goals. To those whose state of mind is fixed with intensity.

A wish is passive. “I wish I had more money.” “I wish I had a better relationship.” “I wish I was further along by now.” Wishes are safe because they place no demands on you. You can hold a wish and take no action. You can fantasize about it, feel good thinking about it, and never move. Wishes are perfectly compatible with inaction.

Burning desire is different. It is so consuming that not pursuing it would create cognitive dissonance so loud that sleeping through it becomes impossible. You do not pursue a burning desire because you are disciplined. You pursue it because not pursuing it has become psychologically expensive. Deviation feels like self-betrayal. The goal has become part of your identity.

Hill illustrates this through the story of Edwin C. Barnes, who arrived at Thomas Edison’s lab as a tramp—no credentials, no connections, no money. What he had was a burning desire to work with Edison. He did not have the credentials. He did not have an invitation. He simply showed up.

For five years, Barnes waited. He took any job, lived however was necessary, endured rejection and indifference, watched Edison’s partners question his presence. When they asked Edison why a tramp was hanging around his lab, Edison recognized something they did not: the specificity of Barnes’s desire. It was so consuming that it could not be extinguished by circumstance or repeated rejection.

Years later, when asked how he persisted, Barnes said that his desire was so specific and so consuming that failure was never actually an option in his mind. He did not persist through grim willpower. He persisted because he literally could not imagine doing anything else with his life.

This is what burning desire looks like in action: not gritted teeth determination, but such total alignment with a single goal that diversion becomes psychologically impossible.

The Instructor’s Confession: What Happens When You Have a Wish, Not Desire

This part of the chapter contains something that does not appear elsewhere in Hill’s work. The instructor who developed this course material shared a direct account of the moment they confused a wish with burning desire.

In 2018, the instructor wrote on an index card: “I want to build a seven-figure business.” They taped it to the bathroom mirror. They read it every morning for eleven months.

What they did not do: actually pursue any business engagements. They stayed in a $60-an-hour consulting contract they hated because it felt safe. They spent weekends watching business documentaries instead of building anything. They wrote the same wish down every day but took no actions that would actually make it real.

The instructor also wrote: “I am in a relationship with my perfect match.” Every morning for eleven months, they described it in detail. They told themselves they were focused on their business, that they needed to “be ready first.”

But when they met someone they were interested in, they kept it at surface level. There were moments where a connection could have developed. They shut it down early. They remember one conversation where the other person was interested. Instead of continuing it, they ended it quickly and told themselves they did not have time.

The instructor kept setting deadlines for when they would “have a girlfriend” and then did nothing different to make it happen. What felt like discipline was actually self-deception. Writing it down felt safer than risking rejection in real life. So they kept choosing the version that already existed on paper instead of the version that required action.

Here is the line that cuts: “Desire without a deadline and a price you are willing to pay is a wish.”

An index card on the mirror for eleven months was a wish. Not a burning desire.

Hill’s Six-Step Method: Converting Purpose Into Burning Desire

Chapter 2 contains Hill’s most practical protocol: a six-step method for converting your Definite Major Purpose (the target you defined in Chapter 1) into a burning desire that mobilizes your entire system.

These are not suggestions. Hill presents them as a precise protocol. Vague application produces vague results.

Step 1: Fix the Exact Amount (or Equivalent Measure)

Do not write “a lot” or “enough” or “wealth.” Write a number. A specific, measurable amount.

$250,000 annual revenue. Not “$200k-300k”—$250,000. 10,000 email subscribers. 6 clients paying $15,000 per quarter. A home in a specific neighborhood within a specific price range. A relationship with this specific person by this specific timeline. A body that can run a 7-minute mile.

Specificity activates the brain’s reticular activating system (the same mechanism discussed in the Chapter 1 article). Your brain cannot filter for abstract concepts. It cannot organize resources around “more” or “better” or “success.” It can filter for numbers. It can filter for specific images and measurable outcomes.

The specificity is the mechanism. Vague desire produces vague results. Specific desire produces specific results. If you cannot write a number, your desire is still at the wish stage.

Step 2: Determine What You Will Give in Return

Hill is explicit: there is no such thing as something for nothing. Every achievement requires an exchange. You must specify what you will offer in return for what you desire. This is not negotiation. This is clarity about the value exchange underlying your goal.

The chapter provides four categories:

(a) A skill you will develop and offer at a professional level. “I will develop advanced negotiation skills and offer them as a corporate mediator to companies in dispute.” Not just “negotiation skills”—where you will deploy them and to whom.

(b) A service you will provide at exceptional quality. “I will provide strategy consulting at a depth that allows early-stage founders to make 3x-better decisions about product direction.” Specific service, specific outcome for specific people.

(c) A product you will create and deliver. “I will design and manufacture a specific product line that solves supply chain visibility problems for mid-market logistics companies.”

(d) A problem you will solve for a specific group of people. “I will help mid-career professionals navigate transitions into leadership roles that require executive presence and political navigation.”

The specificity matters. Not “I will help people” (too vague) but “I will help this group with this specific problem and they will experience this specific outcome” (specific enough to execute and specific enough to measure).

If your Step 2 is vague, your desire remains unmoored to reality. You cannot want something intensely unless you know what you must become or produce to deserve it. The exchange clarifies the journey.

Step 3: Establish a Definite Date

Not “eventually.” Not “within a few years.” A specific date: Month / Day / Year.

June 30, 2027. Not “mid-2027”—June 30, 2027. December 31, 2026. March 15, 2027. This specificity is not pedantry. This date becomes the container. It transforms the goal from an abstract aspiration into a time-bound commitment. Your brain can now ask: “What is the gap between now and then? What must happen in this window?”

Without the date, there is no urgency. Without urgency, there is no reason for your brain to mobilize resources now instead of someday. The deadline is what converts an indefinite wish into a bounded challenge that your nervous system can mobilize around.

Step 4: Create a Definite Plan and Begin At Once

This is where Hill becomes ruthlessly practical. He does not say “think about what to do.” He says “create a plan and begin immediately.”

Specify the first three concrete actions you will take this week. Not eventually. This week. Examples: Call three prospects. Submit the application. Register for the course. Book the ticket. Meet with the advisor. Write the outline. Attend the networking event. Send the cold email. Schedule the consultation call.

The specific actions matter less than the fact of immediate action. Action breaks the spell of wishful thinking. The moment you take a single concrete step, your nervous system receives a signal: this is real, not fantasy. The goal moves from the realm of imagination into the realm of execution.

“Begin immediately” is not motivational language. It is a neurological instruction: interrupt the delay pattern before it crystallizes. Delay is a habit. Action is also a habit. The question is which one you build first.

Step 5: Write a Clear, Emotionally Charged Statement

This is the precision-crafted Six-Step Statement. Hill’s template:

“By [DATE], I will have [EXACT AMOUNT/OUTCOME]. In return, I will give [SPECIFIC SERVICE/VALUE]. I will achieve this through [PLAN]. I am beginning immediately by [FIRST ACTION]. I believe with absolute certainty that this is already in the process of being realized. I can see it. I feel it. It is mine.”

Example (consulting practice): “By June 30, 2027, I will have $250,000 in annual revenue from a strategy consulting practice serving B2B SaaS founders. In return, I will provide decision-making clarity and execution roadmaps that reduce their time-to-product-market-fit. I will achieve this through outbound prospecting, speaking engagements, and strategic partnerships. I am beginning immediately by calling five founders this week. I believe with absolute certainty that this is already in the process of being realized. I can see it. I feel it. It is mine.”

Notice the language. Not “I hope to have” or “I will try to get” or “I am working toward.” The language is present-tense certainty. This is not positive thinking—it is the installation of a declaration so complete that your subconscious mind has no ambiguity about what it is working toward.

Step 6: Read It Aloud, Twice Daily, Until Your Body Responds

Not silently. Aloud. With emotional intensity. Your voice matters. Speaking engages your vocal cords, your hearing, your self-referential processing—three neural pathways that thinking alone does not activate.

As you read, see and feel and believe yourself already in possession. Not as a future fantasy you are hoping for, but as a present reality you are simply waiting to catch up to. You are not trying to manifest. You are reporting what is already yours.

If you feel silly reading it aloud, good. That discomfort is your old self-image resisting the new declaration. Read it again. Do not stop until your body responds—until you feel your pulse quicken, your breathing shift, your chest tighten, a surge of focus.

That physical response is not extraneous or metaphorical. That is dopamine. That is the neurological proof that your declaration has reached your subconscious mind. When you feel nothing, your statement is not emotionally charged enough. Revise until your body responds.

The Science: Four Mechanisms That Activate When You Follow the Six Steps

Here is what happens neurologically when you execute Hill’s protocol.

Mechanism 1: Dopamine Saturation (Specific Goal = Sustained Motivation)

The Knutson study measured dopamine response to anticipated rewards. The finding: dopamine does not spike when you receive a reward. It spikes before, proportional to anticipation intensity. Larger anticipated rewards produce stronger dopamine responses and more resources allocated to pursuit.

When you specify an exact amount and read it aloud with emotional intensity, you are creating an anticipated reward so specific and vivid that your dopamine system activates. The daily reading practice is a dopamine-renewal protocol. Each reading triggers dopamine release. Your brain learns to associate thinking about your goal with dopamine activation. This produces persistent motivation—not the fleeting, mood-dependent kind, but the structural kind that comes from a consistently activated reward system.

This is why people with burning desire finish while people with motivation do not. Motivation fades. Dopamine infrastructure remains.

Mechanism 2: Written Goals Activate More Neural Pathways Than Thought

Dr. Gail Matthews (2015, Dominican University) tracked goal achievement. The finding: people who wrote down goals were 42% more likely to achieve them than those who only thought about them.

Why? Writing engages different neural pathways than thinking. Writing activates motor cortex, visual processing, and language centers simultaneously. Thinking engages only language processing. More pathways = deeper encoding = stronger memory and stronger motivational pull.

Hill’s Step 5—“write a clear statement”—is not optional. It is the installation of deeper neural representation of your goal.

Mechanism 3: Speaking Produces Deeper Encoding Than Writing Alone

The “generation effect” (Slamecka & Graf, 1978) shows that information you produce yourself—by speaking or writing—is remembered far more deeply than information you passively receive. When you read your goal aloud, you engage:

Motor pathways (vocal cords)
Auditory pathways (hearing your voice)
Self-referential processing (recognizing the voice as your own)

Your brain treats hearing yourself speak differently than hearing someone else speak or thinking silently. Your own voice triggers different neural patterns. This is why spoken declarations work where silent affirmations fail.

Mechanism 4: Public Commitment Creates Cognitive Dissonance

When you share your Six-Step Statement with at least one other person, you create a gap between the commitment you have made public and your current reality. This gap is cognitive dissonance—uncomfortable. Your subconscious works to close it not by abandoning the goal (backing down is costly after public declaration) but by finding ways to achieve it.

The American Society of Training and Development found that those with public commitments have a 65% completion rate versus 10% for those who keep goals private. Public declaration converts a wish into a binding commitment.

The Metaphysical Foundation

The six steps apply three universal principles. The Law of Vibration: focused intention shifts your internal frequency, attracting aligned people and circumstances. The Law of Cause and Effect: the mental realm produces causes that manifest in the physical realm. Each step plants a cause—specificity, exchange, urgency, channels, form, reinforcement. Skip any and the effect weakens. The Creative Word: spoken declaration shapes reality across traditions (Judeo-Christian “Let there be light,” Hindu Om, Egyptian Ptah). Hill insists on reading aloud, not silently, because speaking engages the creative power of your voice.

Bridge Burning: Why Divided Commitment Produces Divided Results

Chapter 2 introduces bridge burning—the warrior who burns his ships upon landing on enemy shores. No retreat option. Victory or death.

Most people maintain backup plans: keep the job they hate while starting a side business (both equal priorities), stay in a comfortable relationship while fantasizing about another, maintain a safe consulting rate while dreaming of scaling.

Hill’s diagnosis: as long as “Plan B” exists, your subconscious knows the primary goal is optional. The brain allocates proportional resources—divided attention across multiple futures instead of the full intensity needed for breakthrough.

Bridge burning means one thing: this is non-negotiable. The safety net is gone. This is the only option.

Ariely and Wertenbroch (2002) studied exactly this. Self-imposed constraints—removing escape routes—significantly improved goal achievement. Eliminate the option to retreat and your subconscious perceives the goal as non-negotiable, triggering a fundamentally different level of effort. Divided commitment produces divided results.

Common Mistakes When Building a Burning Desire

Hundreds of people have attempted the Six-Step Builder. A predictable set of failures shows up repeatedly. Most are not failures of the framework—they are failures of execution. Here are the five most common.

Mistake 1: Writing vague statements. “I want to be wealthy” or “I want to succeed in my business” is not a six-step statement. It is a wish. Your brain cannot filter for abstract concepts. It cannot mobilize resources around “success.” Revision required: exact amount, specific date, specified exchange, concrete plan, and public commitment. If you cannot see the exact moment you will know you have succeeded, the statement is not yet specific enough.

Mistake 2: Reading without feeling. Mechanical repetition without emotion produces no dopamine activation. You read. You feel nothing. You read again. Still nothing. You conclude the practice is not working and stop. Backwards. If you feel nothing, your statement is not emotionally charged enough. It has not reached your subconscious. Revise it with stronger emotional language until reading it produces a physical response—quickened pulse, tightness in chest, surge of focus, deepened breathing. That physical response is the mechanism.

Mistake 3: Keeping all bridges intact. You read about bridge-burning and agree it is important. Then you maintain every safety net. You keep the job you hate “just in case.” You stay in the comfortable relationship while fantasizing about another. You maintain all options because options feel safer. Hill’s instruction: burn one small bridge this week. Tell one person about your goal (so you cannot quietly back away). Decline one opportunity that would dilute your focus. Small burns build momentum. Once the first bridge is gone, the fact that you survived propels the next.

Mistake 4: Confusing desire with motivation. You find yourself waiting to “feel like” doing your daily reading. Wrong distinction. Motivation is weather—it comes and goes. Desire is decision. You do not wait for good weather to go to work. Do not wait to feel motivated to read. Read anyway. The infrastructure carries you on unmotivated mornings.

Mistake 5: Skipping daily renewal. You write the statement, share it, read it once, and then stop. Without daily renewal, dopamine saturation fades within 3-7 days. The neurological infrastructure decays. The belief score drops. The minimum protocol: twice daily (morning and evening), 90 seconds total. At day 30, neural patterns form. At day 60, default thinking shifts. At day 90, the goal has become who you are. Show up for the minimum.

The Distinction: Burning Desire vs. Obsession

Is Hill describing healthy desire or unhealthy obsession? The answer depends on whether the desire serves a clearly defined purpose or has become pathological.

Healthy burning desire is specific and time-bound (12 months, not infinite), balanced against other life domains (you are not sacrificing health or relationships), aligned with core values (not borrowed from social expectations), and in service of something larger than material gain (the outcome matters, and so does who you become pursuing it).

Pathological obsession is consuming and infinite, at the expense of every life area, misaligned with your actual values, and driven by external validation or comparison.

Hill’s framework is designed to produce the first. If you find yourself moving toward the second, the issue is not the framework—it is the goal. Your DMP is misaligned. Revise it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between burning desire and motivation? Motivation fluctuates with mood and circumstance. Burning desire is a structural commitment you pursue regardless of how you feel on any given day. Motivation comes and goes. Desire persists through infrastructure you have built.

How long does it take to develop burning desire? Neurological mechanisms activate within the first day. Behavioral changes emerge within 2-4 weeks. The identity-level shift—where pursuing the goal becomes who you are—takes 90-120 days.

Can you have burning desire without sharing publicly? Technically yes, but your completion probability drops significantly. Public commitment creates cognitive dissonance and accountability. Those with public commitments have 65% completion rates versus 10% for those who keep goals private.

What if I miss the deadline? Hill’s instruction: “revise the plan, never abandon the purpose.” Extend the deadline and continue. The infrastructure remains.

Should I broadcast my goal publicly? No. Share with one to three trusted people who will hold you accountable. Announcing publicly produces the psychology of completion—you feel achieved without doing the work.

How do I know I have burning desire? Five markers: (1) strong physical response when thinking about your goal, (2) taking action without forcing, (3) noticing aligned opportunities, (4) the goal is non-negotiable in decisions, (5) cognitive dissonance when straying from it. All five present = burning desire.

What if the goal turns out wrong? Burning desire for a misaligned goal produces results you do not want. If mid-process you discover the goal is wrong, revise the DMP and start again.

Does burning desire work for all goal types? The mechanism is identical across financial, relational, creative goals. What changes is the specificity. Financial goals are measured in currency. Relational goals in connection. Creative goals in completion. The six-step protocol adapts.

The Outer Architecture: Desire Without Skill Is a Trap

There is one critical caveat that separates Hill’s framework from the “manifest your desires” literature that has followed it.

Burning desire is a necessary condition for achievement. It is not sufficient.

If your DMP is to build a six-figure consulting practice, burning desire installs the inner commitment that allows you to sustain effort. What it does not do is teach you sales, positioning, pricing, scope management, or client delivery. Those require deliberate skill acquisition over years.

Burning desire without matching external skills produces a person who is highly self-aware about what they want but unable to execute. You become stuck knowing exactly what you need to do but lacking the capability to do it. Conversely, a skill stack without burning desire produces a person who can do things but self-sabotages at critical moments. When the work gets difficult, you abandon it because you do not actually want it.

You need both, developed in parallel, sustained over years. The shorthand in the full Architecture of Reality course is the Inner Track + Outer Track model:

Inner Track: The psychological and metaphysical work (purpose, belief, desire, identity, fear integration)
Outer Track: The deliberate acquisition of external skills your goal demands

The moment you complete Chapter 2 and install your burning desire statement, do this: make a list of the six skills your goal requires. Score yourself honestly on each. The two with the largest gap are your skill-building priority for the next 16 weeks.

Desire without strategy is fantasy. Strategy without desire is mechanical work that leads nowhere. The work requires both running in parallel.

Continue Reading the Series

This post is part of a 16-chapter exploration of The Architecture of Reality — a modern, evidence-based rebuild of Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. Each post stands alone, but they compound when read in sequence.

← Previous: Chapter 1 — What a Definite Major Purpose Actually Is

→ Next: Chapter 3 — Self-Efficacy: The Neurological Dial Beneath Faith

Related in the series:

Get the Free Chapter 1 Workbook (PDF)

You now understand what burning desire is, why it works, and how to install it using Hill’s Six-Step Builder. You have seen the neurological mechanisms, the common mistakes that derail most attempts, and the framework for distinguishing healthy burning desire from pathological obsession.

Understanding is the first step. Implementation is everything.

The full Chapter 2 workbook—a 32-page fillable PDF—contains every exercise referenced above, plus the seven-day bridge-burning progression, the desire intensity tracker, the dopamine saturation protocol, the accountability lock-in, and the obstacle precommitment framework. You can print it, fill it in, and build the infrastructure that transforms a wish into a structural commitment.

But the best place to start is Chapter 1. The Definite Major Purpose you developed in Chapter 1 is the raw material Chapter 2 works with. If you have not yet completed Chapter 1, start there. If you have, you are ready to move directly to Chapter 2 and begin the installation.

→ Download Chapter 1: “Thoughts Are Things” — Free PDF Workbook

Includes the complete Definite Major Purpose exercise, the 7-day belief tracker, the bridge-burning inventory, and the Outer Track skills audit. Print it. Fill it in. Keep it where you’ll see it every morning.

The workbook is the first chapter of the full sixteen-week course, The Architecture of Reality — a metaphysical rebuild of Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich combining ancient wisdom traditions, modern neuroscience, and Hill’s 1937 framework into a single 16-chapter installation protocol. Chapter 1 is yours regardless of whether you ever engage with the rest. It is built to stand entirely on its own.

If you complete the Chapter 1 workbook and want to continue with Chapter 2 and beyond, you will know where to find it. The path is there waiting.

Sources cited in this article: Knutson, B., et al. (2001), “Anticipation of Increasing Monetary Reward Selectively Recruits Nucleus Accumbens,” Journal of Neuroscience; Matthews, G. (2015), Dominican University goal-setting study; Slamecka, N. J. & Graf, P. (1978), “The Generation Effect,” Journal of Experimental Psychology; Steele, C. M. (1988), “The Psychology of Self-Affirmation,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology; Ariely, D. & Wertenbroch, K. (2002), “Procrastination, Deadlines, and Performance,” Psychological Science; Festinger, L. (1957), A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance; Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999), “Implementation Intentions,” American Psychologist; American Society of Training and Development goal-completion research; Hill, N. (1937), Think and Grow Rich.