Strategies for Personal Accountability

QUESTION

Dear Joey, I am having a difficult time honoring my own time commitments to myself. For example, proactively calling customers that I have not been in touch with recently, or establishing new relationships for my business on a consistent basis.

I seem to get sucked into reactive mode fairly quickly. I try to “stay organized” but sometimes feel like my attempts are futile. Any advice?

Thanks!

—Eric

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ANSWER

Dear Eric, I feel you on this one. The Future and the Now are very much at odds with one another.

At Baronfig, every January we hold an all-hands meeting to discuss the upcoming year. In addition to new projects, each team member shares things that they’d like to change. For the last 5+ years, the top slot on my list has been “Spend more time working on Baronfig’s future.” And every December, when we review, I always lament that I didn’t do enough of it.

While I’m not where I’d like to be with Baronfig’s future-thinking work, I do improve each year. I’ve been able to manage my time effectively enough to write a book, so I’d say there’s more than a fair bit of success on the time management front as a whole.

Here are four strategies you can use to hold yourself accountable:

1. Contingencies. I love to play video games. I’ve been playing them since I was young, and every time I enter a new world I’m flooded with excitement as I unfold a new mystery. So I use this interest like a carrot on a stick. When writing, for example, I didn’t allow myself to touch a game controller until I’d written 200 words.

2. Rewards. Give yourself prizes when you hit certain goals. There can be small prizes—like eating your favorite snack (a healthy one!) after a dozen outreach calls in a single day. And large prizes, like a lobster dinner if you keep the call streak for an entire month. The key here is to keep the goals under your control—you can control how many calls you make, but not how many lead to new clients.

3. Habit Tracking. Big fan of this one. Use a habit tracker or habit-tracking app and start measuring your progress. Once you get a streak going, your lizard brain is going to kick in and work like hell to prevent you from breaking the chain. I used a tracker to write; it took me 199 writing sessions at 417 average words per session to complete the first draft.

4. Accountability buddies. There’s no shame like public shame. Find an accountability partner, perhaps someone who’s looking to achieve something similar, and check in each week with each other. Report your success and failures. If you fail to hit your goals, explain why. You will keep each other on track.

Notice that everything here is a positive reinforcement. There’s no punishment for not hitting your commitments (beyond a bit of shame in breaking your streak or reporting it to your buddy). Focus on lifting yourself up.

You got this.

—Joey

Accountability buddies from 2014: Myself (right) and Adam, the co-founder of Baronfig. Yes, we did eventually get him an Apple monitor—the first computers we used were brought from our homes.