The entire post I wrote the other day on how to get what I want was supposed to be about accountability partners, but I wandered of into pontification land, and never seemed to get to that point.
What is an accountability partner? As it was taught to me, an accountability partner is another person with whom you partner to hold yourselves mutually accountable to some goal.
A lot of people say that the way to achieve a goal is to state it publicly, then you’ll be in a position of shame for not achieving it. In other words, use social imperative to motivate yourself. I don’t really groove on that, and an accountability partner is effectively a more private way of accomplishing using the same social imperative technique.
In an effort to done more of what I want, I’ve recently taken on accountability partners for two different things:
Writing a Book: Setting Up Shop
If you look at the top of my blog, you’ll see a link that says “Setting Up Shop: The Book” which leads to a sign up form for a book I’ve been meaning two write for probably two years. But, I’ve never gotten around to writing the book for all the usual reasons.
The book is the written version of a presentation that I’ve given several times on how to setup a development shop at a startup. I will be giving an abbreviated version of the the talk at SXSW in March. I’ve committed to myself to complete an e-book by then, so that audience members, and anybody else, can get the full version.
In December, my friend Marcus agreed to be my accountability partner. He asked for an outline on February 1, and I delivered it to him on time. That felt very good, and his words of support, “Congrats on step one. Can’t wait to review.” were even further motivation.
After you’re done reading this article, click the link above to sign up for the book.
Getting in Shape
My life has been a never-ending series of failed eat-right-and-exercise routines. I have a friend from elementary school with whom I keep in touch on Facebook, and we’ve agreed to do 30 minutes of cardio every day in February. Someone suggested we call it “Fituary”. Every day, we’re going to post in advance when we’re going to be doing our exercise, then we’ll follow up with each other to see if we did it.
In conclusion, the purpose of this post is simply to follow up on yesterday’s statement that, “for these things to happen, then something needs to change,” and one small change is seeing if having an accountability partner works for me.