How To Hold Yourself Accountable When You Work Alone
Being your own boss and working on your own comes with lots of perks – tea made the way you like it, no weekend chit-chat, the option of wearing pyjamas. We can make work spaces better than any open plan office, collaborate with creative friends we choose to be our colleagues, and, best of all, turn our hard work into results for ourselves. There’s lots we can improve upon traditional work environments, but one of the most difficult things to replace is accountability.
Ah yes, accountability. The thing that would get you to the office on time each morning, that would get you to do the tasks you didn’t enjoy, that would keep projects moving forwards and on time. Without a boss or a team it can be difficult to keep that accountability up for yourself and you find yourself sitting down at your desk half an hour later each day, expenses aren’t being kept track of and that new product you wanted to launch is still in the early stages.
We are all motivated in different way and for some of us accountability is a bigger driver than it is for others. If you’ve not done it yet, try Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies test – some of her research has been questioned and I find some of the questions in the test problematic, however it does serve as a good marker for how you tend to be motivated. I am an Obliger, so I need a lot of outside accountability which is something I now try to build into my working practice.A lot of people who want to start coaching quote accountability as a big factor for doing so – in fact, most of them do. But if you’re not ready for a coach, here are some of my tried and tested ways to hold yourself accountability when you work alone:
The Three Things
One of the reasons our focus starts to slip is because we have so many different things to manage and plates to keep in the air – when everything is a priority it’s hard to keep yourself accountable.This is a trick I learned from a previous job, where every Monday we would have a team meeting at the end of which we’d all name three things we would do that week to make the week a success. Those three things would then be our focus for the week, and the following Monday we’d catch up on whether we’d achieved them.
The key to the three things is it gives you a narrow focus – it becomes much easier to hold yourself accountable for achieving three things than thirty-three. Plus, the three things are always what’s important to make your business successful that week, whether they’re things to get you closer to a goal, make money or achieve something big; the point is you’ll be more motivated to complete them and it’ll be doing your business good.If you need extra accountability, share your 3 things with a family member, create an accountability group with creative friends to have weekly three things check ins, or even just pin it somewhere prominent – sometimes being held accountable to your to do list is enough.
Set a Short Deadline
In my Daily Greatness business planner (not sponsored but recommended), the notes at the front say that we more often than not achieve something in the space of time we give ourselves to do it. So if you say you’ll launch a product in 6 months you’ll do it in 6 months; if you say you’ll launch it in 3, then you’ll get it done faster.If what you’re putting off is a project that doesn’t have to be done by a specific time, then give it a specific time. And make that time really short. Write an ebook by the end of the week. Stock a new product line by the end of the month. Set up an email list by the end of the day. Set a deadline, get it done and out the way. You’ll be amazed at how much you’ll achieve.
Commit To Your Audience
This is a scary one but when it comes to accountability scary can be effective. If there’s something you want to do, get your audience on board to hold you accountable. It’s all very well asking our partners or family to make sure we do something, but we know if we don’t then they’re still going to love us anyway. But if you promise something to your audience, they may not be so unforgiving if you let them down.So tell them the date of your product launch, get them excited about next week’s blog post or even simply ask them to make sure you go out to a café to work (this last one I totally did in the summer). When you promise something to people you’re trying to impress, you’re more likely to follow through.
More Carrot
I’ve spoken a lot about scaring yourself into submission here, but don’t forget the power of a reward. Quite often I sit here at my desk and think ‘if I just finish this I can eat’. Perhaps not the most exciting reward but it gets my head down and the task done (and my belly full). So whether it’s a chocolate biscuit or a holiday, hold yourself accountable to an upcoming treat that depends on your work to happen.
