When you use accountability in goal setting you become more committed to your goals and take them more seriously. Without accountability, it can be easier to let yourself off the hook when things aren’t going well. So if you have a “exit excuse” to completing your goals, you’re giving yourself a way out. Accountability in goal setting is the opposite of an “exit excuse”. With accountability you are taking more responsibility and ownership of your actions to achieve your goals. You’re holding yourself accountable to achieve the results.
To hold yourself accountable for a long term goal, you need to make sure it’s a goal you really want. Otherwise, you won’t maintain the necessary effort to achieve it. Your goal needs to be a 10 out of 10 for desirability but also a 10 out of 10 for your belief that you can achieve it, too. If you don’t really want a goal badly enough, you’ll soon give up. Likewise, if you don’t believe you can achieve it, you are unlikely to sustain the effort required either.
If you have a goal which is a 10/10 for desirability and a 10/10 for belief you can achieve it, congratulations! It’s a goal which is aligned with you very well. But if you’re not quite a 10 on either count, checkout this book by Stuart Lichtman on Cybernetic Transposition. In it, he explains a simple strategy you can use to achieve seemingly impossible goals on your first attempt by focusing in on what you really want.
Accountability In Goal Setting: Why Keeping Quiet Can Be Better For Goals
An accountability “buddy” can help you stay the course for the longer term by holding you accountable to your stated goals and daily steps towards them. Ideally, an accountability buddy should be similarly motivated as you are to achieve some kind of similar goal. Friends and relatives rarely make good accountability buddies and you should be careful as to whom you share your goals and aspirations with.
Although it might seem fruitful to state your goals in order to hold yourself accountable, this can be detrimental.
Tests done since 1933 show that people who talk about their intentions are less likely to make them happen. Announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you’re less motivated to do the hard work needed.
In 1933, W. Mahler found that if a person announced the solution to a problem, and was acknowledged by others, it was now in the brain as a “social reality”; even if the solution hadn’t actually been achieved.
NYU psychology professor Peter Gollwitzer has been studying this since his 1982 book “Symbolic Self-Completion”. He recently published results of new tests in a research article, “When Intentions Go Public: Does Social Reality Widen the Intention-Behavior Gap?”.
Four different tests of 63 people found that those who kept their intentions private were more likely to achieve them than those who made them public and were acknowledged by others.
Once you’ve told people of your intentions, it gives you a “premature sense of completeness.”
Telling Friends & Relatives About Your Goals
Telling friends and relatives about your goals can work both ways depending on their own world view and self image. Of course how you interpret their reaction also plays a part. But in many cases, doing so may be detrimental, especially if they harbour doubt and fear in relation to your plans. If they aren’t similarly motivated as you, you may find they won’t support you and they may even undermine your plans; whether consciously or unconsciously.
Why wouldn’t a friend support you building an online business, for example? Well, should you succeed, it may change the nature and dynamic of your relationship and therefore the status quo. Have you heard the Jim Rohn quote saying that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with? Or that “Birds of a feather flock together”?
People you surround yourself with generally will have similar beliefs, attitudes and outcomes in life as you. So if you’re planning on a different outcome, your regular social circle may not be the ones to turn to.
Accountability Buddies – Find One !
I have an accountability buddy I found through the online business community I promote on this site. You can learn more about it by signing up to my email list. A good accountability buddy is hard to find. They hold you accountable to keep turning up and doing the work needed to attain your goals.
However, you also need to hold yourself to account too. Why would anyone waste their time with someone who isn’t as committed as they are?! It works both ways with an accountability buddy – your buddy needs to get something out of the relationship too, which is why it’s good to find someone who has a similar goal to you.
If you’re looking to build an online business you can join a community of online business owners too which is where I found my buddy!