The Procrastination Antidote
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Introduction
You’re spinning multiple plates.
You’re juggling work and personal tasks.
You’re trying to support your family and those around you.
And then, you have to consider your:
👉 Health & Fitness
👉 Wellbeing & Mindset
👉 Personal development
If you’re not careful, procrastination will hit, and nothing will get done.
Key Takeaway 🔑
Accountability is the procrastination antidote.
It comes with positive side effects, too.
It helps with:
✅ Achieving Goals
✅ Personal Development
Leading to:
✅ Trust and Credibility
✅ Continuous Improvement
✅ Productivity and Performance
It has multiple levels:
✅ Self-Accountability
✅ Accountability Partners
✅ Group Accountability.
Keep reading to dive deeper...
Procrastination
Procrastination is delaying tasks despite knowing the potential negative consequences.
Common Reasons:
💥 Desire for instant gratification.
💥 Lack of motivation.
💥 Fear of failure.
We try to deceive ourselves by ‘keeping busy’.
Often with unimportant work.
Accountability
Accountability is the obligation to answer for your actions, decisions, and responsibilities.
First of all, to yourself and sometimes to others.
It involves transparency and accepting consequences, whether positive or negative.
It includes acknowledging mistakes, taking corrective measures, and fulfilling commitments.
Psychological Pressures
Accountability taps into your psychology.
Intrinsic Motivation
Your intrinsic motivation drives you to pursue tasks for personal satisfaction.
Knowing you’ll be accountable for your actions enhances your motivation to succeed.
Commitment
You want to be consistent with your words, beliefs, and actions.
When you publicly commit to something, there is psychological pressure to align your actions accordingly.
Social Expectations
Humans are social beings, and social expectations influence behaviour.
When you commit to a task in a social context, social expectation drives you to fulfil those commitments.
Failing to do so has consequences:
👉 Guilt
👉 Shame
👉 Damaged reputation
For this reason, those holding you accountable must have your best interests at heart.
This includes YOU not being too hard on YOU…
3 Types Of Accountability
Accountability comes in several forms and can benefit individuals and teams.
1. Self-Accountability:
The most disciplined of us will get by with self-accountability.
You have the motivation, determination and perseverance to get things done.
Key Features:
🔵 Internal Motivation: You’re driven by your intrinsic desire to meet personal goals and standards.
🔵 Goal Setting: You’ll set clear, achievable goals.
🔵 Reflection: You’ll reflect and evaluate your performance.
🔵 Self-Imposed Consequences: You’ll create your own consequences for success or failure.
2. Accountability Partners:
For added accountability, you can engage a partner or a coach.
Your partner could have similar or completely different goals.
You’ll mutually support and hold each other accountable.
Key Features:
🟢 Mutual Commitment: You both commit to help each other achieve specific goals.
🟢 Regular Check-Ins: You schedule meetings to discuss progress, challenges, and adjustments.
🟢 Feedback and Guidance: You provide constructive feedback and guidance to support each other's success.
3. Group Accountability:
Group accountability takes things a step further.
It can apply to individuals and teams.
You all support each other and hold each other accountable.
With group accountability, everyone can have their own goals.
Or the group can have shared goals and outcomes.
Group accountability can increase pressure, so choose your group wisely.
Key Features:
🟣 Collaborative Monitoring: Group members motivate, monitor and support each other's progress.
🟣 Regular Check-Ins: You’ll have regular check-ins with even more ideas and perspectives to help you push forward.
🟣 Recognition and Celebration: You all acknowledge and celebrate collective achievements.
Why It Matters? 🤷♂️
The impact of procrastination is real.
Mentally, procrastination leads to stress and anxiety.
It can erode your self-esteem and confidence.
Practically, you’ll miss opportunities and strain your relationships.
You’ll compromise achieving your goals.
Things such as:
🟠 Social commitment
🟠 Motivation, Monitoring & Support
🟠 Deadlines & Feedback
Cause procrastination to take a back seat.
This has positive side effects.
Achieving Goals:
Accountability provides a framework for tracking progress, identifying obstacles, and making necessary adjustments to achieve your goals.
Personal Development:
Accountability stimulates personal growth.
Acknowledging mistakes, learning from experiences, and taking responsibility for your actions contribute to personal development.
You build self-efficacy—the belief in your ability to accomplish tasks.
Trust and Credibility:
Accountability builds trust and credibility.
You’re trusted to fulfil your responsibilities and commitments based on your reputation for getting things done, which enhances your credibility.
Continuous Improvement:
Accountability involves learning from mistakes and taking corrective actions.
This fosters a culture of continuous improvement and adaptability.
Productivity and Performance:
Accountability drives productivity and performance.
When individuals take ownership and are accountable for outcomes, it leads to increased efficiency and better results.
Take Action 🔥
What are you procrastinating over?
What just jumped into your head?
Whether it’s:
✅ Improving your mental health
✅ Getting your fitness back on track
✅ Improving your TDD and software design skills
Adding accountability will help you achieve it.
You could:
👉 Find a partner with similar goals or engage a coach.
👉 Join a community of like-minded people - Think Slack or Discord.
👉 Define a charter and values for your team and create a culture of accountability at work.
I’m considering creating a Dicord community of ‘Modern Software Developers’.
It will be focused on supporting and encouraging each other with mindset, wellbeing, fitness and mental health.
Let me know if you’d be interested. 👀
Rich’s Recommendations
Check out my recommendations to improve your wellbeing, mindset, leadership or tech skills:
👍
’s weekly newsletter to learn system design:Newsletter: System Design Newsletter
👍
’s weekly newsletter about engineering leadership, career growth and productivity:Newsletter: The Hybrid Hacker
LinkedIn Post: Nicola’s secret to overcoming procrastination.
👍
’s weekly coding challenge to help software engineers level up:Newsletter: Coding Challenges
Closing
Procrastination has mental and practical impacts.
Accountability is the procrastination antidote.
You can be answerable for your actions through self-accountability, partnerships, or collective efforts.
Become accountable for your actions and start marking progress.
Remember
There’s nothing more important than your own wellbeing.
Simple and easy to digest advice. Thank you for sharing it, Richard.
Love the advice about taking accountability. I think that when you are publicly accountable of something with deadlines and all, you become more dedicated to finish the work at your best.
That's a good hack to beat procrastination!
Great article Richard and thanks for the mention!