I won’t waste your time…
This work ethic hack is accountability.
Specifically, accountability held by someone other than yourself.
I’d like to start this article with a story…
I have a close friend who’s also working on his own online business (he actually closed £1k of sales in one day recently for his coaching). We spent a weekend together with some other motivated online content creators and entrepreneurs recently, and he set me a challenge out of the blue…
So I had four days to write eighteen articles…
I was used to writing one piece per day, maybe two on a Friday when writing a newsletter issue.
Now I had to write four or five per day for four consecutive days.
This didn’t fill me with confidence initially, but I’m writing this piece on Sunday evening when this friend’s challenge to me finishes, and I can say that I completed the task comfortably. I even managed to hit the gym a couple of times over the weekend, when I thought I’d be inside writing all day.
Why does this work?
It comes down to the disappointing fact that often we don’t hold ourselves to the standards that we should.
If only you know that you challenged yourself to write a certain amount of work in a certain amount of time, only you will know if you give up. You don’t let someone else down.
Our brains are very good at tricking us into taking the easy route in life, choosing the thing that’s going to keep us more comfortable.
I thought that I was working hard by creating one or two pieces of content a day and consistently tweeting to my audience.
Now I know how much harder I’m actually able to work, and I have a new baseline for hard work that I can measure my efforts against in the future.
When you are set a challenge by someone else, you feel you have to live up to their expectations of you. They’re someone you care about, and you understand that you’ll be letting them down if you fail.
Thus, you cut out the crap from your life and make sure that you execute only the tasks that are going to allow you to succeed.
In my case, this was simply writing articles.
You implement the Pareto Principle, choosing the most effective tasks to complete, and you realise how much you have been wasting your life on peripheral activities.
Make sure, however, that you set yourself up with an accountability partner in the best way, to make sure that you don’t fail…
How to set this up yourself:
Find someone on your wavelength.
What I mean by this is someone who has the same values and motivation as you, and someone who understands your situation.
Don’t have them confirm their challenges with you, just get them to set a challenge based on what they believe you can achieve.
Often the side of yourself that you present these people with is the best one (or at least up there!), so they’re going to have a good idea as to what the motivated and productive version of you is capable of.
It has to be someone you value, and someone who values you, because then you have the fear of failure hanging over you when you realise that this person is genuinely invested in you achieving the challenge they give you.
If you choose someone who doesn’t care to hold you accountable, they won’t be let down if you fail, therefore there’s no real accountability in place.
One last point…
Return the favour. Challenge your accountability partner yourself. They’re helping you out, so they want to be put to the test in return. There’s no better feeling than proving you’re capable to someone that actually cares about your achievement.
So this is the secret creative output hack that I discovered recently. I’d have not been made aware of how hard I’m actually capable of working if I wasn’t put to the test externally, so find one of your friends, challenge them, and ask if they can set you a challenge for work in return.
Make it ambitious, and then go out there and smash the challenge out of the park.
I hope you’ve learned something new from this piece, and as always, thanks for reading!