TL;DR: I need an accountability partner and don’t know where to get one. Be mine?
While composing this post, I found out that somebody I knew died. I have no intention of going into a coffin, or an urn, or a vat of liquid nitrogen not having accomplished what I know I can. Beeminder has been the closest thing to a silver bullet of productivity I’ve found in years of reading about self-development. It’s still far from enough.
The premise of an accountability partner is simple and powerful: Two or a few people get on each other’s case about the goals they’ve set for themselves. The Literature suggests that this is yet greater bullet.
The problem that follows is finding a suitable partner. The obvious place to start is friends and colleges, which isn’t fertile ground in my situation. One would assume that there would be an online service for such a fundamental need, but there is no active and fleshed-out place to go. If anybody knows of such a place and I just didn’t find it, please let me know. This seems like such a glaring problem>solution gap that I’m tempted to start my own in a few months’ time.
For the time being, I appeal to the fellow slovens of Beeminder who may be looking for the same thing. I’m looking to enter into a reciprocal arrangement of having a second perspective privy to the nasty, pitiful parts of my inadequacy. Someone to discuss how to quantify and keep at what I need to be doing, someone to delegitimize any excuses I make to myself, some person with whom to discuss the direction my life is taking. If that, and it’s converse, sound enticing, you know who to talk to.
I, if you’d like to know more about me, am an eighteen year old male of uncertain talent and long-term plans. I’m shipping out to enlist in the Air Force in about a month’s time, and will be unreachable from then to about mid-December as I undergo the time-honored tradition of getting yelled at and doing pushups in isolation from society. I will then progress to Technical School and have to figure out my life all over again. I tend to procrastinate on getting into decent habits after going through changes in circumstance.
Help me get over my shortcomings and I’ll do the same for you. Thanks for the interest and input you will undoubtedly lavish on me.