Looking for accountability partner / loose journal

Hello,

tl;dr As stated in the topic. About me: young male, based in EU (the rest we can talk after we get to know each other). 5-15 min. internet convo recapping goals ED/EOD in both direction. Goals: pretty lame, mainly increasing earning potential and satisfaction of life.

Let’s say I know most things about internet procrastination/addiction on this planet, but I still struggle. I haven’t tried this method IRL (I mean accountability partnership), because most people aren’t such anally compulsive about their goals in reality.

I don’t want to be seen as somebody who promotes certain site (because I don’t), but if anybody knows anykind relatively cheap space where I could meet similarly minded people (interested in AP), please let me know.

How do I see cooperation?
Daily 5-10 minutes talk on FB/Whatsapp.

Levels of planned intensity:

  1. Have you done X?
  2. Why haven’t you done X?
  3. Do it now and report it me back [it’s short habbit so it makes sense].
  4. Do it now and report it me back and pay me 1$ [let’s say that 5$ can buy me a cheap meal in restaurant, where I’m locatedm so I’m not convinced to give so much for one day weaseling. Prolly adding somekind automation to payment process. Any ideas?]
  5. [Presenting advantages of doing X habbit]
  6. [Making fun of me in somehow positive way].
  7. [Calling names and being abusive].

Yes, I used beemider, but guess what… I weaselled out.
Yes, I know there’s coaching, but it’s… expensive.

Hope for positive replies.

1 Like

Hello there!

One small tidbit I want to share - establish decent rapport with the person/crowd before actually committing to something. Just some random fella on the internet disapproving of your slacking off doesn’t pack that much of a punch, you’re way more disapproving anyway. This may be my personal bias of course, but it’s consistent with my experiences.

So, I’d recommend voice chat, or video chat, or personal meeting if you can arrange that with your AP - just so that your brain files that contact as important.

IIRC, Complice people had something like group videochat where they work together as if they were in the same room. Could work for you, although I’m not sure how to access that room. There’s their thread on this forum somewhere (better be linked by someone on a desktop), you can probably get some details there, or at their site.

There are also topic-focused guilds on habitica, might be your cup of tea. I suppose they are text-only though.

Well, there’s also reddit community, something like “get motivated buddies” or sth like that.

It’s probably silly to recommend this forum since you’re already writing here, but a community with relevant and quite niche expertise is nothing to sneeze at.

Also, there’s accountability partner feature in beeminder, although I don’t know what exactly does it do, but it may work for you and your #3 case. Also, giving money directly to your accountability partner creates perverse incentives, it can work fine but can also backfire in a nasty way. I’d stick with beeminder approach here, since they’re good at handling this sort of stuff. There’s a weaselproof checkbox you might be interested in too.


Regarding this:

because most people aren’t such anally compulsive about their goals in reality

Can you formulate couple specific examples of those people? With a name and a face

Do they achieve noticeably less than you? I’m not sure if I understood you correctly, but I’ve interpreted it like “I stress a lot about my goals and also don’t get enough stuff done”. If most other people stress less and get the same amount (or even more) done than you then instead of adding steam to your engine maybe it would be more efficient to make sure that your existing steam is spent on turning your wheels and not at stuff like “feeling bad for not being productive” or what have you. If you feel that you are consistently failing, then either that is not consistent with the data and you should feel better, or it is, but that’s because of some elephant in the room and removing that would boost everything else. I want you to be sure that you are not stirring yourself up the wrong hill.

Do you have a post mortem for stuff you’ve weaseled out of? Even if you don’t want to post it, I recommend writing it, some easy workarounds might become evident. If you are ok with posting it then go for it - maybe somebody faced something similar and has a working solution, or at least some proven dead ends that you could write off.

1 Like