I was wondering if anyone here has had success with longer term accountability groups / accountabilibuddies, and if so what has made them work for you?
I have had the rough shape of what my ideal group would look like - a weekly longer check in then daily check ins in the morning with updates as needed through the day - but have never been able to find a person or group that has stuck around. I am aware that a big part of this just comes down to finding the right people, but also just wondering if others have gone on this journey as well and had success with it.
I find that accountability works better than anything else for my ADHD brain and for fitness I pay a coach and for music I take lessons. There is a larger group of things that don’t fit into the categories that I would pay a coach for (nor can I afford to pay a coach for everything!) and I think there is space for more of a catch all group with other peers. Beeminder works great for my habits and routines, but for more nebulous items like longer term projects there is a missing human element that I think would help me along my path in addition to adding a datapoint to keep me on track.
Also open to other ideas about platforms or services that people have tried for this sort of thing. I have tried some of the paid platforms to capture more nebulous things but never found the one-sided-ness of things to work out very well for me and I always end up dropping away.
Well, the thing that’s really hard about accountabilibuddies is it’s so easy to let it slip away / subside over time. You could try a group goal with it so you were both/all on the hook for checkins. That could help with the diffusion of responsibility thing. Or you can farm out the responsibility to datasmithing (Melissa has a daily co-working club for clients), or baas. Or you can try something like Focusmate. If you had a Beeminder goal to keep you doing sessions on Focusmate, then whoever you’re paired with kind of slots into the social-accountability role without needing them to be consistent and keep up with you.
The only way “accountability”-style mechanisms have ever worked for me is when they are very tightly bounded in scope. A book club is a good example: the commitment is very specific—reading the next section of the book in time for the next book club session—and also naturally time-limited, in that when you reach the end of the book the commitment is over. You can (and often do) start a new book with your club, but these defined endpoints mean that it’s a lot less likely to just peter out in the middle of a book.
Anything open-ended ends up slipping away over time (as @bee said.)
But if tightly scoped it can work: the book club example is one example, but I’m sure that other similarly focused shared accountability groups could equally work.
Thank you for the recommendations and thoughts! Agreed on it being so easy to let it slip away over time. I have tried BAAS before and it was useful, but the one-sidedness of coaching vs. working with peers made me fall away from it eventually. Coacing groups sound rad and I reached out to datasmithing I also have an active Focusmate Beeminder goal - though I have not scheduled any recurring sessions as checkins.
I think actually just setting up a regular one in the morning every day and at the end of my workday might be a good way for me to build checkins into my routines, even if the person on the other side is not doing the same. Will experiment with that!
I was actually just talking to my partner about joining a book club together this week I do think more tightly scoped groups like that would work well for me - maybe I just need to find more groups around me that are doing more of the things i’m focusing on. Will have to experiment with looking around for some others - thanks for the thoughts!
I also have an active Focusmate Beeminder goal - though I have not scheduled any recurring sessions as checkins.