Do you feel stuck and unmotivated? Maybe you feel constantly disorganised and struggle to achieve what you set out to do? You can blame your organisation skills or outside factors, but how much of it is down to your unwillingness to take responsibility for your own life… an unwillingness to hold yourself accountable for your own actions?
Holding yourself accountable for your actions, enables you to take responsibility for how your day progresses. It also gives you the means to change bad habits and improve on new resolutions and goals. Use these ten ideas to help you take control of your life… and ensure you’re in charge!
#1: Avoid distractions
Ensure you keep your focus on the task at hand. Set a timer for a set time and focus on nothing but that task until the timer goes off.
#2: Don’t make excuses
Don’t blame outside factors for your under-achievements, look at how you can make it right and achieve what you set out to do.
#3: Set yourself mini goals
If you easily get overwhelmed, look to break larger tasks into smaller chunks.
#4: State your aims
Clearly list what you want to achieve and let others know too!
#5: Look at your achievements
Don’t just look at your “to do” list for your achievements, but also look at what you’ve learnt and who you’ve met etc.
#6: Be disciplined
Be strict with both yourself and your time.
#7: Ask yourself the hard questions
If you’re not achieving your goals, be prepared to ask yourself why. What are you doing (or not doing) that is preventing your achievement?
#8: Take responsibility for the outcomes – both good and bad
It’s easy to take credit when things go right… but it can be harder to take ownership of things when they’re going bad.
#9: Get feedback
Be prepared to ask for feedback from your colleagues and friends.
#10: Be honest with yourself
If you don’t take responsibility for your life and hold yourself accountable, there will always be a reason why you haven’t achieved something, why you can’t do something. Make a decision to hold yourself accountable… and move both yourself and your business forward.
What tactics do you use to hold yourself accountable? Have you found something that works especially well for you, when you’re feeling stuck or find yourself making excuses? Why not share your accountability strategies with us, by leaving a comment below?
Thank you Jo for this blog. By reading it I realised that my greatest excuse is that “Everything happens in divinely appointed time”. With that assumption firmly in place I never struggle to accomplish something and I can just go with the flow which gives me a lovely feeling of peace and grace while I go about my day taking care of whatever it’s on my agenda. However any project I work on takes much longer than actually needed for completion if I were to approach it in a “Let’s get this done” frame of mind. Sometimes I am able to integrate the two active and passive approaches. I guess that is what people call “Being in the zone”.