The Concentrated Sense of Responsibility

We've all had moments in our lives when we feel like we want to achieve something but don't know how to go about it, or don't feel completely committed to the process. I've found that the best way to deal with these feelings is to get someone else to make not doing "the thing" a lot worse than just getting on with it. The easiest way of making that possible is to have them hold you accountable.

If you really want to achieve something you should tell someone. The person you tell doesn't matter too much but it should be someone who you would expect to bring the achievement up in the future. If you tell a random person on the street who you never see again this won't work. If you tell a close friend, relative or colleague then the likelihood is that in the future they will bring the conversation back up in some way. This could be "Oh didn't you mention you were trying to go to Insert Dream Holiday Here this year? How's that going? Are you still planning it?". These questions and this conversation is the exact reason you are more likely to pursue the dream.

When the conversation is brought up your friend, relative or colleague is holding you accountable to your dream. If you hadn't told anyone then you would be able to live the rest of your life potentially without ever having a sense of disappointment in not achieving the goal whereas when you have to explain to someone why you haven't achieved something you specifically told them you were going to do it can be embarrassing and make you feel like a disappointment in the eye's of your friend, relative or colleague.

This sense of embarrassment and disappointment is something I have experienced many times and it feels horrible when you have gone against something that you said you would do. It feels like you're responsible not only for your own embarrassment but also for their disappointment, that's what the "concentrated sense of responsibility" comes from. I often visualise it as each person you tell looking at you looking for progress updates, waiting for a positive story to come from the process.

If you have a dream that you want to attain that is personal and you don't want to share it with anyone else then you can achieve a similar, if what somewhat less effective, effect by using a task manager or to do list that you review regularly. If you aren't already using a task manager or to do list then I seriously recommend starting to use one and also to read Getting Things Done by David Allen (or listen to it as an audiobook). This book changed the way I deal with personal tasks and making sure I don't forget anything I need to do.

Using a to do list or task manager that you regularly review can have a similar, if not as large, effect on achieving goals. If you look at your to do list every day and each day you see your Big Dream Goal without a tick next to it you will feel the need to seek actions that can help you achieve this. A personal example from me is to do exercise. I recently started going for a run around my village every day and in an effort to try and maintain discipline in achieving this I added "Go for a run/walk" as an everyday tasks in my task manager. One day I was feeling particularly drained and my legs were aching. I spent all day relaxing in the house and didn't really concern myself with whether I was going to be going for a run or not. This continue until the evening when I opened my laptop and my task manager was already open on the screen. I had completed all the other tasks in my day and going for a run/walk was the final task that needed completing. This alone was enough to motivate my into changing clothes into fitness wear and going out of the house. I decided to go for a walk so as not to stress my aching muscles too much more and ended up completing a 3.19 mile route (further than I had walked or ran any day previously). Without the reminder from my task manager I would have quite happily gone into the evening watching Youtube videos or bingeing a series on Netflix.

There are more subtle ways to use this idea as well. For example Ali Abdaal recommends booking phone calls, zoom calls or other meetings early in the morning so you have a reason to wake up and go into the day rather than stay in bed browsing social media. The idea behind this method is exactly what every employed person is already doing; you have to be in work for 0900 so you wake up at 0730 so you can shower, get dressed and travel to work to arrive on time, this is a commitment that you have made with a person (or in this case a company). The commitment is "I will arrive at 0900 everyday for work and leave at 1730 each day and you will pay me x every month." In order to be paid x you have to hold down your end of the bargain and go to work on time, you have to get out of bed and get moving so that can happen.

An easy way of achieving this public level of commitment is to tweet or share what you want to work on and then post updates. I use this method for my blog. Before I wrote any articles I tweeted to say I would be starting a blog and would be sharing further details. No one cared but just by putting it out in the public eye I felt compelled to move with the project. While writing this article I am three weeks in and feel in a bit of a 'rut' when it comes to writing. I have started back at my full time job after returning from furlough and suddenly the empty weeks that were mine to use however I wanted have disappeared so I actually have to plan time to write, or read. Despite this lack of time I've managed to find an hour or two to write this article and publish it because otherwise there will be a blank space of time where I haven't posted anything when I made a commitment (to nobody because nobody cared about my blog) that I would post frequently and tweet updates.

I'm interested to know whether this is something other people do too so if you can think of any examples of times you've made a public commitment to something to keep you 'motivated' please tweet me to let me know.

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