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Episode Description:

Welcome back, Type A+ Overachievers!

This week, Beth dives into ways that she holds herself and her clients accountable, including tips from James Clear's "Atomic Habits."

Links mentioned in the episode:

Podcast:

The Type A Plus Podcast Instagram

Host:

Beth Lawrence LinkedIn

Beth Lawrence & Company Instagram

Beth will be back each week, delivering bite-sized tips (15-minute episodes or less) on how to optimize your life and work.

Episode Transcript can be found below:

Welcome to the Type A+ podcast with me, Beth Lawrence.

I'm a certified meeting professional, an award-winning event planner, and a classic over-prepared overachiever.

In each episode, I'll deliver bite-sized tips on organizing your business and life, even during your most hectic times.

So, let's get started.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back. Happy Thursday! Thank you for your patience!

As I release this episode, I'm actually traveling this week for a client site visit which feels amazing considering that three years ago, we were in lockdown right now. It's crazy to think about. But we've come so far, and yet we have so far to go.

In today's episode, we're going to be talking about holding yourself accountable. Accountability is something that is different for everyone. For people who are overachievers, accountability can be a particularly tricky topic.

Generally, many of us are self-motivated and determined to do things. However, there are times when things fall through the cracks, especially for Type A+ people. We make promises we can't keep, we move forward on ideas without having the full picture. The more overwhelmed and extended we become, the less likely it is that we'll fulfill all of these obligations and meet deadlines the way that we're expected to. This leads to more stress and procrastination, right?

As an event planner, a good portion of my job is playing project manager, holding myself accountable, and holding others accountable for deadlines. But there are different ways to do this, depending on the situation. Let it be known that I have definitely broken promises to myself. All too often, I found myself grinding at the last minute to meet deadlines. This goes all the way back to school and sometimes even more recently in my business. Of course, when I'm working with clients, we agree on a project management system. You've heard me talk about Airtable before, so it's typically Airtable. However, I've also worked with Asana, Trello, Monday.com, Google Sheets, and many different methods for project management.

You may think that having a project management system is enough to keep yourself and others accountable. But I'm here to tell you that we have become so good at finding ways to ignore or mute notifications on things we don't feel like doing.

For example, that app that helps you stick to your timeline ignores notifications. Well, I really don't like email notifications in my inbox, so I'll just keep them in the project management system.

And I don't want to allow push notifications, so I'm just going to put my phone on Do Not Disturb.

There are so many examples of ways that we can, against our better judgment, ignore notifications and things that we're supposed to do. We give ourselves permission, in some cases, not to do those things electronically. We have so many things that are designed to help us. But as I always say, when I plan events, humans will human. You can design the perfect user experience, whether in real life or virtually, and the human beings who interact with that experience will still make their own decisions.

So how do we keep ourselves accountable to these wildly important goals in our lives? First and foremost, as I mentioned last week, we need to make sure that our goals are specific, impactful, measurable, and easy to achieve. From there, it's time to move on to holding ourselves accountable.

So, here are five ways that I keep myself and my clients accountable, day-to-day.

The first point is to make it easy to do the right thing. There's a book that I love called "Atomic Habits" by James Clear, and he outlines four laws of behavioral change: make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, and make it satisfying. This is a great example of making it easy to do the right thing. If you want to go for a walk outside every morning, make sure you lay out your clothes and shoes the night before. If you want to avoid Instagram while you're working, set an app limit, put your phone in the other room, or turn it off. Sometimes we have to get extreme with these boundaries to hold ourselves accountable.

Second, give yourself permission to say no. My fellow Type A+ people struggle to say no as a complete sentence constantly. We underestimate the amount of time it takes because we overestimate our ability to get things done quickly and efficiently. And sometimes we even take on tasks from someone else because we think, "Well, I'll just do it better, I'll do it faster." Check back to the episode about color-coding your calendar so that you can easily see at a glance how much time you actually have if this is something that you struggle with.

Number three, track your time. It's so easy to say we spend an hour or two trying to find the solution to a problem or to move the needle on a project. But did you rid yourself of distractions and actually focus? Can you name three action steps that you took toward the goal? Right? Time isn't everything, but sometimes tracking how much can be done in 20 minutes can amaze you at just the amount of time it takes you to move the needle on those steps that could really have a huge impact in your life if you could just keep yourself accountable. And this is really fun: listen to an accountability partner. When I was running virtual accelerator programs, one of the things that we did was create steady opportunities for the participants to check in with one another. We wanted them to be able to learn from one another and to hold each other responsible for completing the assignments along the way. And this helps in a few ways, including ensuring that you don't feel alone in this struggle, which is really important, and making it fun along the way. And along those same lines, make it fun.

The final point here is to reward yourself. When you reach a goal, have a way of celebrating even the small things. Even project management systems like Monday throw a little celebration for you if you put "done" on a task. So if you like your project management systems, that's a nice small way to reward yourself. Taking a 10-minute walk after completing 90 minutes of work is a nice way to reward me. Another example is if you've completed three things on your to-do list, maybe meditating for 10 minutes or, if you've moved the needle significantly on a project, take yourself out to lunch or dinner and figure out the milestones that you want to hit. And then when you hit those milestones, reward yourself and don't feel bad about it. Whatever makes you happy will be the thing that motivates you. And does it work 100% of the time? Of course not. Is it something that I always come back to, to ensure I am meeting my own expectations and deadlines? Definitely.

If you have secrets to holding yourself accountable, I'd love to hear them. Tell me your favorite tips, your favorite tricks, and media that you love (books and podcasts) that inspire you to help get things done when you don't feel like it. And I also want to validate that it's okay to not feel like it.

It's okay if you've put too much on your plate and you're overwhelmed, and you just don't know where to begin. That's where setting a timer for 20 minutes, or calling a friend and saying, "Look, I've really wanted to make an appointment to get my taxes done, and I just haven't. Can you text me in a week and remind me?" Little things like that bring people in and even posting on social media, in some cases.

When I started my sober curious journey, trying not to drink alcohol, sharing that on social media was really helpful for me because it kept me accountable. If I have reached 50 days, I know that the next milestone is right around the corner. Others who were experiencing the same thing as me were able to relate, and we were able to keep each other accountable and have that sense of responsibility.

So, I hope that this was a helpful episode for you. I'm loving Motivation Month.

It's helping me because I have not felt motivated. So, I'm hoping that it has helped you too.

Again, if you have any tips, we'd love to hear them.

Until next week, thank you for listening to the Type A+ Podcast.

The Type A+ Podcast is written and produced by me, Beth Lawrence.

Our music is composed by Dan “Dilemma” Thomas.

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New episodes are released every week.

Thank you for listening!