how to build an accountability system that works for you
back to writing week 2: reframing accountability and setting up your system
Happy Monday, and welcome to Week 2 of Back to Writing.
This newsletter is late today, partially for life reasons, and partially because I’ve struggled with exactly what I want to say about today’s topic, accountability and creating systems to ensure we follow through on our goals. For a long time, accountability has felt to me like a slightly disappointed former teacher looking over my shoulder, sighing and saying I really could do better, or perhaps like a finger-wagging older brother telling me to get back to work. It’s baked into the word, right? It’s used in the criminal justice sense when we say that someone will be held to account, that they will punished for their crimes. In grad school, we joked sometimes about having an “accountability-buddy,” and the ideal was a slightly scary peer, someone you could picture hanging over you when you were tempted to check twitter instead of writing, so that even the specter of their judgment would get you back in line. And there are some projects where this kind of accountability works—many dissertations have been written on spite alone—but it’s not exactly a way to build a pleasurable writing life.
So let’s try this: let’s reframe accountability as not an endlessly-receding goal post but a way of rewarding and celebrating our hard work. A carrot, not a stick.
Let’s work this week on building systems will help us to see our hard work, both the incremental effort we put in and the results of that effort. What systems can help make your work tangible and visible to yourself? What structures can help you ensure you feel seen as a writer?
The answer isn’t one size fits all, of course. What I’d like to offer instead are a set of questions and suggestions, based in part on Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies. (If you want, you can zip over and take her quiz, though the site will ask you for an email address to get your results; I’d suggest you have your spam email address at the ready.)
The short version of the Four Tendencies is this: the key to getting things done and changing your habits is considering how you respond to outer expectations and inner expectations. If you’re someone who always lives up to others’ expectations but has a hard time meeting goals you set for yourself, you’re probably an Obliger. If you’re able to meet your own goals but resist arbitrary rules and struggle with others’ expectations unless you understand why they’re meaningful, you’re probably a Questioner. If you resist both inner and outer expectations and feel stifled by routine and habits, you’re probably a Rebel. And if you tend to meet both inner and outer expectations, you’re likely an Upholder. (That’s Rubin’s own tendency, not surprisingly, and she’s a bit smug about it at times. But if you want to feel a little good and a little bad about your Tendency, you can check out this graphic, the third one in the post, which lists positives and negatives for each Tendency. Upholders may be self-directed, but they can also be rigid, disapproving, and judgmental.)
Though the Four Tendencies are a little squishy for my researcher’s heart, I do think that reflecting on your patterns with respect to meeting your own goals and others’ expectations of you can be helpful in considering what kinds of systems and structures can help you develop a sustainable writing practice. For many of us, the writing we do is largely self-directed. Chances are, no one’s tapping on your shoulder for you to finish that poem you’ve been daydreaming about, and so it’s really helpful to think about what helps you achieve the goals you set for yourself.
Here are a few ideas about accountability systems, linked to each Tendency profile:
Because Obligers often struggle to meet inner expectations, the most obvious advice is to develop a public or social way of sharing your progress. That might be an accountability group where you share your writing goals and then check in on your work each week, or a text chain, or a shared excel sheet where you log your writing time. But because Obligers often have trouble prioritizing their own work—it can be a lot easier to grade student papers or answer emails than wade again into revising an essay that may never see the light of day anyway—I think the bigger task here is to reaffirm the value of the work you’re doing for yourself.
If you’re an Upholder, a simple check mark or highlighting system may work well for you--you could block off writing time in calendar each week, then highlight it once you’ve completed each writing session.
But for Rebels, the idea of committing to a whole week’s schedule in advance might make you feel stifled and constrained, and seeing your writing alongside meetings and doctor’s appointments in your calendar might take away from the magic of your writing practice. So if that resonates with you, you might think about how to reframe your writing time as part of your rebellion: can you steal some writing time in the parking lot at daycare, or scribble lines of a poem during a boring meeting?
If you’re a Questioner, it might be helpful to reconnect with your Why: what is the purpose of the project you’re working on? What do you want it to do for you, for the people who will read it? Writing the answer in your notebook or on an index card at your desk could help you recommit to a project that’s been giving you trouble.
The big picture here is to think about what helps you achieve the goals you set for yourself. And no matter what your Tendency is, we all benefit from sharing our dreams and our progress. For this week, I’d encourage you to share your goals in the comments, in an email, on a post-it note in your planner, in a text message with your friend. Naming your dreams can be scary, but it’s also part of what makes the hard work happen.
three tasks for today:
Set your intention for your writing for the week. This could be a milestone on an ongoing project, a deadline for a submission or an application, or a target for word count or time.
Reflect on your Tendency and use that insight to create a scorecard or accountability system (or tweak an existing one).
Consider setting an external deadline. This could mean emailing a writing friend and telling them you’re going to share a draft of an essay by Friday, or telling your roommate or partner that you’re going to submit something in advance of an upcoming deadline. Even Upholders benefit from a nudge.
I’d love to hear about your plans for creating or modifying your acccountability systems. If you have a friend you think would benefit from some encouragement in their writing life, you’re welcome to share this newsletter. You can always reply to this email, comment below, or find me on twitter (@nancy_reddy) and instagram (@nancy.o.reddy).