Accountability
Accountability is a subtle but highly effective motivator. It thrives on the social nature of human beings, using our desire for approval to ensure we get tasks done. At its core accountability is about knowing you are responsible for something, be it the health of your child, the profit of your business or the content on your website. The accountability effect is an observation based on this, namely, that we are more motivated and diligent in our actions and thoughts when we know we are accountable for them. My personal thoughts on the reason for the effectiveness of the accountability effect are that it makes us feel important, and this sense of importance (or the fear of losing it) can ensure that we complete tasks we are accountable for.
Before I go any further it is worth mentioning, despite dealing with the same topic, my discussion of the accountability effect is not based on the book by the same name. The opinions below are my own on the subject, and I have neither read the book nor know what it says about accountability. With that, onto the rest.
Transferring Accountability
Richard Feynman has a great quote that goes like this: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool”. Now he meant this largely in relation to the solving of scientific problems, but I think it applies in a wider sense to any opinion we have or action we plan to take. We can all admit at some point to rationalising an action we have taken when we knew at the time it wasn’t right. Common examples of this are “I’ll do a longer workout so I can have the cake” and “I shouldn’t really start studying yet anyway, there’s loads of time”. These arguments work at the time, because we alone are inclined to believe them. However, they don’t stand up to scrutiny when posed to any external counterparty.
Building on this, there appear to me to be two main types of accountability, defined by whom we are accountable to. In the first type we are accountable to ourselves (let’s call this “internal accountability”), and in the second we are accountable to others (“external accountability”). In my experience, as well as what I have been reading, external accountability tends to be the stronger of the two, and so we can improve our effectiveness at certain tasks my transferring accountability from ourselves (internal) to somebody else (external). Put simply, this means taking tasks, actions, thoughts and anything else that you have been monitoring yourself and finding someone who you trust that you can make yourself accountable to.
Bear this in mind as we look at some examples.
Examples of Accountability Transfer
Starting a Blog
Intellectual accountability (relating to your thoughts and opinions) is just as important as physical accountability (relating to your actions). Telling yourself you will learn a new topic or read around a certain area in order to know more about it is great, and personally I find learning new things one of the most satisfying things you can do. However, when left accountable to only ourselves, it can be hard to actually do anything about it, leaving our opinions weak and unstructured, having never had to fight their corner. There are many ways that you can solve this, go to a book club, talk to friends who are also interested in the same things, but one that is all the more common nowadays is to start a blog. This essentially involves airing your views, opinions and thoughts to anyone who happens to come across your site. That was my thinking when I started this blog, both to hold my opinions up to more global scrutiny, and to learn new concepts by explaining them. So, assuming at least one person reads my blog, I have successfully transferred accountability for my thoughts to them, and if nobody does, then fuck it - the world is flat and scientology is cool.
Dinner party
Secondly, let’s consider transferring accountability for your actions. Suppose you are interested in eating healthier but are struggling with doing so. You have two choices for what to do on Friday night; in the first you tell yourself you are going to cook a healthy meal, holding yourself personally accountable for doing so. In the second you invite your friends around, explicitly telling them that you’re going to cook something containing avocados, vegetables and whatever quinoa is. Now, in which scenario are you more likely to end up cooking that meal? The answer for most people will be the dinner party, as your dinner guests will hold you accountable should they not enjoy a healthy meal on Friday.
As I mentioned at the beginning, this is a topic that has been researched by those much more intelligent than me, oftentimes under different names. For example, Robert Cialdini talks about something in his book Influence (highly recommended) called “consistency”. This principle states that once people act in a certain way, they feel that other people expect them to continue acting in that way, imploring them to continue doing so in order to appear consistent. Practically speaking, Cialdini is (indirectly) saying that by acting in a certain way you are transferring some accountability for those actions to those around you. This is the same concept however, showing that we can use the transfer of accountability from ourselves to others to improve our motivation and diligence.