Several months ago, my friend Julie Howell and I started having co-working days, where we spend the day working together. Working alone gets tedious at times, and we have found that having someone to bounce ideas off of, or just to share things with, makes us more productive. And it’s more fun, too!
Then we decided to take it a step further than monthly co-working days. Now, we email each other a daily report. The process is simple: At the end of each day, Julie and I each send an email to the other describing what we did that day.
It started out as a way to document our accomplishments and motivate us to achieve more. However, it has become even more than that.
Here is what Julie had to say about it:
“Writing a daily email of “today’s accomplishments” has been a great idea. It does two things for me:
One, I find that during the day when I might skip over something because I’m just not into it or just plain lazy – I think “Better get it done so I can have something to write Cathy.”
Two, over time it began to show me how inefficiently I use my time or more correctly how I allow some things that are not important to monopolize my time.
And now after I write my “today’s accomplishments” email, I also send myself an email about what I want to accomplish the following day.”
My experience is much like Julie’s. I never want to send an email saying, “I didn’t do a darn thing today,” so I make sure that I accomplish things I can tell Julie about. And sometimes reading over the email points out to me where the time sinks are in my day. What distracted me and got me off course? What emergencies came up that had to be dealt with? And how can I keep those things from continuing to impact my productivity?
Interestingly, I found another benefit from doing the daily emails. What started out as a simple list of tasks turned into a daily journal. I not only write about what I did that day, I document ideas that came to me and future plans.
Getting an accountability partner has made a difference for me. Not only am I getting more done, I have a record of my accomplishments, plans and goals.
Why not try it yourself? Select a friend or colleague to be your accountability partner, and report to each other every day. Share your successes, your challenges and your goals as a way of reaching greater heights and keeping a record of your journey.
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5 responses so far ↓
1 Deanna T. // Feb 25, 2011 at 8:10 am
Brilliant Cathy!
Now I just need to find a partner…
2 Cathy Stucker // Feb 25, 2011 at 8:26 am
Although Julie and I live near each other and get together in person at times, your accountability partner can be anywhere. You may know someone from an online forum or email group, or it could be someone you met at a conference or…just about anyone.
If you can’t find someone right away, start sending emails to yourself. It doesn’t have the same accountability power, but just looking over my past emails and seeing some of the things I accomplished can be inspiring. And that works, too!
3 Jeannette Paladino // Feb 25, 2011 at 9:08 am
At the beginning of the year, a friend and I decided to be accountability partners in losing weight. In the beginning we checked in with each other every day. Now we check in when we’re stuck and especially if we’ve reached a goal weight. Knowing that I’m accountable has helped me to think about reaching for something I know is going to tip the scale in the wrong direction. It’s working — slowly but surely I’m taking off the pounds.
Many thanks for your continuing efforts to connect bloggers and publishers.
4 Vinny O'Hare // Feb 25, 2011 at 1:34 pm
It is a great idea to have someone that makes you acoountable. I have had two or three people over the years that knew my business plan and were able to yell at me when that plan got derailed.
I have done the same for them as well. It is a great idea to have someone to answer to especially in the online world were its easy to come up with a new idea.
5 Cathy Stucker // Feb 25, 2011 at 2:05 pm
Great ideas, Jeannette and Vinny!
Jeannette, you might also want to read The Economist’s Weight Loss Plan.
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