Personal accountability
In such a noisy world, many useful messages and ideas are co-opted and twisted for agendas. I find this particularly prevalent in self-help, where toxic self-promotion and hustle images are created to share and unattainable ideals to sell their wares. With all this chatter and fluff, this nonsense gets in the way of seeing truth and value and, it becomes difficult to see the trees for the forest. It is very easy to get lost.
Within this noise there are some good and helpful ideas often embedded in the presented narratives, but they can be twisted and deeply misshapen; the meaning intentionally or incompetently misused for particular exploitative agendas — a very unbalanced logic and misrepresented perspective. Often the value and benefits are watered down or missed — the presenter abusing the ideas to sell more stuff and take the money. This can be a bitter experience and, it also becomes difficult to believe and to trust any message. A parallel to Gresham’s Law, where bad money drives out the good.
Because of this, useful, helpful and positive messages can be overlooked and, this can be detrimental to the quality of our lives. We do not have to buy books, courses, seminars or videos to understand these concepts. More reputable sources are providing this information and, these are freely available. The main point is that we have to look for it and, we have to put the effort forward. We have to try. We have to be responsible for doing it. We have to honour our responsibility to ourselves. This is the basis of personal accountability, which can be a hard thing to adopt.
The frontier spirits
Self-reliance was a key propitious trait of the frontier, characterising making your own way in the word and, enduring the struggles of life from forging ahead into the unknown wilderness. It represents an archetype of the pioneer and invokes many of the basic human ideals of accountability, responsibility, taking risks and hard work bringing its own reward.
Embedded somewhat in here is the idea of fairness — the frontier is equally bountiful and harsh to all. It is a land of opportunity, but also land of uncertainty, where only the hardest working will succeed. Essentially an image of the meritocracy and, this makes it appealing to the modern world, one of striding out and making your way in a level playing field. It is an escape for some into a bygone and romantic era far from the claustrophobic, imprisoning, confining, fake, unfair and cynical world that can be experienced today.
But in reality, the frontier was dangerous with disease, hardship, hucksters and villains; the romantic notion is an idyllic image that never was and, was far, far darker than presented. Implied in self-reliance is the idea of the self-made person but, again this is a fiction; we cannot do it all alone. There is so much to be done and learnt, so many needed skills that in most cases, we cannot be total reliant on our own efforts. We need others to help us, we need the human capital of our connection.
Life was never fair, nor was it ever a meritocracy — there are many unfair barriers that people must face and overcome, and these have always existed. But, irrespective of this, although life is not fair, we are still forced to live it. We cannot escape this fact. Moreover, simply giving up and checking out, would never be a useful and productive strategy. In many regards it would be running away from out problems, and just make them worse. It would be simply a descent deeper into misery and hopelessness.
Therefore, the only rational thing we can do is to try. Making some productive and constructive choices, and taking some action. We are not totally helpless; we can make choices in our lives. Ideally, we can try and do something sensible and rational to provide a better chance at making some headway in our lives.
There are many things in life we cannot control, especially the actions of others. However, we can control our actions and responses to situations. I cannot ensure the success of my endeavours, but I can choose how hard I work towards them. My abilities are limited and I cannot compete in every field or chase every opportunity. But I can choose where to play — where to compete and which opportunities to chase. Thus, I have choices in my life, and I get to choose them.
This is the article’s main message, and one of hope. To develop a manner, stance and mindset to try and tackle life in a constructive manner. It is better than a decent into self-destruction, and a lack of self-respect.
Life can be hard
Yes, this is hard. The idea of self-efficacy is where one has a belief that one can influence the outcome of a situation through their actions. It is an idea embedded in confidence and one that is often the most challenging. The question of whether I believe I can affect the situation directly influences how I feel about the situation. Consequently, how I feel about a situation then affects the motivation that I have to act on the situation. Will it be a waste of time to try? Although a fair question, it is reasonable to ask — if I don’t try what else would I be doing? A pity-party, anxiety and being unable to sleep are not good alternatives. Ultimately trying in my experience gives a little respite to these feelings. I can say to myself at least I tried. Some effort was made to make the situation better.
Accountability
I feel there is currently a toxic view on accountability, one that is purely outcome focussed. If we cannot control the outcome of a situation, how can we be accountable for the outcome? This can be twisted and used as a self-help whipping stick. It usually ends with you owning everything with a blend of some toxic hustle and non-verifiable self-promoting stories where they conquered every challenged faced. Maybe I’m a cynic, but these are not stories I tend to have much belief in.
However, there is a point that the outcome is something I have to live with. It exists, and has to be dealt with. Something needs to be done about it and, although it may not be fair, it probably will not go away on its own. Therefore, I may not have a choice in the outcome, but I have a choice in how I approach this.
Stoicism has this zen aura, taking everything in one’s stride and never being influenced or unduly down with any situation. These are incredible people, with an iron will, a steely constitution and incredible character. This is not me. Maybe one day I can improve in this department, but this is certainly not me today. I have emotions and can have some really down days; life can affect my mood, no matter how hard I try. However, life goes on, and problems and setbacks cannot be ignored, they need to be attended to even if I do not want to.
Self-awareness and self-examination allow a person to look at a situation and understand themselves and ask hard questions. How hard did they try? What did they learn from this? What would they do differently if the situation appeared again? Did they take some responsibility in their actions towards the situation? Did they try to do something to improve it? Show initiative? This is really the only way I have come across that provides some insight and learning from situations. It tries very hard to extract some positivity out of bad situation, even if it is one of try harder next time, or do not do that again.
Although situations and outcomes may not favour me, the message here is that I can only do what I can do, but I can ensure that I do it and to the best of my ability. This represents the accountability to myself, in doing what I can to address the challenges and ambitions that I have in life, and trying to learn the best I can from setbacks and bad situations. Some then be at peace without any care for the eventual outcome, given that they tried their best and learnt what they could from the experience. However, as a human with many faults, I always care about the outcome and it does affect me. But knowing that I have done my best does soothe somewhat unhappy outcomes, and this is the best I can hope for.
Accountability to yourself does not have to be big or significant events. These are best found in the smaller, regular events in trying to make daily progress. Two examples of regular and modest situations of self-accountability are given below.
Writing as an example
To improve my writing, I impose a yearly quota of articles. These practice exercises required to gain experience to improve the quality of my work. There is no shortcut with gaining experience. To improve the quality of my work, it will take a lot of practice, take a significant amount of time and require substantial effort. It cannot be avoided.
The focus cannot solely be on a quota, as pure numbers can lead to a thoughtless repetition. Doing something poorly over again just to say that I have met a numerical target does not ensure any improvement in quality. I must be thoughtful, dedicated and engaged. There must be a constructive effort to try and improve. There are different steps and I must work on each to be accountable to myself. How hard did I work is a question that must be asked, and that after completing the article a satisfactory answer needs to be given. This satisfactory answer to the effort expended is irrespective of the outcome or reception of the work.
Now this article was written as a steppingstone to the quota, one of many, However, the articles in the quota need to be distributed fairly evenly throughout the year to ensure that I have sufficient time to write them, and hopefully gain from a quality improvement. It is unreasonable to assume that I can achieve them or make significant improvement if I just cram them in at the end of the year. That is a strategy likely to fail. Therefore, I have to force myself to do them at regular intervals and, by actually doing the work faithfully at these regular intervals represents being accountable to myself.
To write, time must be set aside to think of a topic, research it, write it and the edit it. So, thinking ahead, I have to put some time in my calendar, and hold myself accountable for doing the work during that interval, and not making excuses to get out of it. Given the number of calendar apps, it is easy to schedule time. These give reminders, so there are no excuses not to do it. As there are so many potential topics, a choice needs to be made; it needs to be stuck with. This is the next piece of accountability — sticking to the decision made and following through on it. I have a topic and I need to work my way through it towards the end, and there are no excuses not to.
Now, it would be easy to write any old words down on a page. But this will not improve the quality of my work. What would I have learnt from this? How will this make me better? What would be the point in doing this if I don’t make the effort to improve? A weak effort would damage my self-respect and make me feel bad; it would not even be a feeble palliative to my ego and self-concept.
Therefore, I need to set ample time aside and a word target, and stick to them. This includes the necessary time for editing — which includes trying to ensure that the structure followed. These are small act of personal accountability — setting the targets that I need and following through on each of these.
Additionally, post-publication reviewing is important. This is where I learn the most. Comparing against older pieces to see if any improvement is made. Looking at the narrative and structure and seeing if it reads well — a logical progression, a lack of repetition and having sufficient content to justify someone’s time reading it. It is a time-consuming task that requires a lot of self-awareness and acceptance of criticism which makes it emotionally hard. This is another act of immense accountability, finding the time for reviewing the work and asking hard questions of myself I may not want the answers to. Acts of accountability like these maybe small, but I view them as necessary to improve.
Learning by reading as an example
Reading can be fun, but it can also be a chore. Reading for long periods of time can get tiring. But if I want to learn subjects then I need to read, and I need to set targets for the reading. Moreover, I need to ensure that I am engaged in the reading — what is the point if I am not paying attention to the book and not learning from it?
Having a set of subjects that I want to learn is the first challenge. This is followed by choosing the books. Choosing easy books is simple, but what will I gain from them? To learn, harder more challenging books are required. So having a target and signing myself up for the more difficult books is an important part of accountability.
Next was knowing what to take from the books. Why am I reading them? Having goals for what I was trying to get out of them and ensuring they were done was the next step of accountability. I took notes and could summarise my learnings to give a record of my learning. Forcing myself to do this ensured that I had to engage with the book and understand it. Thus, I could not nod off or not pay attention; there is no way that I could make notes and mark the book up if I was going through the motions. So, there was a system in place that could ensure my engagement, but also measure my effort and knowledge. It provided a record that I could not ignore, and help me to be accountable for my learning.
Thus, I was being responsible for my own education — choice of subject, book and what was gained for it. Ultimately this will only be a part of my education — discussions with experts and applying the learning to tangible problems are absolutely necessary for gaining expertise and experience in the field. However, getting the background by reading and being accountable for it, was the start of the journey — and in all endeavours there need to be achievable initial steps.
Gaining the motivation — small beginnings
As mentioned previously, accountability is embedded in motivation. It is difficult to be accountable to yourself if you are not motivated. Not everyone has high levels of intrinsic motivation and, difficult, ambiguous and uncertain problems are often daunting, difficult to find an entry point and motivationally draining.
However, from the two examples above, there were direct actions that I could take. There were some small, initial steps. For instance, I can choose a topic and start writing about it. I can forget the final written article and realise this will be edited later, and just put some initial thoughts down and paper and edit and improve on them later. Thus, there is a clear path that I can take action on that is relevant to my goal. It is a small first step, which can be separated from the whole task and all the other steps. So, it can be isolated and, each step can be handled in turn.
This makes it much easier. I can be accountable for each step. For instance, I may have a quota of books or a quota of articles, but I can break these down and isolate the individual pieces, and focus my accountability on this small piece. As the reception of my work is beyond my control, I can control the level of effort that I apply to each step, and this is the only thing I need to concern myself with. This is my accountability; each small step will combine together into the whole work.
It is something that I have found in many other endeavours, small things are easier, clearer and less daunting which improves my motivation and accountability. Sometimes, these small tasks can then lead on to larger things. This is an approach — a way of seeing life, a method and a philosophy. Complex and overwhelming goals can be simplified into small concrete chunks, and accountability to these chunks can be the best way to achieve them. Irrespective on the outcome, some progress has been made and it is visible.
Often there is serendipity in life, progress in one area can significantly affect other areas in ways that are not always clear, especially at the outset. Luck can have a way of finding you when some progress has occurred. It is worth thinking about.
Conclusion
Life may not turn out how we want, but we can at least control our actions. We can set out to do the work we set ourselves. It may not turn out how we would like it to, but at least we can hold ourselves accountable to at least try and do it to the best of our abilities. This is the most that we can ask of ourselves. So, focussing on the doing rather than the outcome may be a healthier approach to life. Also, breaking things down into smaller activities makes them much easier to do and less daunting. This maybe the best way to stay motivated and keep ourselves accountable for doing things.
