How to fail at your Masters of Procrastination

Escaping the self-paced learning trap

There’s a small gym across the road where I live. They offer a selection of workout classes, on weekdays only, and only at specific times. It looks like they wouldn’t be able to compete with the bigger gyms in town with their always open, everything-available-at-all-times-weekends-included.

There’s one crucial difference though. When you sign up at my little neighbourhood gym, the owner asks you if you want her to check on you if you don’t show up 10 days in a row. She can send you a message, or call you, whatever you prefer.

It turns out that these messages/phone calls are the secret for their survival in walking distance of a huge gym complex. She offers built-in accountability for her clients, instead of expecting them to figure it out themselves. She creates a solution when your motivation inevitably runs out.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you will

How many LinkedIn courses are in your “saved courses” section? How many Coursera courses have you started to then diligently delete the reminder emails? How many books are you currently reading, or should be reading, and haven’t advanced in weeks?

Standing completely still is also self-paced. You just don’t get very far at that pace.

Of course, you can try harder.

• You can write your goal on a post-it above your monitor.

• You can schedule learning into your calendar.

• You can define goals and give yourself a treat for every goal achieved.

For some people that works.

Everybody else ends up with a Master in Procrastination, featuring the cleanest apartment ever and a list of non-related (and frankly, unnecessary) tasks finished to perfection.

Or, as the gym owner realised: No accountability, no sustained action.

How to create more accountability for yourself, and others

One of my favourite concepts is the idea of making the right things easy to do while making it difficult to do the wrong things. Or, in business speak: remote friction where you want things to happen, and add friction where you need people to stop doing things.

If you want to move away from “trying harder”, you can use this motto for your own benefit. And you can certainly adapt it for your team.

Create a study/workout/doing-the-thing group. If you know other people with similar goals or doing the same course/sport/book-reading/etc, set up a time (or a Slack channel) where you can discuss and learn together.

Find an accountability partner / Be the accountability partner. This is more than just telling people that you’ve decided to do something specific. This is about checking in with that person regularly to share how you are getting on. If you are the accountability partner for a team member, you can use your 1o1s for this.

Work with a coach / coach your team. I have been working with a coach for at least the past 5 years, and it makes all the difference - especially if you ask your coach to make sure you set yourself tasks to accomplish before the next session. This is even more powerful than an accountability partner, because those are paid sessions.

When used for learning something new, I call these set-ups self-directed learning. You are still responsible yourself for how much you get out of it. The minimum pace is defined upfront though, so you won’t stand still.

And that is exactly the philosophy behind the Remote Leadership Accelerator: an 8 week study program that alternates self-study with 1-on-1 discussion with a knowledgeable coach (yes, you can request to work with me).

If your plan was to level up your remote leadership skills, or you don’t know where to put that self-development money, this is a good option: You can start whenever you are ready - and once you commit we’ll take you through it in eight weeks. Promised!

And here’s all the details: Remote Leadership Accelerator.

Have a great week