How I Use Public Accountability to Get Any Personal Project Off the Ground

Without publicly committing to something, I probably won’t go after it.

The idea to work on personal projects or build specific skills had been there for ages. It just took a decade to finally get started. What seems to work, is publicly committing to something, and consequently using the impending disappointment and laughter of those who are tracking my every move to get met started, and keep me going.

Using public accountability to keep writing

I had always wanted to start a blog, but sharing your words with the world means potentially getting judged on that by others. By friends, by strangers, and anyone else in between. Now that I have been consistently writing on Medium, I feel public pressure from readers who expect to see new words on my account.

Using public accountability to make YouTube videos

Then we have YouTube. An acquaintance showed me hilarious short films he made with his friends, and which he posted to YouTube. The platform was still wearing diapers. This was back in 2006.

I was deeply impressed and asked if I could join them. I also wished that I could do something like that too. If only I had realized I could. All I had to do was… just do it.

Like today, there still are no gatekeepers on YouTube who tell you what kind of content you can or cannot make. Every individual can have their say, whether they want to make it big or post purely for the sake of self-expression.

The people are watching.

I know now that social anxiety is at least part of what was holding me back. Or what I allowed to be held back by, if you prefer to look at it like that.

Either way, the possible opinions of the public felt like too much to handle. I didn’t think of what could go right. All I could see was what could go wrong. Snark remarks by friends and family I’d probably have to deal with. Looks of disapproval when I’d enter the high school or university grounds again. I went as far as to think I could lose my jobs if my employers would find out I was writing online. When I finally did start blogging, most of the time, I wasn’t even writing about them. When I was, I made sure to leave out any details that could point a finger in their direction.

What motivates you to get into motion?

I’m learning what works well for me. One of those things is the emotion of anger.

Using anger as fuel.

If I feel someone disrespects me or when someone tells me that I cannot do something, that doesn’t get me down. On the contrary. It makes me angry. It awakens a fire in me that will take action to prove the naysayer wrong, so I can shove it in their face.

Using the feeling of “I am so done with this crap” as fuel.

Apart from anger, being done and tired of an ongoing situation helps to start moving too. When I feel bored and dissatisfied, there are two things I can do. The first option is to accept how I feel and change how I view the situation. Or, I can take action to start changing the situation I am in.

The magic that happens when the two come together.

Throw anger and feeling done into a cooking pot, and it will boil over.

This is basically how my YouTube channel started. I wasn’t feeling content with what was going on in my life. Several factors had me shackled to the desk. What I could attack was how I spent my free time.

What I did next was something I’m past-me deeply grateful for. I screenshot part of my bucket list and published this as an Instagram post. In the caption, I stated that I’d be committing to a 30-day challenge to get out of my comfort zone, where I’d share any progress I made daily.

This was a big thing because I had been putting this project off for at least two years. I came up with one excuse after the other. After having posted it to my 200-something followers (wow), I felt as if there was no going back.

There was a lot of friction when going through each activity. Sharing the progress also felt like a big hurdle to overcome. Had I made the promise to myself only, it would have been much easier to back out. I would have made an excuse to “do it tomorrow”. Tomorrow would have turned into next week. You see where this was NOT going.

Hitting publish on each post gave me the satisfaction of accomplishing today’s goal. It raised my self-confidence, as I followed through with what I said and proved to myself that I could do this and didn’t resort to excuses or laziness. It gave me the motivation to carry on tomorrow.

Building in public, as makers like to call it, doesn’t help you just to keep going. By sharing your work with other humans, you receive feedback, for free. Whether you do something with this, is up to you.

And when you’re still small and unknown, no one will feel the need to crap on you. Their messages would be one of the few. It’s harder to hide your mean message in a sea of comments that isn’t yet there. That should give you some reassurance. Unless you report on highly controversial topics that bring out strong emotions in the consumers of your work. But that’s a risk of the trade, today, tomorrow, and all days thereafter.

Virtual coworking with strangers on the internet in a video call

One tool I’ve written about before that has helped me out a lot is Focusmate. I rediscovered the platform during the pandemic. Lately, I’ve also been spending more and more time on the newly founded platform Cofocus. It’s as simple as booking 50-minute coworking sessions with strangers from all around the world on a communal calendar.

Vocalizing what you intend to get done beforehand, and verbalizing how you spend the actual time with another living soul is powerful.

Sure, you can scroll the internet during the entire session. You can even lie to the partner about your accomplishments. This is only hurting yourself. If you have a conscience, you’ll probably feel so bad about yourself that you want to do better the next session.

Basically, you guilt yourself into getting work done. Especially when you see the other partner working hard as well.

Things started changing.

Once I realized the power of public accountability, things have started changing for the better.

• I have used it to keep regularly writing here on Medium.
• On my YouTube page, I mentioned my upload schedule. New and returning visitors will be expecting me to deliver because that’s what I promised.
• When I feel down and in the slumps, I jump on the Social Media platform I use most often, commit to a goal, and feel pressured to work on it before people call me out for slacking off.

Some of the results:

• I have published more blogs in the past year than I have in my entire life.
• I created and published more videos in the past three years than I have in my whole life.
• I did a 30-day digital drawing challenge and what do you know? I created more digital drawings in those 30+ days than I had in my entire life.

I still feel scared, but since embracing the fear of public rejection, at least I’m moving forward faster than I ever have.

Main takeaway

If you cannot rely on yourself to get things done, use public accountability to your advantage. Tell the world you will do something, preferably on a platform where you have lots of people watching. Even better if you know them personally. Shout it from the rooftops. Then make sure to do what you said you’d do.

Try this, and watch how you’re suddenly blazing through all those things you postponed eternally, in that time far ago, before you knew about the power of public accountability.