by Liesl Lafferty
Accountability is a major influence in attaining your goals. The American Society of Training and Development studied accountability and found that people are 65% more likely to reach their goals when they’ve shared them with someone else. Even better, people are 95% more likely to reach their goals when they share them with a group and meet regularly to review them.
How to Run an Accountability Group ⋆ Elustra Consulting
We can all agree writing is often a solitary experience. During the pandemic, while deeply ensconced in the extra layer of global isolation, I sought a community to support my lonely pursuits, and I found the Sundance Writers’ Cafe. Three times a week I joined a Zoom room with about 75 other writers and we worked in silence for an hour. Afterward, we had the option to talk to other writers in breakout rooms for a half hour. I engaged in conversations with people from all around the world.
Writing within an accountability system worked for me. I achieved a new level of focus. I felt compelled to follow the rules and found it easy to ignore the regular distractions of life. My phone would ding or my computer would a flash with a new notification, but in Zen-like fashion I didn’t flinch. I had tailored this time to work on one of my scripts. It made me accountable to myself and I was getting a lot of writing done.
Concurrently, one of my esteemed Wet Ink Collective colleagues, Olesia Shewchuk, asked me if I wanted to do some accountability buddy time with her. We set a date, connected on FaceTime, stated our goals, put ourselves on ‘mute’ and went to work. She mentioned that pre-pandemic she had done this in person. She had people over to her house and everybody wrote quietly together. Moreover, she was presently doing accountability sessions with several of her friends throughout the week. Then the idea struck, ‘Let’s create an online accountability group of our own’. We were inspired to build and support our community. In April 2021, Write on the Clock was born. Since then, more than sixty of our friends and colleagues have joined us!
Every Thursday at 10:00am PT, we spend 15 minutes stating our individual goals for the day – the check in. Then we ‘mute’ ourselves and write for an hour and a quarter, and finally spend a half hour checking out, reflecting on whether or not we reached our goals, sharing resources and discussing many issues of our craft. We do it consistently as it helps get a lot of writing done.
Then one day Olesia said, ‘Let’s try a Write-a-thon and spend five hours writing together.’ So, we did. It was excellent and now we do that as well, on the first Friday of every month.
Our group continues to grow. The amount of progress that we make is tangible. We facilitate many hours of disciplined work and exchange ideas about how to make each other better writers. And, of course, it’s all free!
If you are interested in joining us, please send us a note requesting the link to writeontheclock [at] gmail [dot] com. You may also want to join the Sundance Collab. It is also free and membership gives you access to events, films, opportunities and advisors. Sundance Collab
Accountability partners have created changes that have trickled into my regular practice. Now, I am more disciplined when I am working on my own. Perhaps I am still physically alone in my office with my words, but now I can also be in a group of people with the same goals and passions. We are all a little more accountable to each other and ourselves.