A short YouTube talk by Peter Szabo arguing that an accountability coach or partner—who checks in daily and weekly—greatly increases the chance of achieving personal goals. Szabo cites studies claiming about a 400% increase in success and emphasizes accountability’s motivational role (avoiding embarrassment and providing ‘useful pain’ to resist temptation).
Chapters
So you know what you should do and you know what you shouldn't do. But still you kind of take two steps forward, but three steps back when trying to achieve your goal. What's going on and how can you fix it? Hey, my name is Peter Szabo, and let's get into that question. My main tip, just to keep it very simple, very quick, is to get an accountability coach, accountability buddy partner, and just make sure that he or she checks in with you daily and on a weekly basis to ensure that you are progressing. The reason behind this is very simple. There's been bunch of studies that show when you have an accountability coach, it increases the likelihood of you succeeding by 400%. Right? And it really comes from that human need that, you know, like, deep down we don't want to feel embarrassed. Deep down we don't want to be like, hey, we've made all these promises, but we didn't live up to it, right? So that little bit of pain, that useful pain that is gonna push you to say no to that cheesecake when you're really tempted, that little bit of extra pain, that thought in the back of your mind that you don't wanna kind of publicly or, you know, humiliate yourself in front of this person, it's gonna make you push and keep going even when you don't feel like it. So that's a big one.