Is “Accountability” the Wrong Word?

Accountability: anything or anyone that helps you gain mental leverage to achieve the results you desire.

—The Accountability Stop

I start every blog post with the definition above. When I began The Accountability Stop, I noticed that the word “accountability” is a bit imprecise. Not because it has multiple distinct meanings, but because it covers loosely related ideas, namely, the “mental leverage” concept as I (repeatedly) define it, and the “willingness to accept responsibility for one’s actions” (paraphrasing Merriam-Webster).

More tellingly, to not be accountable by my definition is to simply not achieve the results you desire. The opposite of the dictionary definition is to blame others for your circumstances. These ideas could coexist when a person is not accountable, but not necessarily.

Semantics Schmemantics

Arguing about definitions doesn’t help us finish the work we want to be accountable for, so why bother talking about it? Hear me out, it might have more impact than we think. 

We can find articles about 

• journaling to document our streak of continuing a habit,
• accountability buddies, and
• announcing our goals publicly for motivation. 

But these techniques are not naturally pulled together under one umbrella-concept of mental-leverage accountability.

To me, a question is raised: could we be better as a society at accomplishing our goals if we had a more precise term for the motivation-oriented personal accountability we need to accomplish them?

The Word We Want

I was talking with a friend the other day who listed several projects she wanted to complete. She had plenty of reasons to do them. She wanted to do them. But she was not working on the projects. She wasn’t blaming anyone else for this lack of progress. But she did not have the proper mental leverage to actually do the work.

We tend to marvel at people who accomplish a lot. We say they have a strong work ethic. We say, “I don’t know where they get all that energy.” Do they really have different brains or more energy? Or is it possible they have a different concept of mental leverage that helps them continue to drive forward? 

If we started our conversation with, “I don’t have the right mental leverage right now to finish my painting,” would that more easily lead us into a discussion of techniques to gain mental leverage? When we say “I don’t feel motivated to work on my painting,” it gives us the easy out to tell ourselves that we’re waiting for inspiration.

Obviously, a blog on the internet will not change our language to redefine “accountability” or to create a word to encapsulate “mental leverage” more efficiently. But maybe we can be more precise about how we use the word accountability, and change to mental leverage when appropriate.

What’s Your Account?

Am I out in left field? Does the word “accountability” do everything you want it to do? Did you think that The Accountability Stop would be about something else entirely?