Accountability Quarterly Check-in

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

—The Accountability Stop

This weekend I’m doing a quarterly goal-setting exercise with my accountability buddy. We talk weekly to review progress on our current goals. We use our quarterly goal-setting to review the goals themselves and reprioritize as needed. Part of our inspiration is the Twelve-Week Year approach.

Looking Back

So let’s talk specifics. My priorities last quarter were:

1. Focus on Daily Health Habits
2. Write songs for a new musical
3. Write Accountability Stop Articles
4. Eight “small” tasks” that I thought could be accomplished in one week each. 

How well did it go? If I’m going to be honest on this blog, not very well. I mentioned lately that I’m in a new relationship. Inevitably that shifted priorities. The things that went the best were Accountability Stop Articles and some of my daily health habits. I only completed three out of eight of my “small” tasks for last quarter.

However, I’m not down on myself for Q3. The relationship is going really well and we did a lot of fun things together. As we’re settling in a bit more and creating new routines together, we’re looking at returning to some of the things that we enjoyed doing alone. For instance, he wanted to get back to the gym on Saturdays and I want to get back to writing and playing piano on Saturdays. Those easily fit together in our respective schedules.

Looking Forward

For next quarter, here are the priorities I’ve come up with:

1. Weekly schedule review—I created a weekly schedule review checklist that I have used in the past to plan my week and make sure I hit all my priorities. I got out of that habit. It’s a good one that I’d like to reboot. If this habit goes well, it will also help with the daily health habits I tried to focus on last quarter.
2. Write Accountability Stop Articles—I have not been consistent every week. It’s caused me to write several accountability articles about how to deal with not being accountable. (Here, here and here!) This is my primary creative endeavor for the moment, so I’d like to continue with it until I reach the 100 article mark that I set for myself.
3. Play Piano—I have a piano. I love to play it. So why haven’t I? I have had an arm tendonitis issue, but that is getting better. I’ve fallen out of the habit and would like to restart.
4. Finish my will—I had a will professionally written, but it has some attachments I need to finish and a form I need to file at my workplace. Last quarter I included this in my list of “small” tasks. Obviously it has some resistance attached to it and needs to be pushed. I’ve actually scheduled a day off of work specifically to deal with this. 

Quarterly plans also include time-specific activities, holidays and prior obligations. Ignoring these can lead to disappointments regarding our goals. Given everything I have going on this quarter, I’ve decided not to worry about writing new music for a musical right now. I expect it will become a priority again in the future. 

I mentioned that these priorities and check-ins happen with my accountability buddy. But we could also review our goals by ourselves to see how they align with our current season in life.

What’s Your Account?

Have you done goal-setting exercises to set your priorities? How has it worked for you?