How do you hold yourself accountable? In this interview I share:
- The advantage of having a boss.
- Ways to generate your own accountability.
- Playing the A game with the 5 bucks.
Create artificial restraints on your most valuable resource: time
– David Wood
To find out more about Chris Dorris and view the full episode, go to https://christopherdorris.com/mental-toughness-podcast-tough-talks/
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– TRANSCRIPT –
Chris Dorris: [00:00:00] One of the things in my life to rephrase this that helps me be disciplined is a shimmer of accountability.
How do you hold yourself accountable?
David Wood: [00:00:16] Yeah. I love that. If we have a boss, then we have external accountability. And that’s really valuable. You might not think it if you have a boss, but it’s really valuable. The boss puts constraints on resources. The boss says this is a priority. Often the boss will say, yeah, no, you’re not allowed to do that.
Or, yeah, go and do that. Do this first, do this second. The boss might also put constraint on time. I need this by tomorrow. Four o’clock is a lot of value in that. If you are your own boss. We need to generate our own accountability and our own external constraints.
Chris Dorris: [00:00:55] Yeah. Right. That’s where the question was coming from, for me, for the entrepreneur in the world, right.
From the people who are their own bosses.
David Wood: [00:01:03] Exactly. So we need artificial constraints. We have to generate them ourselves. So. One way we’ve already covered. This is what I’ll do in 12 months. And this is what I want. That’s a constraint for the next seven days. This is what I choose to care about. These other things don’t make it into this week, right?
That’s another constraint. Booking sprints in your calendar and saying, I’ve got two hours to get a specific task done, and then even breaking it down into 25 minutes. That’s another constraint. But the accountability piece. One way people get this, is they hire a coach, you get a coach and you make a commitment.
I’ve got some wonderful entrepreneurs right now in an eight week program called the Samurai Program, which is designed to double your income. We’ll give you a 20% boost in eight weeks and then a hundred percent boost over a year. And what they do for accountability is they write down each week, what they will do over the next seven days.
And it’s in a group document, we all get to see it.
Chris Dorris: [00:02:08] That’s accountable.
David Wood: [00:02:09] And when I get on the live call, we go through it. Now there’s two levels of accountability. You can put an a next to it, which makes it an A goal. That means it must be done. If you’re in a coma in hospital, you are still on the hook for getting that done.
There are no excuses. There is no changing your mind. There is no renegoiating once it’s all in.
And if you don’t put an A next to it, it’s a big goal. Hey, maybe you do it. Maybe you don’t right? No big deal. Now, if they don’t do an a goal, they set a consequence.
For each one has their own individual consequence. For me, if I don’t complete an a goal, I pay $5 to my ex girlfriend that’s what I do. Literally. Not kidding you. I
paid, I just sent her five bucks on PayPal.
Chris Dorris: [00:02:59] You’re kidding me.
David Wood: [00:03:00] Nope. I’ve got other clients.
Chris Dorris: [00:03:06] Whoa, are you guys friends?
David Wood: [00:03:10] We are now.
Chris Dorris: [00:03:11] Because you pay her!
Oh God bless it.
David Wood: [00:03:18] Well, it gets better. I’ve got people who donate $5 to Trump’s reelection campaign. If they don’t do it. Yeah, they were against Trump. One guy said I can’t do it. My wife would kill me. And I said, well, I can get it done. Right. I love it.
So I have an A goal is only really Two that I have to do each week that are always A goals. One of them is to do my weekly action plan where I set the seven, what I’m going to do in the next.
Chris Dorris: [00:03:49] Oh, how interesting. That’s a total process goal. That’s it? That’s neat. It’s a goal within the goals.
David Wood: [00:03:55] Yeah, I don’t have that. I will slide.
Chris Dorris: [00:03:59] Let’s repeat that. So your first and your first A goal is what.
David Wood: [00:04:05] Is to create my weekly goals. And it must be done by one o’clock mountain time on Friday.
Chris Dorris: [00:04:12] Oh, wow. You know what I love about all of this is your super specificity. I love that. When I used to work almost exclusively with competitive golfers.
One of the things. In fact, I was working with a golfer yesterday and we talked about this in the pre shot routine is one of the first things you do is pick a super specific target, focus
David Wood: [00:04:38] And there must be a time attached. If there’s a, it’s not an action. It’s a wish.
Chris Dorris: [00:04:48] I like that. So you, so by now by 1:00 PM mountain time on Friday, you’ve got the next week.
Oh, all set up.
David Wood: [00:04:57] Yeah. And if it’s not done and there are a couple of times I missed it. I pay the $5 and then I put something else into my system, into my structure, like a reminder or an email or an extra reminder the day before.
Chris Dorris: [00:05:09] Okay.
Now I’m visualizing you doing this. There are people that would like have a million things though.
They’re planning next week. If they’re going to put too much here. Yeah. So does there a metric on that or do you have a guideline for like how you,
David Wood: [00:05:25] No, I can’t tell you how many to put on but I think it’s a good idea to work out. This is my priority. These are the things I commit to doing. Like these are my goals and there are no excuses on that.
And that’s hard.
Chris Dorris: [00:05:39] Yeah. Well, how many? Okay. So how many of those do you have? What is today? Thursday? How many of those did you have for this?
David Wood: [00:05:47] I only had two A goals. Oh, wow. Yeah, because I like sometimes if something’s really important, I’ll be like, I do, you’re going to show up. That’s an A goal. You are going to get that done and that, because I know five bucks is on the line.
It’s only five bucks, but it’s still, it gets my attention and I’ll actually plan ahead. Make sure I don’t leave it at the last minute. I’ll communicate to people about my deadline and it’s weird. They don’t understand. I’m like, like I have to have this by Friday at one o’clock in fact I need it by Thursday at one o’clock because I’ve made a commitment to my coach and I’m unwilling to break that it’s not official.
Chris Dorris: [00:06:30] Yeah. And people are surprised, but I’m like, I’ve made a commitment and I am unwilling to break that. That is some powerful ass language right there, bro.
David Wood: [00:06:40] Yeah. I’m unwilling to fail and that’s, I’ve got to call people three times. I’ve got to check that it’s coming. I like, I really get on top of it because once you play the a game, you start to realize everywhere things break.
Yeah. Oh, leaving to the last minute breakdown, not communicating with the people ahead of time that I got to get this really early. So there’s no surprises breakdown. So many diff didn’t set timers. Didn’t set an alarm. Break down. Oh my God. I had a client call me and say, I’m sick. And and I’m not going to make this.
I’m not going to make it in time. I said, are you telling me, or are you asking for. That was one of the biggest, most profound insights he’d ever had. He realized he was telling me and he shifted to wait, how can I do this? I’m sick. I don’t know how to get it done. We brainstormed it. We came up with something. Guy nailed it.
So the game. It’s not for everybody, but if you want to see where things break down and where you’re so inefficient. So ineffective, the a game and 5 bucks is a really great way. To answer your question. Pick the goals that really matter. And then the other ones will be bonus. You’ll do them. If you have time.
