The power of sharing your goals

We all know how difficult it can be to maintain new habits, but what if you had a way of making it much easier to succeed?

Believe it or not, 'other people' are the clue.

Have you ever wondered why it's easier to stick to a plan when someone else is counting on you?

Research has shown that having an accountability partner or buddy makes us more likely to do the thing we've said we want to do!

Pairing up with either a friend, colleague, family member or even a complete stranger to achieve a goal that you find hard to do by yourself, increases the success rate for both people. By sharing our goal with someone else we’re essentially making ourselves accountable to them. 

Teaming up with another person takes advantage of the Hawthorne effect - which is the effect on the behaviour of being watched. This effect is normally referred to in the context of focus group settings - the risk of getting skewed market research results because people want to be seen to "do the right thing".

The Hawthorne Effect is essentially a form of bias. Humans tend to behave differently when they are being watched or feelthat they're being watched. It can be applied to all sorts of situations. For example, a study of hand-washing amongst medical staff found that when the staff knew they were being watched, compliance with hand-washing was 55% greater than when they weren't being watched! Group weight-loss programmes work better when they involve the weekly group weigh-in. I always wondered why people would bother going to be weighed at a weekly meeting when they could just do it at home. The magic is in the accountability of the other people in the group.

So, back to taking advantage of this effect to hack our own psychology. Having an accountability buddy can help us get things done and you can also help them achieve their goals, win-win! They can motivate us, inspire us on the down days, and generally make the process more fun. 

You still have to do the actual work (that's the bad news). But by just sharing your goal with another person, the research shows that you are 65% more likely to achieve it! Otherwise, we're relying purely on our own internal motivation to keep going when things get tough or boring!

It doesn't need to be a big goal either, it works for simply getting stuff done off your to-do list too.

How does it work?

Choose a person to partner up with - there are lots of online options to find other people who are looking for accountability buddies. Ideally, choose someone dependable who has similar goals to you. Declare your goals to one another and set expectations: eg, how often to check-in on one another, how to give feedback, what to do if the other person drops out. (I didn't say it was perfect!).

I've had some work-related accountability buddies for some time now and I find that, as I don't want to let them down, I'm much more likely to do something that would otherwise go on the long finger.

Have you found a motivation hack that's worked for you? I'd love to hear any tips you have and will share them here!