Accountability as a Service

Theory #41: Hey you, did you do the thing you said you would do?

People have all kinds of ambitions, goals, and plans, but consistently following through is the hard part. Some people are wired to make steady progress or have learned to do this well. But many people depend on external pressures and constraints, feedback, check-ins, and high stakes — financial, professional, or social — to spur them into action. All of these things provide accountability.

“The term accountable originates from the Latin computare, “to count.” To be accountable required a person to produce “a count” of either the properties or money that had been left in his care.”¹ So my favorite frame of accountability is this: being accountable is being answerable for something and to someone.

Accountability-as-a-service is something people increasingly crave, and I believe it’s on a steep growth path. As just one example, I recently launched an experiment for writers like me who want to write more. At its core, this experiment is about accountability. And I’m expecting to see a lot…