相互监督：懒惰去无踪，成功更轻松

    和很多码字的人一样，多年来我一直没把写小说的事太放在心上。我的这本小说中有不少文字还是前些年我不太忙的时候写的，写的是一支小镇的中学篮球队，一次锦标赛和一个谜。2011年，我就开始潦草地规划怎样收尾。但我就是动不了笔。我确实写了点，然后就一连几个月抛在一边。

    我知道原因是什么。我希望写作能有回报，希望能有人读我的作品。写小说意味着要投入大量的精力和时间，但将来小说能不能出版还是个问题，更别提什么收入了。如果没有来自外界的肯定，要完成这件事需要很强的意志力。这是个问题，因为上天赋予我的意志力大部分都被我用在了如何克服自己每个小时都想从家庭办公室旁边的厨房里拿点点心的冲动上了。因此，总是会有一些别的人或者别的事吸引我的注意力，小说就落在了待做事项的最末一项。

    我得想出一个办法把它提到第一位。

    很多人都面临着这样的问题，我在规划自己最新一本书的工作日安排时认识到了这一点。我们对于自己将来的职业前景都有恢弘的设想，但眼前的最后期限、会议或干劲十足的同事总是会在周一早晨占据了更主要的地位。内在动力是强大的，但对自己说“不”总是要比对其他人或整个世界说“不”更容易。

    那么，成功人士是怎么做的呢？他们为自己想做、但在生活中被挤在后面的事创造出了外部动力。他们创造了互相监督体系，使得一些重要而不紧急的事务得以进入优先事项。在互相监督体系中，如果没有按时完成，会让人非常尴尬。高效人士知道，一旦成功看起来是最容易的选择，我们就成功了。

    比如，拥有新泽西社交媒体营销公司Ghost Tweeting的妮卡•斯图沃特。她也是一家互助团体7-Figure Club的成员，7-Figure Club得到了女性企业家网络Savor the Success的资助。每周一，各个企业家都会在网上提交本周目标，它们应该反映个人年度目标的推进进度。等到周五，每个人再在网上公布，是否达到了既定目标。假如周一斯图沃特分享给这个团体的本周目标是发出10份提案，她告诉我，“到了周四晚上如果我还没完成，我可能就得熬夜赶进度。”为什么？她很看重这些人的看法，不希望自己在这些人面前看上去很懒。

    我知道自己需要一个互相监督机制，否则我的小说可能永远也写不好。去年晚些时候，我读到了凯瑟琳•雷诺兹•路易斯在《财富》杂志(Fortune)上的一篇文章——《选择职业教练的四大误区》。我给凯瑟琳写了封电子邮件，祝贺她这篇文章的发表。我们聊到了她会不会聘请一位职业教练，以及这对于我是不是个好点子。她告诉我，“我不想付给什么人钱，然后听他/她告诉我做些什么来推进我的职业目标，这些我自己都知道...只是没有意志力去做。我想我真正需要的是一个写作伙伴，能让我对自己设定的目标负责。”

    感觉到这是个机会，我立刻提议，你愿意做我的写作伙伴吗？她欣然接受。我们讨论了我的目标(完成小说)以及我打算如何实现这个目标(每周写2,000字)。每周五我会报告我是否完成了目标。

    Like many writers, I've been kicking around an idea for a novel for years. I wrote a chunk of my tale -- about a small-town high school basketball team, a championship, and a mystery -- during a less busy time in my life years ago. I'd been jotting down ideas on how to finish it since 2011. But I couldn't build momentum. I'd write a bit, then abandon the project for months.

    I know why. I like to get paid for my work, and I like my work to be read. Writing a novel means investing serious time in something that may or may not ever result in publication, let alone revenue. Finishing it with no promise of external validation would require serious willpower. That's a problem, since I already expend most of the willpower the universe grants me trying not to grab snacks hourly from the kitchen next to my home office. Consequently, with other people and projects competing for my attention, the novel always fell to the bottom of my list.

    I needed a way to get it to the top.

    This is a problem many people face, I learned while writing about workday schedules for my recent book. We have grand ideas for where to take our careers someday, but immediate deadlines or meetings or aggressive coworkers always seem to take precedence on Monday morning. Internal motivation is powerful, but it's easier to say no to ourselves rather than the rest of the world.

    So what do successful people do? They create external motivations for things they want to do but that life has a way of crowding out. They create accountability systems that boost important but not urgent items to the top of their priority lists -- ideally in a way that makes failure really uncomfortable. Effective people know that we succeed when success seems like the easiest choice.

    Nika Stewart, for instance, owns Ghost Tweeting, a New Jersey-based social media marketing business. She's also part of an accountability group called the 7-Figure Club, which is sponsored by Savor the Success, a network of women entrepreneurs. Every Monday, each entrepreneur checks in online to set a weekly goal that will advance her toward her annual goals. Then on Friday, everyone checks back in to say if she did or didn't meet her goal. If Stewart's weekly goal, shared with the group on Monday, was to send out 10 proposals, she tells me, "Thursday night, if I didn't do it, I might stay up and do it." Why? She doesn't want to look lazy in front of people whose opinion she cares about.

    I knew I needed an accountability system for myself, or my novel would never get written. Late last year, I read a Fortune article by Katherine Reynolds Lewis called "Career coaches: When are they worth their salt?" I emailed Katherine to congratulate her on her article, and we got to chatting about whether she'd ever hire a career coach, and whether it might be a good idea for me. She told me, "I don't want to pay someone to tell me to do the things I know I should be doing to advance my career goals ... but haven't found the willpower to do. I think what I really need is a writing buddy who will hold me accountable to the goals I set."

    Sensing an opportunity, I proposed. Would she be my writing buddy? She accepted. We talked through my goal (finishing the novel) and how I intended to accomplish that (write 2,000 words per week). I'd check in on Friday to say whether I'd done it.