相互监督：懒惰去无踪，成功更轻松

    只是方法做了这样一个小小的调整，效果之显著令我羞愧。由于要向凯瑟琳汇报进度，我有了每周写2,000字的动力，这样我就能写邮件告诉她我已经写了。虽然不完成也不会真的导致什么后果，但在每周目标前，从上学时期就养成的按时交卷习惯还是占了上风。

    “写2000字”和其他付费客户项目一起列入了我的待办事项列表。十周后，我已经有了足够的文字(20,000)可以考虑一下这本书的后半部分如何规划。我留出了一天考虑不同的部分应该如何发展，在那一时刻，写一本真正的小说的强烈冲动促使我想写完余下的部分。

    我把每周的写作数量提高到了5,000字，甚至更多，而且开始每天一大早就动笔，而不是考虑写小说怎么能成为我人生的一部分。到了4月15日，我已经有了草稿。

    当然，接下来还有很有编辑工作要做，但完善一件东西总比从无到有要简单。互相监督体系帮助我克服了从无到有的障碍。而且，正如凯瑟琳可能指出的那样，这种方法比聘请职场教练的成本要低得多。

    如果你有一位互助伙伴，他能帮助你完成什么样的个人目标？（财富中文网）

    劳拉•范德卡姆是财富网站的固定供稿人，她的新书《最成功的人工作时间干什么》已于4月23日发行上市。

    I'm almost embarrassed to say how effective this little shift in approach was. Being accountable to Katherine made me want to write 2,000 words, just so I could email her and say I'd written them. There weren't any real consequences to failing, but the part of my brain that learned to turn in papers on time in school years ago leapt to attention once it had an assignment.

    "Write 2,000 words" got a spot on my to-do list along with assignments from paying clients. In 10 weeks, I had enough words (20,000) to have a sense of how I intended to shape the second half of the book. I carved out a day to figure out where various chunks should go, and at that point, the momentum of having an actual story compelled me to write the rest of it.

    I cranked up to 5,000 words or more per week, and started beginning my days with novel writing, rather than figuring out where novel writing would fit in with the rest of my life. By April 15, I had my draft.

    There's still a lot of editing work to be done, of course, but I find turning something into something better much less daunting than turning nothing into something. An accountability system got me over the nothing-to-something hurdle. And, as Katherine would point out, it was much less expensive than a career coach.

    What project in your life could benefit from an accountability partner?

    Laura Vanderkam is a regular contributor to Fortune.com and the author of What the Most Successful People Do At Work, out April 23.