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To have self-accountability, you need to get honest with yourself, decide what goals to aim for, and be responsible for your progress. Here’s how it’s done.

Self-accountability is a radical form of personal responsibility where you take ownership of everything you do. Your successes — you own them. Your failures — they may be less glamorous, but yep, you own those too.

And while that second part may be difficult, self-accountability is actually a form of self empowerment. When you recognize that all of your actions have consequences, good and bad, you’ll inspire yourself to make better decisions — even when it feels like external factors are working against you. And when something goes wrong, you’ll stop looking for someone to blame and start looking inward to figure out what lessons you can learn.

Master self-accountability, and you’ll start making major wins in both your personal life and your professional life. Here are the five steps you need to become self-sufficient in personal accountability:

# **5 Steps to Level Up Your Self-Accountability**

Get ready to get introspective — because self-accountability is all about knowing yourself and acting on that awareness so you set yourself up for success. Here are five steps that will make you more accountable:

Here’s what personal accountability isn’t: It isn’t doing everything yourself. Personal accountability means taking ownership of your actions, your wins and losses, as well as your strengths and weaknesses. When you take stock of these things, you’re able to make more informed decisions about when to take on a task solo, when to say no, and when to seek help.

Accountability starts with a little self-reflection. In fact, get out a piece of paper and make a list. What are you good at? What are you not-so-good at? When you know what your strengths and weaknesses are, you can guide your own personal development and ask for support.

Let’s say that you’re a software developer. You’re one of the best programmers at your company, but you don’t have experience with user testing. If your company wants you to get involved with user testing, you’ll know that you need to ask for extra support — whether that’s undergoing extra training or partnering with a colleague who has more experience — to get the project done well.

By choosing not to take on the project alone, you’re holding yourself accountable, being honest with yourself and your team members, and setting yourself up for success.

Improving your self-accountability helps you reach your goals because it keeps you focused on getting more big wins in your life. And one of the best ways to work on your accountability is to follow through when you set goals. But you’re not going to set just any goal.

Some goals — like “live more authentically” or “be more accountable” — are impossible to measure. There’s no way to quantify authenticity or accountability, so there’s no way to know whether you’ve crushed your goal or missed your mark. Instead, set goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely (SMART goals).

For example, a SMART goal you can be accountable for might be to speak up in 80% of your meetings over the next month. This goal is specific (speak up in meetings) and measurable (80% or eight out of 10 meetings). It’s attainable — you might not have the opportunity to speak up in all of your meetings, but 80% is doable. The goal is also relevant to your career success. Lastly, the goal is timely, as it lasts for one month.

At the end of the month, you’ll be able to assess whether you’ve reached your goal and, if you need to, make adjustments like increasing your goal or defining clearer parameters for the goal. Maybe next month you want to speak up in 90% of your meetings, or maybe you want to speak up in 100% of your departmental meetings but not in company all-hands meetings. 

You can break your SMART goals into smaller milestones. For example, maybe you start by speaking up in one meeting per week. The next month you increase to two meetings, and so on, until you’ve attained your overall goal of 80%.

Being accountable means having organizational and time management skills. Prioritize your goals. Make to-do lists. Establish your own workflow. And be your own project manager. When you do, you'll be able to stay on task, meet your own expectations, and claim more personal wins in the workplace. 

For some people, creating a routine is a good way to counter procrastination and establish [good habits at work](https://www.cutsclothing.com/articles/good-habits-at-work). Maybe you start everyday by clearing out your inbox, then you move on to your most important project. Maybe you end every day by making a prioritized to-do list, then you start the next day with the first thing on the list. Or maybe you follow Mark Twain’s famous [productivity hack](https://www.cutsclothing.com/articles/productivity-hacks) and “[eat the frog](https://todoist.com/productivity-methods/eat-the-frog)” — start your day with your least pleasant task, get it over with, and the rest of your day will seem easy by comparison.

Being realistic about the amount of time you need to complete each of your tasks will also help you stay accountable. A major part of mastering time management is allowing yourself enough time. So however long you think something is going to take, add a little cushion for unexpected emergencies and extra quality control.

Managing your time also means setting boundaries. If you’re going to hold yourself accountable for meeting your current goals, you need to prioritize those goals, which may mean saying no to less important tasks or setting an extremely generous timeline for your lesser priorities.

Being afraid to admit your mistakes is one of the main obstacles to self-accountability. Often, we worry that admitting our mistakes will hurt our relationships — that other people will blame or judge us. But in most cases, the opposite is true.

Denying your failures shows a lack of accountability and makes you look unreliable. Owning your failures and accepting the consequences that come with them is an essential part of building trust, and it can actually lead to healthy relationships. It shows your team members that you won’t blame others or make excuses based on external factors.

It’s true that external factors sometimes play a role in our failures, but external circumstances aren’t in our control. Our own actions are. So we learn more when we analyze our own role in our failures instead of assigning blame, which helps keep us accountable. There's always something that we can be doing better to plan for and work through those outside obstacles.

Let’s say, for example, you miss a deadline because you’re dealing with a client emergency. Instead of blaming your missed deadline on the emergency, you should accept personal responsibility and consider how you can do better next time. You could schedule deadlines further out to make room for the unexpected, or you could start working further ahead of the deadline so you’re not leaving tasks until the last minute.

But remember, taking responsibility is about self-reflection, not self-blame. Self-blame is bad for your mental health. Self-reflection is empowering. When you analyze your mistakes, take a minute to acknowledge that everybody makes mistakes and that every mistake is a learning experience.

Instead of fearing failure, make it your goal to [fail forward](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2019/08/23/failing-forward-and-why-its-ok/?sh=3ab6dc0b1a51) — to learn from your mistakes, to move forward, and to take on the world as a better version of yourself. You’ll be more prepared to succeed tomorrow because you failed today.

# **5. Enlist an Accountability Partner**

An accountability partner should be someone you trust to call you out when you’re not being accountable to yourself and your goals. In an ideal partnership, it works both ways, and you provide the same service for them.

Tell your accountability partner what your goals are and what milestones you need to meet to stay on track. Then, check in with them regularly to discuss how you’re doing. Just knowing that you have a check-in coming up can motivate you to continue making progress. 

They can give you extra motivation when you need it, but remember, if you’re failing to meet your goals, it’s not your accountability partner’s fault. That’s on you. That’s self-accountability.

When you embrace self-accountability, you can wake up every day and make yourself proud. Achieving personal accountability is a process, but once you get there, it will become a lifestyle. Your bold ownership of your personal wins and losses will show others that you’re reliable and responsible, which will help improve your relationships at work and get you noticed for all the right reasons.

To start your self-accountability journey, do some self-reflection, set goals, develop an action plan to meet those goals, and take responsibility for everything you do — win or lose. And trust us, while you may make a few mistakes along the way, when you take responsibility for your actions, you can’t lose.

For more motivation to help you wake up and win, check out these tips to [increase your energy and motivation](https://www.cutsclothing.com/articles/how-to-increase-energy-and-motivation).

5 Steps to Level Up Your Self-Accountability

1. Self-Evaluate

2. Set SMART Goals

3. Develop Your Own Action Plan

4. Take Responsibility

5. Enlist an Accountability Partner

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