How to beat procrastination through human accountability

In today’s episode, we talk to Focusmate founder Taylor Jacobson about human-to-human accountability and how it can help us beat procrastination and achieve our professional and personal goals.

If you’ve ever sat down to work on a task and then suddenly minutes—our hours—have passed without you accomplishing much, you’re not alone. Taylor experienced that situation enough times to know something had to change: so he created Focusmate, an app that pairs people with an accountability partner for live, virtual co-working sessions. 

Focusmate’s vision is to improve the way millions of people work by helping them keep on task and get their jobs done. As you’ll hear in this episode, I tried it myself, and I can personally vouch for it!

In addition to hearing the story of how the app came about, we cover powerful ideas such as:

• How pairing people with an accountability partner helps improve focus and achieve goals
• Why relying on willpower is not an effective way to change behavior
• How vulnerability and being willing to admit our mistakes enables us to be more productive
  

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

• [00:01:04] How Taylor ended up being interviewed for this episode
• [00:03:30] How Taylor’s interest in accountability partners got started
• [00:07:25] What happened when Taylor moved to India for his first startup project
• [00:10:54] The event that sparked the idea for Focusmate
• [00:13:00] Why Taylor believed that other people would benefit from Focusmate
• [00:20:26] Why relying on willpower alone to change a behavior isn’t effective
• [00:23:59] How Taylor used accountability to develop Focusmate
• [00:26:49] How many people are part of Focusmate now
• [00:27:03] How Nir Eyal got involved in Focusmate
• [00:28:28] How Taylor would convince people who feel skeptical about accountability
• [00:32:57] Resources that Taylor recommends