✦
Experiments

Accountability matchmakerAccountability works.
Just not the kind you tried.

Accountability is one of the few interventions with genuinely strong evidence behind it, and most people have tried it once, badly, and concluded it does not work for them. The usual attempt is a weekly check-in with a friend, which is the highest-effort and least durable version — it depends on two people's enthusiasm surviving at the same time, and it never does past about week five.

Free, no sign-up. Worked out in your browser, nothing sent anywhere, and the result imports into EvyOS.

Money on the line
the structure most likely to work for you

How it works

  • A meaningful amount held by somebody who will actually take it — or a commitment-contract service that donates it somewhere you would hate. It must be enough to sting.
  • Where it usually goes wrongFails if the amount is comfortable, or if the holder will let you off. It has to be somebody who will enjoy keeping it.

The message to send today

The whole intervention is one message. Not sending it is the only way this fails.

  • I am giving you £[amount]. If I have not done this by [date], you keep it. No negotiating on the day.

Your backup

  • A visible recordNo people at all. A wall calendar, a tracked streak, a spreadsheet you update daily. The accountability is to the record and to your own dislike of breaking it.

Do not bother with

You have probably tried this one and concluded accountability does not work for you.

  • Body doublingFails if other people cost you focus, in which case you will spend the session monitoring them.

This cannot introduce you to anybody

There is no matching service behind this page and it would be dishonest to imply one. What it does is tell you which structure fits and write the message — the person is somebody you already know, and that is usually who it should be anyway.

This result contains something worth keeping.

Send it to EvyOS →

Nothing has left this device. The link carries the result in the part of a URL browsers never send to a server, and you will see exactly what it is going to create before anything is saved.

Share this

Only the link and that one line are shared. Nothing you typed goes with it.

✦ How to use it

Three things that make it work.

1
Answer about what actually moves you

Not what should. Most people know which of the six they respond to and have never said it out loud.

2
Read why the others fail for you

You have probably tried at least one of them and drawn the wrong conclusion.

3
Send the message today

The whole intervention is one message. Not sending it is the only way this fails.

There are at least six kinds, and which one works depends on what actually moves you: shame, company, money, structure, or simply being watched. They are not interchangeable. Somebody who is motivated by not letting a person down gets nothing from a public commitment, and somebody who works better with another human in the room gets nothing from a weekly report.

This is honest about one thing: it cannot introduce you to anyone. It tells you which structure to build and gives you the message to send.

✦ The limit

An answer is not a record.

This works something out and then forgets it. It cannot tell you whether the number moved, because it has no memory of the last time you ran it and no idea what you did in between. Every calculator on the internet has that limit, and if it has never bothered you then this one is yours for free for good.

EvyOS is the same structure with the work recorded against it. Send the result across and it becomes real goals, tasks or habits with their dates — then the next answer is computed from what actually happened rather than from what you remember typing.

Start free →Everything else
✦ Questions

Accountability matchmaker, answered.

It is one of the better-evidenced interventions there is, but not in every form for every person. Most people have tried exactly one version — a weekly check-in with a friend — found it collapsed by week five, and concluded the whole category does not work for them.
Because they need two people's enthusiasm to survive simultaneously, and one party having a bad fortnight gives the other permission to stop. One-directional arrangements, where somebody just asks you a question, are far more durable and much less to ask of them.
No, and it says so plainly. There is no matching service behind this page. It tells you which structure to build and writes the message; the person is somebody you already know, which is usually who it should be.
For people it works on, very well — but only if the amount stings and the holder will genuinely keep it. A comfortable amount held by somebody who will let you off is a slightly expensive way of doing nothing.
Because you have probably already tried it. The wrong kind of accountability failing is the single most common reason people write off the entire category, when the honest conclusion was only that one form did not suit them.

Keep the answer.
And the record of doing it.

Goals, projects, tasks, habits and skills in one system, with the work logged against what it belonged to.

Start for free →