More and more people are working from home. It sounds awesome at first: you can work in your bathrobe, spend more time with the kids, and keep your own hours. But it has its drawbacks as well.
If you live alone, working from home can get very lonely. Keeping your own hours can lead to a disorderly schedule. And without someone standing over your shoulder to check in on you, you may find yourself slacking off.
An accountability partner can solve all of those problems.
Finding an Accountability Partner
Working with an accountability partner has many benefits—you can learn all about them with a Google search. The hard part is actually finding an accountability partner to give you these benefits.
There are life coaches and similar services that will check in on you to make sure you’re sticking to your goals. A good life coach will even help you set those goals.
The problem is life coaches are usually very expensive. It’s great if you’re already a high performer who just wants to improve your results. But if you’re like the rest of us, you probably can’t afford what most coaches charge. They need to make a living too.
You can always ask your friends for assistance. But there aren’t a lot of people who would be a good match. They need to be highly motivated, punctual, and reliable. So do you, for that matter.
Even if you do have a friend who is a good fit, you may wind up chatting with them instead of working. There’s got to be a better way.
Focusmate to the Rescue
Focusmate is a freemium service that sets you up with an accountability partner for short, focused work sessions.
Focusmate Can Help Cement Your Schedule
When you sign up for Focusmate, you’ll see a calendar with a list of available coworking opportunities. The calendar is divided into 15-minute time blocks and sessions last for 50 minutes.
You can count the sessions as two Pomodoros if that’s your flavor of productivity. Here are some more advanced Pomodoro techniques to check out.
You can view each person’s profile if you want. On the other hand, you can just pick a day and time by hovering over someone in a specific time slot and clicking the check icon. It’s really that easy to get started.
Many time blocks will already have someone available to pair with. In the event that there’s an unfilled time slot when you want to work, you can create your own appointment by clicking the plus button in the lower right-hand corner.
You can then add your work sessions to Google Calendar. You can even use Google Calendar to block your time ahead of schedule in addition to adding your individual work sessions to it.
Focusmate Gives You Human Contact
One of the core concepts behind Focusmate is that there’s no chitchat during your sessions. You meet your partner, explain what you’re working on, and get started. After your session, just check in with your partner to make sure you were both on task.
At the end of the session, some people will have time to chat. Even if they don’t, it still helps to see another human face and know that you’re both working toward a common goal.
You can also invite your friends and use the Focusmate system to get past the problems mentioned earlier.
Focusmate Will Hold You Accountable
Accountability is what Focusmate is all about. The more you use Focusmate, the more it helps.
Once you’ve created a session, you’re locked in. There is now a living, breathing, human being somewhere else in the world, depending on you. You better make that appointment.
Once you get started working with your partner, that’s it. If you don’t get some work done, it’ll be awfully embarrassing if they crushed it during your session.
You Have No Excuse Not to Start Today
Signing up for Focusmate is easy, and you get three free sessions per week. The paid plan is currently only $5/month for unlimited coworking sessions.
Time to get over that speed bump and get started. A more productive and successful future is waiting for you.