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It only helps if you set it up yourself and say exactly what you want, otherwise it slips into being nagged. Keep it small and specific: one line, once a day, one behaviour. You are not after their approval. You are turning a distant private goal into a small public one that lands on the same day you did or did not do the thing.
Take action! God will see your actions (Quran 9:105). Being witnessed is part of the doing, which is some of why telling one person changes so much.
التوبة
وَقُلِ ٱعۡمَلُواْ فَسَيَرَى ٱللَّهُ عَمَلَكُمۡ وَرَسُولُهُۥ وَٱلۡمُؤۡمِنُونَۖ وَسَتُرَدُّونَ إِلَىٰ عَٰلِمِ ٱلۡغَيۡبِ وَٱلشَّهَٰدَةِ فَيُنَبِّئُكُم بِمَا كُنتُمۡ تَعۡمَلُونَ
Say [Prophet], ‘Take action! God will see your actions- as will His Messenger and the believers- and then you will be returned to Him who knows what is seen and unseen, and He will tell you what you have been doing
Qur’an 9:105read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A scoping review of engagement strategies in digital mental health found that keeping people going over time is the recurring problem rather than getting them started, and it maps the strategies used to help with that. Social accountability sits in that family of approaches. It is a map of what gets used, not a measure of how well any of it works.
Saleem M, Kühne L, De Santis KK, Christianson L, Brand T, Busse H. (2021). Understanding Engagement Strategies in Digital Interventions for Mental Health Promotion: Scoping Review.. JMIR mental health doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Somebody knowing today brings the consequence forward to today.
Before treating something as your failure to get going, check whether you ever agreed it was yours. A job that bothers one person and genuinely does not bother the other has not been agreed by anybody.
Put the thing you are avoiding early in the day. Anything you place late gets pushed out by whatever the day turns into.
When you finish the dull task, give yourself something you actually like. A reward you do not really want does no work at all.