An accountability partner can be a great resource to motivate you and to help you reach your goals, but if you are not careful, an accountability partner can be like a ball and chain that drags you down.

To make sure you find an accountability partner who is your catapult to higher and faster achievement and not your crutch, consider this:

The greatest value in having an accountability partner is to maintain a daily discipline of setting and reaching goals. You want someone who helps you keep focused,  motivated and moving forward.

Theoretically, you should have enough self-motivation to go out and do the things you need to do in order to achieve your goals, but being human, we all like to share our victories with someone else.

An accountability partner fills the human need of letting us take pride in what we do, and have it mean something not only to ourselves but to somebody else. By telling another person of our achievements, we get the external feedback that what we do transcends the small world of our own egocentric wants and desires.

When we get positive feedback, we allow ourselves to believe that our efforts are valid because someone else sees them that way too. We tell ourselves that what we do is good and that we should continue, because the universe “out there” has given us the green light and the stamp of approval. What we do transcends us.

That’s an awesome feeling, isn’t it?

Just make sure that the  push for achievement comes from you. If you ask someone to be your accountability partner with the idea that that person is going to show up at your house every day,  shake you awake, tell you what you need to do and sit on you till you do it, then you have a crutch, not an accountability partner.

If you find yourself with a crutch, you should get a new accountability partner or do without one, so that you don’t become a permanent cripple dependent on your accountability partner.

After all, you want to be independent, don’t you? So, you need to find a positive accountability partner to be your catapult.

There are two types of positive accountability partners.

One type is very neutral, almost non-existent. She is someone to whom you can send a daily e-mail, and by doing so you give yourself an extra jolt of re-commitment to moving ahead with your goals.   The only requirement of this type of accountability partner is that he/she has a valid e-mail address.

The second type of positive accountability partner is more interactive. An interactive accountability partner is great as long as the push is coming from you to focus and achieve. An important quality of the interactive accountability partner is that there is no criticism or suggestion that you change direction. You want a cheerleader to reinforce your self-made momentum. The last thing you need is a devil’s advocate who constantly expresses doubt about your every move.

If you have a positive mindset, your accountability partner can be your catapult by simply being there and by giving you positive feedback.

Do you have an accountability partner yet? Is he or she a crutch or a catapult? Let me know in your comments below.

If you implement the steps I am about to give you, tomorrow you will look back on today as the day you became awesome.

If you are like me, you’ve spent a lot of time and a ton of money reading a bunch of e-books, watching videos, attending seminars and webinars, and trying a lot of stuff that just didn’t work.

You made a huge effort and didn’t get much in return. You felt everything but awesome.

That was my story.

Recently I stumbled across a method of getting stuff done that is changing everything.

Now I am writing articles in 10-20 minutes that used to take me hours to write. I am finishing all of the articles I start, something that didn’t happen often before. I’m not being held back by writer’s block.

Ideas flow.

Instead of trying to be cute and funny by being creative, I have learned to be productive by using a repeatable technique. I am having loads of fun spending less time doing more and producing better quality with less effort.

And that is just the beginning. Soon I will start releasing my own products so I won’t be at the mercy of a competing hoard of hungry affiliate marketers all promoting someone else’s product.

Would you like to get more out of life now and become awesome?

To be successful, you’ll need to understand two things:

1. The Magic of Three
2. The Power of Imperfection

That may sound simple — and it is, but there are some important details you need to pay close attention to.

The Magic of Three

Everybody knows the importance of creating a task list. They let you prioritize the things you need to do and help you remember important task so you get more done faster and more efficiently, right?

Well, sort of. The problem that I have with task lists is that shortly after I start writing down all the things I need to do, the list takes on a life of its own and I feel like the list owns me and not the other way around.

You can feel overwhelmed with all those things to do. Some give up. Others trudge along with no enthusiasm.  Either way, the outcome is not optimal.

But there is a better way.

Task lists are good. The secret to making the task list continue to work for you is to break the list down, so you are only focused on three tasks at a time.

Each task should not take more than 15 minutes. If possible, you should limit the task to 5 minutes, but that isn’t always possible, so the max should be 3 fives, so tops 15 minutes.

So after you have written down the things you want to do today with the most critical tasks first and the least important last, take the top three items and mark them.

Now forget about the rest of the stuff on the list as if it didn’t exist.

Only focus on three items at a time. You will be amazed at the difference it will make when you find yourself faced with only THREE things to do for the entire day. And when you start on the first one, you only think of getting that one done. Don’t even think of number two yet.

Once you finish the first task, pause, take a long, slow deep breath and celebrate that you completed that task. Now there are only two to go.

Now move on to the next task, only focusing on that one.

Once you have finished those three tasks and ONLY after you have finished them, you can go back to your master list and pick out the next three items on the list and deal with them the same as you did with the first three. If you get tired or run out of time, you can look back at your day and celebrate those achievements.

I guarantee this method will fill you with a sense of accomplishment and make the frustration fade.

With regards to copywriting, the method is similar.

When you are going to write something, pick a topic and then write down three bullet points.

If you write the bullet points in the form of a question, it will make it easier to answer.

Don’t try to be creative. Instead, just answer the questions as if you were being asked in person. Make your answer clear and to-the-point.

If you are dealing with a book, then write down three questions that the first three chapters should answer. Within each chapter, think of three questions that need to be explained for each chapter. (You can do sub-points as well, but advance in groups of three.) The important thing is that you only focus on three things at a time and that you pause and acknowledge each group of three as an accomplishment.

The Power of Imperfection

The other big hurdle that I had and I am sure many people have, is the desire to be perfect. As children we are told that we should always do our best, and learn to fear being less than perfect.

While I agree you should always strive to do your best, I bet you’ll agree that the habit of not considering a task finished until it is absolutely perfect can hold us back, become an excuse for procrastination, or stop us ever releasing products that could be making us money.

It evokes the stench of the putrid remains of unfinished projects.

This is where the power of imperfection comes in.

By tapping into the power of imperfection, you free yourself to let your natural communication skills flow out onto the page and create copy that you didn’t think you were capable of.  When you tap into the power of imperfection, you trust yourself that you will do your best, and you suspend any self-criticism until later. You accept that your copy may never be 100% to your liking, but that if you write it coming from a place of self-acceptance and enthusiasm for your subject, your writing will convey that excitement and your readers will always come back for more.

After all, writing and speaking are simply transference of feeling through words. If you feel it when you write it and when you read it back, your readers will sense it as well.

Allowing yourself to write from a place of self-acceptance and self-confidence is what makes a mediocre writer good and a good writer great.

If you combine the magic of three with the power of imperfection, you can knock off an article of 300-500 words in 10-20 minutes easy. You won’t be shackled by writer’s block or self-doubts.

Now I have a request. I am very interested in your experience with this method. Give a try today and leave me a comment below with the details of your experiment.

Here is your chance to be awesome. You can also inspire others with your story and become inspired to do even better by reading the stories of others.

Pick a topic and give yourself 5 minutes to do some quick research (Google it or use Wikipedia), and then use the magic of threes to break the writing down into bite-sized pieces.

Be awesome. Do it today. Post a comment.

For years I used Gmail because it was free, but never really came to terms with the interface. After all, I had been weaned on Outlook and was used to putting things in folders. Gmail left everything in the inbox and only allowed you to mark it with different labels.

It was a mess.

But since I got my Google G1 Android phone which has built-in Gmail support and no Outlook support, I was forced to take another look at Gmail. At first I resisted, but then…

I liked what I saw.

One of the biggest things that had been missing from Gmail was the ability to manage my mail. I wanted the mail I had read out of my inbox. Think folders.

Google still doesn’t have Outlook type folders but it did introduce the ability to archive earlier this year. Archiving solved my problem of wading through hundreds of emails and always looking at a cluttered inbox. Now I can read the message, and if I am done with it for now but may want to look at it again, I can press the Archive button and poof, it disappears from my inbox. If I don’t need it, I simply delete it. Either way, I can maintain a clean inbox.

At the same time, I love being able to search through all of my mail for a particular word, phrase or person and to get all e-mail messages sent and received on that search term. Google refers to this as conversations. It can be a real time-saver, since you can follow the flow of the communications easier.

Maybe it goes without saying, but being able to access my e-mail no matter where I am is another great convenience and productivity booster. Since the G1 phone stores the messages in your inbox on your phone offline, I can catch up on my e-mail and respond to messages even if I don’t have a network connection, or only have a poor one.

Keeping all of my appointments on my phone to track upcoming meetings is a must. Before the G1, I had a Windows Mobile 6 phone which I configured to sync automatically with my Outlook calendar. One of the reasons I didn’t get the Google phone earlier was the lack of the ability to sync with Outlook, not to mention the seemingly primitive way the Google calendar was set up.

But then, when I took a closer look, I found that there is a way to synch my Gmail calendars with Outlook. The cool thing about Gmail is that I can have multiple calendars, so I now have one for the day job, one for my own projects and one for my family events. Thanks to Gmail, all three can be combined into one view, so I can see them at a glance on my G1.

The trick to get around some of the missing functionality of Google calendars is to do all my scheduling in Outlook and then synch it with Google. The Outlook calendar still rules in ease of use and functionality.

You can use the free Google calendar synch program or the fancier and more expensive CompanionLink for Google application to sync your Outlook with your Google calendar.

So Gmail is back in favor and I give it the high productivity nod. Despite the lack of folders and the thought that all my mail is being spied on by the Google algorithms, I am finding that it is saving me so much time and makes me so much more productive that I consider it a good friend and business partner.

What is your experience with Gmail? Do you use it? Leave me a comment and tell me how you manage your messaging.