Personal accountability isn’t easy, but it will change your life.
I learned this lesson when I started freelancing full-time in 2019, when for the first time in my career, I had no manager but myself.
I decided to strike out on my own after a series of toxic work environments, and suddenly, I was 100% responsible for everything that did or didn’t happen in my business.
Deadline missed? My fault. Client unhappy with a deliverable? My fault. Not enough revenue in the pipeline? Also my fault.
Everything was my personal responsibility—the wins and the losses.
It took me some time to get used to such an onus, but I’ve never looked back. Learning how to take personal accountability has had a majorly positive impact on my career, relationships, and happiness.
Here’s my advice for learning how to take personal accountability when you’re striking out on your own.
What is personal accountability?
Personal accountability means taking ownership of your life and everything contained within it. It means you refrain from blaming others or the universe for the issues you encounter, and instead take a more nuanced view that includes your own role in everything—and I do mean everything.
Personal accountability comes into play in relationships, career, and your personal goals (so in other words, your whole life). When you take personal accountability, you own up to how your actions and words impact others and the world around you.
That part overlaps with taking responsibility for your actions, which I’ve written about before. Responsibility deals mostly with what happens after a mistake, like apologizing and making things right with the people you affected.
Personal accountability starts earlier in the process. It’s about the standards you set for yourself and whether you hold to them, especially when no one else is watching.
Other people can still be part of the picture. A mentor might check in on your goals, or a friend might call you out when you’re slacking.
What makes it personal accountability is that you’re the one who decides what the standard is. You’re also the one who has to answer for it in the end.
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Why personal accountability is worth the work
Holding yourself to a standard when nobody is checking in takes effort, and it will include more than a few uncomfortable moments. I wish I could tell you that the results will be immediate, but the benefits of personal accountability take time to show up.
If you keep at it, the first benefit you’ll get is self-trust. Each time you follow through on something you told yourself you’d do, you get a little more proof that your word means something, even when you’re the only one who heard it.
That proof adds up. When you trust yourself to follow through, it gets easier to set bigger personal goals, because you have a track record telling you you’ll show up for them.
You also stop waiting for someone else to tell you how you’re doing. Plenty of people spend their early careers looking to a manager or a parent for the green light before they feel good about their work. When you’re the one setting the standard, you can measure your own progress and make a call without needing outside approval first. You learn to trust your gut, which makes you faster at making decisions and a lot less anxious about them.
Personal accountability also helps you catch problems while they’re still small. If you check in on your own standards regularly, you’ll notice when you’ve skipped the gym three weeks running or let your inbox pile up before it turns into a real mess. Compare that to finding out from a performance review, or from a friend who’s tired of you canceling plans.
Other people notice when you take personal accountability too, even though the standard is yours. Managers hand bigger projects to the people they don’t have to chase down, and clients come back to freelancers who hit deadlines without reminders.
In a role where no one is your boss, like freelancing or commission-based sales, that reputation turns directly into income.
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How personal accountability shows up in life
Personal accountability applies anywhere you’ve made a commitment, whether you made it to someone else or only to yourself.
The standard looks a little different in each area of your life. The core skill stays the same, since you decide what you’re aiming for and you answer to yourself for how it turns out.
That includes the good outcomes. Owning your wins is part of the same skill, and plenty of people find it harder than owning their mistakes.
Related: Incremental Change: How One Small Step Makes a Big Difference
Personal accountability at work
At most jobs, someone else sets the expectations. Your manager hands you deadlines, and a performance review tells you whether you hit them.
Personal accountability at work means setting your own standard on top of that. Maybe you decide every report gets a second proofread before you hand it in, or that you’ll reply to client emails within a day even though no one asked you to.
Other people can be part of this. You might ask a coworker to look over your work or find an accountability partner who checks in on your progress, but you’re the one who decides what counts as good enough.
This matters most in roles where no one is your boss. When you freelance or work in commission-based sales, nobody schedules your day or tells you to make one more call. Your results depend on the standards you set, like how many calls you’ll make each week and how you’ll follow up with the people who didn’t say yes right away. If you miss your number, there’s no one to blame. When you beat it, the credit belongs to you, and there’s no one capping how far you can go.
When a project goes well, take a minute to note what you did that made it work so you can repeat it. Keeping a record of your accomplishments also makes it easier to accept praise from a manager or client without handing the credit off to luck or timing.
Personal accountability with relationships
Healthy, long-lasting relationships rely on small agreements and commitments. You tell your mom you will call her back, you promise to help a friend move, you agree to come in early to assist a co-worker—these kinds of exchanges and offers are foundational in all relationships.
Personal accountability in relationships means keeping track of those promises yourself, before anyone has to remind you. If you notice you’ve canceled on the same friend twice, you make a point of showing up the next time, even if they never said a word about it.
It also means deciding how you want to show up for the people in your life. Maybe you want to be the friend who remembers birthdays or the partner who puts the phone away at dinner. Once you’ve set that standard, you check in with yourself on whether you’re living up to it, especially on the days you’d rather not.
Related: How to be a better friend
Let yourself notice when you do live up to it. If you showed up for a friend during a rough week, or someone thanks you for being there, accept it and let it count as proof of the kind of person you’re becoming.
Personal accountability with personal goals
Personal goals are where accountability gets the hardest, because nobody else is waiting on the outcome. If you quit learning Spanish or skip your workouts for a month, the only person who has to know is you.
That also makes them the best place to practice. With no outside pressure, every bit of follow-through comes from you.
When you miss a goal, look at why it happened and adjust the plan. Beating yourself up won’t move you forward, so treat the miss as information you can use.
When you hit a goal, give yourself credit for it. Looking at what went right tells you as much as looking at what went wrong, and it gives you a reason to keep going.
How to build a personal accountability system
Taking responsibility tends to happen in the moment, when a mistake or a win shows up unannounced. Personal accountability is the part you can plan for, and it works best as a simple system you repeat.
Here are my tips for setting up a system that will work again and again.
1. Set a standard
Start by choosing one area of your life where you want to hold yourself to a higher bar. It could be your sales numbers, your wellness, how often you make time for your friends—anything.
Keep it to one area at first. Trying to overhaul your whole life at once is a fast way to burn out and give up on all of it.
Then decide what “good” looks like in that area, based on what you want for yourself, where you are now—and without borrowing someone else’s idea of success. For example, if you made $2,000 in sales last month, try for $2,500 this month. If you normally lift weights twice a month, try upping it to once a week.
2. Make it measurable
A goal like “reduce my screen time” is vague, even if it is a worthy one. Aim for specifics, like “I won’t look at my phone before bed on weekdays” or “I’ll spend no more than two hours on social media daily.”
The same goes for work and relationships. “Get better at sales” can become “make 20 calls a day,” and “be a better friend” can become “text one friend each week to make plans.”
Pick a number you can hit on an ordinary week, since you can always raise it once it starts to feel easy.
3. Schedule your checkpoints
A standard without a checkpoint tends to fade after a few weeks. Put your review on the calendar the same way you’d schedule a meeting with your boss, because in this system, you’re the boss.
Weekly check-ins work well for most goals. For slower goals, like saving up for a car, a monthly review may make more sense.
Treat that time as protected. If you’d feel awkward canceling on a manager, give yourself the same courtesy. Putting off your check-ins is the opposite of taking personal accountability.
4. Run an honest review
At each checkpoint, ask yourself the same set of questions to determine how you are tracking with your goals. Ask yourself:
- What was the goal I set out for myself?
- Did I meet that goal?
- If not, what happened?
- If so, how do I celebrate?
- Do I need to adjust the goal?
- What do I want to happen before my next check-in?
Write your answers down, even if it’s only a few lines in your notes app. Using the same prompts every time makes it harder to talk yourself out of an uncomfortable answer. Keep the tone factual, the way you’d give feedback to a coworker you respect.
5. Raise the bar
When you’ve hit your standard consistently for a few weeks, give yourself credit for it, then set a higher one.
This is where owning your wins pays off. Each time you raise the bar and meet it, you collect more proof that you can trust yourself with bigger goals.
Once your first area feels steady, you can add a second one and run both through the same checkpoints.
Learning to take personal accountability will be an uphill climb. You’ll need to be honest with yourself, speak up when you’ve missed a goal or done something wrong, and learn to celebrate and honor yourself along the way.
With a methodical approach and lots of patience, you’ll soon start to see the long-term benefits that come when you take personal accountability.
