When I say "hold yourself accountable" - what do you think of? Do you imagine a system of unyielding deadlines wherein you must always deliver by that date or no one can trust you? Is it that every word you say becomes a contract that you must abide by, no matter what the situation?
That's certainly what my (recovering perfectionist) brain often imagines. But, this has been an excellent season to relearn that accountability is actually much more generous than that. Dictionaries define it as "expected or required to justify decisions." To be accountable is to answer for the decisions you made - not to deliver flawlessly, but to be able to explain the whys and hows of what happened.
Say for example, and this is for sure a completely made up example and not something that happened to me recently *wink*, you sat down to work on a project, and instead you got a notification that you needed to update your operating system. So you pressed update, and walked away while it ran, and before you knew it, it was four hours later, and you had gotten a solid nap in, and made some really delicious soup, but also you did not do that project. You feel bad about it. People were waiting on it, and those people cannot eat your soup or benefit from your nap.
This person, who is definitely not me, could just keep avoiding the project, or work really hard on it and ignore all the other things that also need to be done and are time sensitive, and get really behind on everything else, or take another nap to avoid thinking about anything. And in a really punitive way of thinking about "accountability", all of those fit because they are some way of avoiding, overcompensating, or punishing oneself for not doing something when you said you were going to do it.
But in a more generous model of accountability, it's about saying:
What happened? I walked away, got distracted, got wrapped up in other things, and crashed because I am really easily distractable, and tired right now.
What decisions did you make? What are the consequences? I made the call to update the computer, and then everything else sort of flowed from there - not nefarious or even consciously procrastinating! But the consequences are now that I'm behind.
What needs to change on a system level? Nothing systemic, really - a perhaps avoidable but also understandable sequence of events. I could get better about setting phone reminders when I walk away from my desk, and maybe prioritize some sleep.
Who needs to know about the changes? Should email that person who is waiting on the project, let them know what happened ("I'm sorry, this fell off my plate and I won't be able to get it done by x - if I get it to you by y, will that overly complicate the timeline. If it does, I can prioritize it and have it by z, just let me know. Thanks for understanding - there's a lot to juggle right now."
What, if anything, do you need to implement moving forward so that the new plan is viable? I might want to make a reminder to check in at the end of the day - if other things are going to be delayed, an earlier heads up will probably be better.
It's a dance between self-compassion and accountability , I can both understand what happened and also make changes to not repeat patterns I don't want to repeat. But accountability doesn't mean "I have to always deliver things exactly when I say I will" - it just means that I am responsible for the decisions I make, communicating when things need to be communicated, and making changes when things need to be changed. It's not an end-state - this isn't a "I use pom timers and now I'm always accountable to everyone all the time!" thing. This is an evolving practice - building in enough places to be self-reflective, and practing enough self-compassion so that we can learn from ourselves without it being a punishment-based thing.