Thrive - Do What Matters

If you only watch one TED Talk this month, make it this one. 🎯

'Want to get great at something? Get a coach.' - Atul Gawande, TED 2017

Atul Gawande is a Harvard surgeon, public health professor, New Yorker writer and bestselling author. He loves a good checklist (who doesn't!).

He is also one of the most compelling advocates for coaching, and the benefits that external perspectives provide.

If you're still not convinced in the benefits of accountability partnerships and coaching, let his story compel you. After training for years and being a genuine expert in his field, Gawande's complication rates were still improving after two months of coaching.

"Coaching done well may be the most effective intervention designed for human performance."

The notion that we are fully formed, that we've arrived, or we can do it alone - these are beliefs that limits us.

Is it time to let external perspective be a gamechanger for you? 🩷

Watch it here:
https://www.ted.com/talks/atul_gawande_want_to_get_great_at_something_get_a_coach

You have built your accountability system. You have identified your blind spots. You have your If/Then plan for when things derail.

Now, the most important question of all: who knows?

Over the past fortnight, the incredible Artemis crew have highlighted for us the power of going together. The importance of having someone who'll hold your dream, support you to achieve it, challenge you and keep your accountable to your commitment.

Research consistently shows that this one element multiplies follow-through more than any other single factor. The American Society of Training and Development found that adding a scheduled accountability appointment takes goal achievement probability from around 50% to 95%! Not a better plan. Not more discipline. Just having the right crew in your corner.

Have you set yourself up for success with accountability?👇

🎯 Are you clear on both the goal you want to achieve, and the standard you want to meet?

⁉️ Have you got your accountability partner on board? This works best when you have someone interested in your success, not just supportive of your feelings. Support is lovely, but the partnership that moves the needle is one where someone asks the honest question, not just the kind one.

📅 Is there a structure to sharing progress? A regular check-in that is protected in both calendars avoids accountability becoming optional.

Think about the goals you're working on right now that would benefit from an accountability partner? Find your crew, your person - it might be someone in your team, your community, your network, or a coach. Someone who'll support you, to the moon and back.

Going together is faster, more sustainable and more effective than going alone. 🩷

A completely accurate representation of Planning to Fail in real life 🎯

💭 The plan: Get up early, do the thing, be extremely productive, finish with energy to spare.

🙈 Reality: School shoes missing. Work call ran forty minutes over. Someone ate the good biscuits. It is now 4pm and the thing is still untouched. 😩

🙅‍♀️ Old response: Write off the entire day, declare the week a write-off, emotionally reschedule everything to 'next Monday'.

🩷 New response (Planning to Fail edition): Open the workbook. Do the fifteen minutes that is possible. Call that a win. Because it is.

Fifteen imperfect minutes of forward movement beats zero perfect ones. Every. Single. Time.

Tag a friend and agree to ditch the "reschedule everything to next Monday" mindset together. 👇

Progress that dips and rises is not a straight line. But it is still progress!

Sometimes we treat derailment as defeat. Every missed commitment as evidence that we aren’t the person who gets the result.

What if instead we treat derailment as data - as useful information about where the plan met real life. And used that data to adapt how we respond.

That approach gets results, helps you learn and is kinder to our precious selves.

Planning to Fail does not mean planning to give up. It means deciding in advance - if something disrupts my plan, what do I do to keep moving forward? How will I treat the disruption? What’s the small step forward, or the quickest way back on track. No drama. No starting over from scratch.

What is the smallest action you could take today that still counts as moving forward to what you want to achieve?

Take that step. And use it as evidence to remind yourself - you ARE the person who does the action to get those results. 🩷

As April gets underway, there might be one piece of planning you've skipped.

Have you planned to fail?

Not because you want things to go wrong, but because you know your plan will meet real life, and real life does not always cooperate! A school run that takes forever. A week that fills up before you fill it yourself. An evening when the last thing you want to do is what you had scheduled.

What separates people who follow through over time from those who don't isn't discipline, or commitment. It's the decision they made before things got hard, about how they'll respond in those moments.

Here's how to incorporate it into your month 👇

👀 Identify your most likely disruption. For most people this is a predictable pattern: a busy week, an unexpected obligation, a low-energy window. Name what's likely to de-rail you.

➡️ Write an If/Then plan. "If [that disruption happens], then I will [specific action]." Not a vague intention, an actual decision made in advance. It might be as simple as 'if I miss my scheduled time on a Tuesday, then I will do 20 minutes on Thursday morning instead.'

👟 Decide what counts as progress. What is the smallest thing you could do on your most difficult day that would still move you forward? On days when you only have 20% to give, giving that 20% is 100%.

🧠 Plan for course correction, through regular reflection. Consider what went to plan, what didn't, how to adjust. Recalculate the route rather than abandon the trip.

Research has found that progress in meaningful work is the single biggest driver of motivation, creativity, and performance. Not perfect ex*****on, just progress. Even small, imperfect forward movement can sustain momentum and engagement.

Let's plan for progress, rather than perfection over the coming weeks. What's your If/Then plan for April?

🩷

It's Easter, which means chocolate is both a food group and a philosophical framework. 🍫

Stay with me here! 😆 W***y Wonka's Chocolate Factory is surely mandatory Easter viewing, and contains some useful insight on accountability!

Four children. Four patterns. Four lessons.

🤢 Augustus Gloop: Acts Without Awareness
Augustus dives headfirst into the chocolate river, ignoring every signal that this might end badly. His blind spot? He doesn't pause to evaluate. He mistakes enthusiasm for a plan. We have all had an Augustus moment, moving fast with great energy but no discipline or system to support it.

🏆 Violet Beauregarde: Fear of Not Being Enough
Violet's blind spot is her need to be first, to win - at everything. She chews the experimental gum despite being explicitly told not to, because winning matters more than listening. This is the fear of not being enough in overdrive: striving so hard to be the best that every warning sign is dismissed.

👉 Veruca Salt: No Personal Accountability
Veruca's accountability system is entirely external: she expects everyone else to deliver her outcomes. Her blind spot? She has never had to develop self-accountability because effort has always been optional. But when pointing the finger at someone else results in the garbage chute, she's left with three fingers still pointing back at herself: what could she do more of, differently and better?

🔫 Mike Teavee: Fear of Uncertainty
Mike knows everything - every fact, every detail and treats those who don't with contempt. His blind spot? While he might have facts, his "soft as cheese" thinking lacks curiosity and wonder. His need to know be fed information means he doesn't imagine or appreciate the magic. A focus on answers and details are often uncertainty's preferred disguises.

🍫 Charlie Bucket: The One Who Makes It
Charlie does not have more talent, more resources, or more advantage than the others. What he has is self-awareness, genuine curiosity, responsibility for his own actions and the willingness to take small steps even when the outcome is uncertain. He owns his choices. He doesn't wait to feel ready or certain, but embraces the magic. And when he makes a mistake, he owns it. Charlie is a dreamer of dreams.

This Easter weekend perhaps a re-watch of W***y Wonka is in order? And while watching, perhaps consider which character you see yourself in most and how you can 🩷

***yWonka 🍫🩷

You know the goal matters. You know what you need to do. You have the Accountability System in place! And yet, there are areas where you consistently do not follow through.

Have you considered that you might have a blindspot about what's actually getting in the way? That the reason you accept is in fact a fear in disguise as something more logical?

Three fears sit behind most accountability blind spots. They are not character flaws. They are not personality. They happen to everyone. They are simply learned behavioural responses to a situation our brains perceive as dangerous:

💔 The fear of not being loved: not making the call, not asking for the sale, not having the conversation. It is disguised as 'I don't want to come across the wrong way.' Underneath it is the fear that someone's no to your offer is a no to you as a person.

😰The fear of not being enough / being found out: This one is perfectionism's favourite disguise. It says 'I'll do it when I feel more ready.' It shows up as procrastination, imposter syndrome, and overachieving to prove worth. It's a masterclass in starting but never finishing.

⁉️ The fear of uncertainty: This one is paralysis wearing the costume of thoroughness. Excessive planning, constant checking, an inability to make a decision without more information. It says 'I just need to know how this will go first.'

The key insight, and central to our coaching at Thrive, is that nothing has meaning except the meaning we give it. The fear is not what stops us, the story we attach to the fear is. And when build the skill of recognising and naming the fear, we also build the skill of changing the story.

So if there's an area in your life or business where you consistently fall short of your own intentions, consider that reason you're telling yourself about why that happens. Is that reason actually logical, or is it just a disguise for fear?

Which of the three shows up most for you? 👇 🩷