How To Be More Responsible

This is connected to my last article on how to stop being impulsive. 

This is a placeholder for now. I’ve still got a lot to think about from that. 

But, it’s a natural progression to connect these two. I hope as I monitor impulsivity over the start of the year, I will find ways to be more responsible.

Some ways I could be more responsible:

I can think before I speak.

I can put other’s needs before mine and consider other people and those I care about before I make a decision.

I can focus on being consistent with my routine and positive habits so that I can be better and remain focused.

I can think about the consequences (financial, personal, professional) before I make a decision. Generally, I should think longer the bigger the decision. However, I know many stress the importance of relying on your gut when required. 

Resources

5 Ways to Be Responsible – wikiHow
9 Ways to Take Responsibility for Your Life
How To Be A More Responsible Person? – Make Me Better
11 Habits Of Responsible People That Everyone Should Consider Adopting
15 strategies to help your kids become more responsible.
5 Ways to Take on More Responsibility at Work | The Muse
Taking Responsibility: 3 Simple Tips to Take Control and be more Responsible
How to take responsibility for your life: 11 no-nonsense tips – Hack Spirit
How to be more responsible in life? : DecidingToBeBetter

First Notes

A lot of these resources were a bit more general than I would have hoped. There will be some good items to revisit, but barely any of the answers that were given jumped off the page.

I saw stop complaining, don’t blame other people, use willpower and more.

Maybe those are just the answers.

S.M.A.R.T. Goals

The one I saw on Reddit that resonated most is to create S.M.A.R.T. goals. 

Objective-Key-Results

I’ve been implementing OKRs in my personal life and my team’s. The first few implementations were hard but I believe we’ve gotten better at goal-setting and because of that, more responsible individually and collectively. 

I will share more on OKRs when I revisit this, but it is objective-key-results and was passed through many amazing companies including Intel, Google, Amazon, Netflix and more.

OKRs are a way to structure goals to make them measurable and time-bound, much like the original S.M.A.R.T. goals mentioned. 

I am going to revisit my own with some of this new knowledge and determination and hope to share more. 

Monitoring Being Irresponsible

In the post on impulsivity, I write about monitoring it. When I feel like I have been irresponsible it is almost always connected to impulsivity.

As I monitor that I will also think of the responsibility and how I can improve both. 

How do you track impulsivity and irresponsibility?

Do you create a scale? Right now, I am tracking mood, but I would like to add these in. I can be impulsive and irresponsible when I am low in mood and also when I am too high and manic. 

This is something fascinating to think about. The scales would change too. Currently, for mood, I track with DSM. However, it’s dangerous if I go below 50 or above 60. 

With responsibility, if the scale goes to 100, it would make sense that 100 is the most responsible and 0 is completely irresponsible.

With impulsivity, if the scale goes to 100, 100 would be reckless and 0 would mean you had concrete willpower and rational decision-making all day.

Tagging Events To Track Impulsivity and Responsibility

With enough willpower, even for a month, I believe you could get some pretty incredible insights into what is contributing to lack of responsibility and high impulsivity. 

It will of course get better with more data over time but there is a lot of power here. 

Generally, when you try to measure something you will improve it. So, even if you fail in measuring all the way through or getting statistical significance, you’ve almost certainly made some progress.