Set expectations about what you can deliver

- It's great to be accountable, but not for the impossible. You might get so pumped about holding yourself accountable that you feel like if there's a challenge that seems impossible, bring it. But that's really not a good idea. You can't aim so high initially that you're doomed to failure. Over-promising will not help your professional reputation. Instead it's important to set realistic expectations for yourself and others. Let's talk about how to do that. First, you have to be honest with yourself. It's easy to get excited and underestimate what it'll take to get a task accomplished. That leaves you backlogged and falling behind from the first moment, which is not a good place to be. Instead, don't start with wishful thinking. Start with data. Right now you can start to do something that will be incredibly valuable for your future project planning, which is time-tracking. Nothing fancy, just mark down maybe twice a day, how you've been spending your time and how long things take. Don't wait and do it once a week because your memory blurs. But if you write it in a notebook or put it into a spreadsheet before you go to lunch and before you leave for the day, after a couple of weeks you can develop a startlingly accurate sense of how long certain things take. The better of an estimator you are, the better you can gauge what you can realistically take on. Next, ask whether the task is hard or impossible. Aiming towards something hard is great. It can motivate you and your team and spur you on to new ways of thinking. But some things, honestly, are just impossible. If you have to assemble a thousand customer orders and deliver them in two days, that's perfectly doable in theory, but you need manpower or at least some kind of robot to be able to do it. If your boss isn't giving you the support you need so that it becomes structurally impossible, that's a fool's errand. That brings us to the final point which is about managing others' expectations. It's essential to be clear up front about what's realistic. It's easy in the moment to say yes and think, I'll figure it out later. It feels bad to disappoint your boss or your colleagues. And you might worry that if you demur, they'll think you're lazy or don't want to put in the work. Sure, those are risks, but a much worse risk is agreeing upfront and then breaking your word when it becomes clear, you simply can't accomplish something. So before you go all in, before you say, yes, I'm accountable for this, it's important to do a bit of war-gaming, figure out what the obstacles might be and where things could go wrong and have a frank conversation about it. Even if you do end up agreeing to try, you'll be more protected and you can build in important clauses, like, I can guarantee the product will be ready if we have sufficient staffing at the factory to produce it. That can mean the difference between being seen as a real leader and someone who breaks their word. With these strategies you greatly increase your chances of success by setting the right expectations for yourself and others.