🖐️ Five ways I get others to hold me accountable

When the desire to please śrī guru is blazing in the heart, all laziness and unwanted desires will automatically burn away. That desire alone will open our hearts to receive his instructions, after which we'll have all we need to attain our ultimate well-being. "Āra nā kariho mane āśa — there is nothing else worth aspiring for," as Śrīla Narottama dāsa Ṭhākura said.

In this post, I'm sharing with you the ways that I, who lack this inner drive to always please śrī guru, manage to avoid getting sucked into the myriad of temptations that derail me from what I ought to be doing. While these techniques might be temporarily helpful for someone at my level, I must not lose sight of the ultimate goal: śrī-guru-caraṇe-rati, deep attachment to the feet of śrī guru, which makes many of the methods I'll be describing below unnecessary.

Most every human being has a yearning to gain the approval, or recognition, of others. Although this is an unwanted quality that will one day be dissolved by the mercy of śrī guru, while I have it, I may as well figure out ways to use it to my advantage. I've found that making systems that keep me always having to stay accountable to friends (in other words, gaining their approval) is one of the most effective ways to keep me on track, even when the task or goal becomes difficult. Below are five ways I do this.

1. Making progress toward a shared objective 🎯

There is something so invigorating about moving toward a shared goal with like-minded devotees. In Mahāprabhu's instructions, all prominence is given to saṅkīrtana, collective kīrtana. We hear the example of how a single stick snaps in half easily, but a bundle of sticks becomes unbreakable. Similarly, I have noticed that by working together with other individuals who share my beliefs and aspirations, I can accomplish objectives that would otherwise seem unattainable when working alone. Here are a few examples:

• I've always wanted to read through Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, yet it is so voluminous, I've never had the persistence to make it to the end. Something always comes up, and I lose momentum. Now, however, I’ve been reading Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam for an hour every morning for about 2 1/2 years, and am still going strong. That is because every morning at 7:30 am, there is a group of wonderful devotees waiting for me to begin reading on YouTube live. This practice has had a huge impact on my life and I know there's no way I would still be doing it without the support of those devotees.
• I’ve been able to get through challenging GVP book publication projects because there is always someone like Vaijayanti-mālā Mātājī, with whom I'm privileged to work closely, waiting to receive the next file. So even though I am constantly getting stuck on difficult sentences and I feel the urge to submit to distractions, I somehow manage to push through because I don’t want to bottleneck the entire project. It is so enlivening to work with a dedicated team of devotees.
• I've always wanted to learn Sanskrit and memorize verses. However, because they both require brainpower, I never keep it up for long because I have a lazy mind that doesn't like to work too hard. That's why for the past few years, I've been finding others who also want to learn verses and then making memorization groups. Also, recently, I've started meeting up with some friends in Mayapur a couple of times a week to study Sanskrit, and now I've been feeling extra motivated to read Sanskrit stories from Amarahasa every day.

2. Sharing progress updates with an accountability partner 🤝

I've always struggled with getting to bed before midnight. To break this bad habit, around Kārtika time last year, I reached out to a friend to see if I could report to him over WhatsApp when I got into bed every night. He agreed and asked if he could share his screen time stats with me before he went to bed. We’ve been sending these daily reports to each other for six months now, and I’ve been slowly adding more and more habits that I want to develop.

For many years I’ve tried various techniques to develop good habits, but never before has anything kept me endeavoring toward them for this long. Even though I often fail with many of them, having an accountability partner has given me the motivation to keep trying.

Here is an example of the daily progress report I sent last night:

2 days till Ekādaśī

🪔 ❌✅✅❌❌❌✅✅✅❌❌✅✅
🛐 ✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅
📿 ✅✅✅✅✅❌✅✅✅✅✅✅✅
🗣️ ✅❌✅✅✅✅❌✅❌☑️❌✅✅
✍️ ✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅☑️✅✅✅✅

(🪔 = Maṅgala-ārati, 🛐 = Stotra recital, 📿 = Harināma, 🗣️ = Kirtan, ✍️ = Journaling in the morning and evening)

I feel a major sense of accomplishment seeing the checkmarks build up over time.

There is a great online tool for finding accountability partners to focus on various tasks called Focusmate, which I’ll write about in the “apps and tools” section below.

3. Setting specific goals every Ekādaśī 🌱

As you may have seen in some of these Ekādaśī Eve postings, Ekādaśī is the day I set for creating or adjusting habits and goals that I’ll try to focus on over the next two weeks. This practice has made me eagerly count down the days till the next Ekādaśī, which I've never done before. Knowing that I only have to follow through with the goals/habits for two weeks and that when the next Ekādaśī arrives I’ll be able to discontinue, change or increase them gives me a sense of relief and motivation to follow through till the end.

After Navadvīpa parikramā I became sick and felt fatigued so I cut the number of habits I'm tracking in half. Now on this Ekādaśī Eve, I’m feeling energized to re-continue the habits I had before and add some new ones. This practice of re-evaluation has gotten me to become more serious on Ekādaśīs as well.

I learned this practice from Śrīla Bhaktivedānta Vāmana Gosvāmī Mahārāja, who explained it as follows:

Jagad-guru Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura said, “Every fifteen days, on each Ekādaśī, a person should record how much progress he has made in his performance of sādhana-bhajana.” But we do not do that. And should that record be kept on a piece of paper or within our hearts? Only by recording it in our hearts will we be able to analyse our progress. Every Ekādaśī a person should make a point to ‘record’ how much harināma he did in the last fifteen days, how much time he spent discussing śāstra and how much service he engaged in. Only then can he understand whether he is making progress or whether he is going backwards.

(Self-Assessment on the Disappearance Day of Guru-pādapadma)

So as you can see, this is meant to be a much deeper practice than just keeping a written record like I've been doing. Anyhow, gotta start somewhere!  

4. Preparing written or spoken offerings 📝

What we listen to and talk about is what will end up living in our minds rent-free. Therefore, it is essential that every practitioner in bhakti gets a chance to speak about Kṛṣṇa.

I've been doing my own thing in the maṭha for a while now and so I don't often have the opportunity or inclination to speak harikathā to others. Maybe a couple of times in the year, I'll get asked to glorify our ācāryas on a Zoom program or in Gopīnātha Bhavan. Other than that, not much harikathā comes out of my mouth. But there's never an excuse not to glorify Kṛṣṇa. That's one reason I started this Vine of Devotion website. My intention was to establish consistent programs that would compel me to engage in reading, listening to harikathā, and reflecting on devotional subjects so that I could write or speak about them.

Śrīla Vāmana Gosvāmī Mahārāja instructed Umā dīdī to do this in one of his first letters to her:

Submitting articles to the Patrikā is also bhagavad-anuśīlana (cultivation of devotion to the Lord) and service, because writing such articles necessitates studying and memorizing the many fundamental truths and conclusions of scripture. The various sacred texts are like bouquets of flowers from which you will have to fashion the garlands of essays and poems as you please.

– A True Servant A True Master, Letter 2,
written on 2/9/1970

Last year when I was making the Rūpa-śikṣā videos, we had a program where we'd meet once a week and recite and discuss the verses we were going through. In the last three programs, we had Mani Mañjarī dīdī summarize and explain the first part of Rūpa-śikṣā, Mādhavī dīdī the middle part, and Rukmiṇī dīdī the last part. Their carefully considered explanations were truly inspiring, and it seemed to me that they were also invigorated by the experience. I realized that we need to have more of this. We should all be figuring out ways to encourage each other to listen to, study, contemplate, and then speak harikathā.

Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura explained that iṣṭa-goṣṭhi (a gathering of like-minded devotees in which they discuss their iṣṭa, worshipful Lord) is another way of referring to Śrī Gaurāṅga Samāja, the society of Gaurāṅga. In other words, this is meant to be our society's prime activity. He explained that three or more devotees gathering to discuss Kṛṣṇa is called an "iṣṭa-goṣṭhi" and a group of two devotees meeting to do this is called a "kṛṣṇa-kathā-goṣṭhi". (See the original article, Śrī Gaurāṅga Samāja)

5. Employing various apps and services 👾

I’ve tried dozens of productivity apps, and over time began to develop an unhealthy addiction to trying out more and more apps. Although they were meant to help me save time and be more productive, they ended up giving me a false sense that I was making progress when, in reality, they were just another form of procrastination. That said, I have found the following three apps, which I utilize daily, to be genuinely helpful for holding myself accountable:

Focusmate

Focusmate is the other accountability partner system I mentioned above. The way it works is you choose a time you want to focus on any particular task, and Focusmate pairs you with an accountability partner for a live, virtual coworking session that will keep you on that task. At the scheduled time, you start a video call with your partner and tell each other what you’ll focus on. At the end of each session, you report to each other how you did. Altogether, we end up speaking for just a couple of minutes. You can have 25 min sessions with 5 min breaks in between or 50 min sessions with 10 min breaks in between. (There are also 75 min sessions, but I’ve not tried that out yet.)

Focusmate has been the most effective tool I’ve ever used to stay deeply focused on difficult tasks for prolonged periods without any distractions. It's helped me be very intentional with the blocks of time I have in the day. It’s also been a useful way to avoid people sucking up my time. I can honestly say to them, “Sorry, can’t help you now because I have a meeting scheduled!” 😋

If you’d ever like to book Focusmate sessions with me, here’s my link: https://www.focusmate.com/i/t1Rp44WLwX

You get three sessions a week free, so you can try it out – no credit card required. If you’d like to have unlimited sessions, it costs $5/month. So far, I’ve had 520 sessions.

(They announced a plan to start a referral program so that you’d be able to get free months for all the people you invite, but I’m sharing this with you early before they've started that program. Aren't I selfless? 😛)

Freedom

Freedom is a service that blocks apps and websites across all your devices. Here’s the schedule I set for the times when I’m allowed to use all websites and apps:

It is super customizable. You can either add websites to a whitelist that you'll be able to visit even during your Freedom sessions or you can add them to a blacklist for websites you want to restrict yourself from visiting at all times. This service has saved me LOADS of potentially wasted time. When Freedom is running, it is literally impossible for my devices to distract me.

Everyday

Out of the seven or so habit-tracking apps I've tried out, this is by far the most effective and visually pleasing. It very nicely shows the progress I'm making across my habits all at once. It syncs on every device natively and on web browsers. I have it as my default Chrome tab page so I am constantly getting reminded to stay on top of them all. The only problem is it's a bit pricy. (The developer kindly made it available to me when I explained my situation to him.)

Everyone is different and will have their own set of tools and systems that work best for them. I hope you found something helpful here. I’d love to hear what systems and methods you use to keep on track when the going gets tough. Please don't hesitate to share your thoughts in the comments below.