Accountability creates achievement

The answer is accountability. How do you keep yourself accountable to living the life you want to live? The equivalent of that in your life is an executive coach. Make space to ask yourself the big questions in life about your career, your relationships, your health, your spirituality.

I have somebody sit with me and they prevent me from doing anything but my top goal. It's like the same idea as a trainer in a gym.

If you're going to go out and start a new business, if you put in ways that you have to do certain things, put in constraints for the things that you need to do, and then you're going to do that. Without that, when you're on your own, when you're entrepreneur, I found myself upset at myself for just wasting my day. But I fixed it by telling people, 'You're going to get this every week,' and now I have to do it.

If you want to write a book, the easiest way is go to a publisher and sign a contract, not because of the money. In software engineering, you're not going to get much - $5,000 or something like that. But it's the pressure. You absolutely should go to a publisher or have some external... Someone to hold you accountable, and then you'll get it done.

For me the biggest thing is just if folks are working on a sprint, it's very simply, 'What did you deliver this sprint?' That's it. Just ask a bunch of questions. 'What did you deliver?' And more questions, 'Okay, fine, but what did you deliver to production? Great. And how long have you been working on that? How long? What was the cycle time?'