How to make a pact that works: goals, obstacles and check-ins

You found an accountability partner. Now what? Without a plan, check-ins slowly turn into “how are you? good, you?” and then into nothing.

The fix is a pact: a short, written agreement about what you’re each working on and how you’ll support each other. It takes 30 minutes to make and saves weeks of drifting.

Start with a goal you can actually check

Decades of research on goal setting (summarised by Locke and Latham, 2002) point the same way: specific, challenging goals lead to better performance than vague goals like “do your best”.

So instead of:

• “Get fit” → “Run 5 km without stopping by 1 March”
• “Grow my business” → “Get my first three paying customers by June”
• “Learn Spanish” → “Have a 15-minute conversation in Spanish by the summer”

A good test: could your partner tell, from the outside, whether you did it?

Plan for the obstacles, not just the dream

Psychologist Gabriele Oettingen spent years studying positive thinking. Her finding: just imagining success can actually drain motivation. What works better is pairing the dream with its obstacle. She calls the method WOOP:

• Wish: What do I want? (Run 5 km by March.)
• Outcome: What’s the best thing about getting there? (Feeling strong; joining the office run.)
• Obstacle: What inside me gets in the way? (I skip runs when I’m tired after work.)
• Plan: If [obstacle], then I will [action]. (If I’m tired after work, I’ll do a 15-minute easy run anyway.)

Do this together in your first meeting. Hearing your partner’s obstacles is surprisingly reassuring.

The pact template

Write this down, one copy each. A notes app is fine.

1. My goal: specific, with a date.
2. Why it matters to me: one sentence.
3. My weekly minimum: the smallest thing that still counts as a good week.
4. My biggest obstacle and my if-then plan.
5. Our check-ins: day, time, how (walk, call, message) and how long.
6. How honest we’ll be: “Call me out kindly” or “ask before giving advice”.
7. When one of us slips: what we do instead of feeling guilty. (Our suggestion: look at what got in the way, make a smaller plan for next week, move on.)
8. Review date: four weeks from today.

Keep check-ins short and regular

A 15-minute weekly check-in beats an occasional two-hour catch-up. Try three questions each:

1. What did I do since last time?
2. What got in the way?
3. What will I do before next time? (If-then, please.)

Then swap. Finish with one sentence of encouragement. That’s it.

Research on progress monitoring (Harkin and colleagues, 2016) suggests that reporting progress to someone else is one of the things that makes tracking work. Your check-in is exactly that.

Review and adjust every month

At your review date, ask:

• Are we still working on the right goals?
• Is the check-in rhythm right?
• Do we want to continue, change something, or end the pact?

Goals change. That’s allowed. The pact is a tool, not a contract.

Make it yours

Some pairs meet for a walk every Sunday. Some send a voice note every Monday morning. Some work silently on a video call for an hour. The best pact is the one you’ll both actually keep.

Every Pactful pairing comes with a suggestion for your first meeting and a nudge to make your pact. If you haven’t joined yet, start the 3-minute form.