Nicola's searching for interesting backdrops while thinking about one of her favourite productivity hacks - how you can make yourself more effective in just 15 minutes a week.

Clicks And Leads is a "tongue in cheek" digital marketing Vzine by entrepreneur, author, podcaster, speaker, Nicola Cairncross. You can also subscribe to the video podcast on iTunes.Some of the insights shared in this weeks VzineWhat I want to talk to you about today is something I've noticed with all the new people coming into my Inner Circle membership site having bought the "Be Everywhere Online" course.

The one thing that people need to know is how to get started so what I've had to do is create a set of "watch this first" / "read this next" videos - all in a little section for new members.

I was thinking about how best to help people, how best to know what people are thinking, how best to know how they're making progress with the course and I've been doing quite a lot of research on how to make training courses very very good for the participants.

Because if it’s good for the participants, they will recommend the course. One of the things that I've noticed is that a lot of people need to be guided through content but not just guided they need to be encouraged to become accountable.

Now whether that's become accountable to the person running the course or whether it's become accountable to themselves, doesn’t seem to matter but it’s not internal yet.

That got me thinking about how I keep myself accountable to my goals and my long-term objectives, because it’s instinctive for me now.

One of the ways I do it (and it's a really simple success tool) is to just write myself a little note in my journal at the end of each week. I ask myself these questions:

What have I achieved this week?What's been a challenge?What have I learnt?What needs to change?

If you notice, that's all quite positive language so you see I'm not beating myself up about everything.

I'm encouraging my Inner Circle members in my membership site now to write me a little note on a Friday afternoon or on Monday whichever it is, as long as it's the same day every week.

I think that's a really good way of them letting me know what they've done, letting themselves know if they've not done anything, giving themselves space to think about what they want to achieve in the following week.

I can keep track of how they're feeling, what they're thinking and what are the actions they're going to take?

This is the way that I can stop them if they are going down the wrong path and stop them wasting money and stop them from wasting time because I've been there, I've been there for the last 20 odd years plus - 22 years actually that's Phoebe's 22nd birthday tomorrow and I've been online as long as she's been around!

That's the way I'm going to encourage them to let me know what their next steps are and if they're going along on on the right rails so if you're watching this at home and you're thinking …

"How can I keep myself accountable? How can I keep myself moving forward? How can I make sure I'm on the right track? How can I make sure I'm not falling behind or missing my goals?

That is a really good way to do it.

I had a really brilliant employer once called Benny Grey and he used to say to me "You can do anything you like during the week as long as you are around within about 30 minutes notice if I want to come down for a meeting. But one thing you mustn't do is go home on a Friday without writing me a little roundup of what you've done this week to achieve our goals and what you found challenging.

Actually, he said, if you've got anything challenging pipe up straight away but that report writing was a good discipline for me just recapping what I'd achieved during the week why was to get done next week what was a challenge and how I was planning to overcome those challenges.