This slightly overstates the case. Structured announcements ("I will have done X by date Y") give you a chance to fail in the eyes of people whose opinions you

This slightly overstates the case. Structured announcements ("I will have done X by date Y") give you a chance to fail in the eyes of people whose opinions you value. That helps. I have an online friend who used this idea a couple months ago. To make himself achieve his weight-loss goals, he announced that he'd be posting nude pictures of himself on his blog at a set date. I'm not sure how well it worked (he lost weight, but not as much as he'd hoped), but he did actually post the pictures.