The Straight-A Guide is a framework for decision making. You can start by defining success. Once you know what you’re after, you can set goals that translate your definition into measurable targets.
If you have the right attitude, that means you’re making a 100 percent commitment to success, as you defined it. You won’t need external forces to motivate you because you know what you’re after. Aspire to better outcomes and take action to turn those commitments into daily output.
Build an accountability tool to help you measure your progress. Every day you should close the gap between what you intended and what you actually produced.
I learned the importance of measuring progress by studying leaders, like Alan Mulally, who once led the Ford Motor Company.
Ford Motor Company
In 2006, Alan Mulally arrived at Ford when the company faced severe losses and internal silos. He did not rely on speeches or hope. In a book about his career, he wrote about building a cadence: a weekly Business Plan Review where leaders reported progress with clear status signals. Early meetings exposed a predictable problem—people avoided reporting “red” because they feared consequences. Mulally changed the incentive. He praised transparency, demanded facts, and required corrective plans. That discipline forced alignment, accelerated decisions, and rebuilt trust. A scoreboard replaced guessing, and the organization could execute with fewer surprises.
Accountability means building tools that measure daily progress and produce proof of follow-through. Anyone can create these kinds of tools. I used them in prison and I still use them today.
Outcomes rarely fail from lack of intention; they fail from lack of measurement. Without a scorecard, you can always claim you’re “working on it.” With a scorecard, or an accountability tool, you confront the truth: the metric moved or it did not. Accountability also protects credibility. When you document outputs, you reduce debates about motivation and increase confidence that you can execute—especially under constraint.
In the Straight-A sequence, the lesson on accountability exists for a practical reason: you cannot outsource evaluation to the system.
“Create tools to measure daily progress. Don’t wait for the system to tell you whether you’re ‘extraordinary and compelling.’ Build accountability resources to measure progress.”
Prison environments come with noise—delays, denials, rumors, and shifting policies. If you’re holding yourself accountable by documenting progress, you build a record that show your intrinsic motivation. People find value in those who are self-directed and don’t make excuses. That value can lead to a higher income upon release.
While climbing through 26 years in prison, I understood the importance of documenting progress. For that reason, we built the profile section on our website at Prison Professors. I encourage all visitors to build and develop a profile.
Your reading, writing, and self-directed exercises will prove how hard you worked to prepare for success. If you develop your website, you’ll have an asset that you can leverage into more opportunities later. Perhaps it can even work to advance you as a candidate for an earlier release date.
Apply This Principle
Build a personal scorecard that makes progress undeniable.
Choose 3–5 “proof metrics” tied to your goals: pages written, book reports completed, course modules finished, service hours logged, letters sent to mentors, or lesson drafts produced.
Track daily outputs in a simple log. Record date, task, quantity, and where the artifact lives (journal page number, folder name, mailing date, or profile link).
Run a weekly review. Mark what shipped, what slipped, and the exact correction you will execute next week.
Create a monthly summary page. List what you produced, what you learned, and what you will produce next month.
Add outside verification. Build a “release-ready résumé” and collect references, completions, and project outcomes as evidence. When possible, publish updates in your Prison Professors profile so your record exists beyond your own notebook.
Accountability sets up the next principle—awareness. Once you measure your progress, you can scan for opportunities that accelerate it. Awareness means staying alert to every opening to grow and advance your candidacy for liberty, because others notice consistent effort and may support it. Your scorecard gives you the data to recognize which opportunities matter most right now.
Self-Directed Questions
What are my five accountability metrics for the next 30 days, and what exact number defines success for each metric?
What is my daily minimum output standard (non-negotiable), and where will I record it every day?
What work product will I ship every week that an outsider could evaluate (report, lesson, essay, book report series, service log)?
What is my weekly review date, and what three questions will I answer during the review (shipped / slipped / corrected plan)?
What documentation will prove my progress without requiring explanation (artifacts, certificates, published posts, letters, verification logs)?
Who can verify my consistency, and what is my plan to generate that verification (scheduled letters, mentor check-ins, program staff sign-offs)?
What predictable obstacle disrupts my routine, and what is my written contingency plan that still produces measurable output?
If a judge, probation officer, employer, or counselor reviewed my file today, what would they see from the last 90 days that proves preparation—not intention?
What metric has not moved in the past two weeks, and what specific action will I take this week to change it?
Where will I store my artifacts so I can retrieve them quickly (index in journal, digital archive plan, mailing log, profile links)?