What kind of accountability works when I hate being pressured?

Externally imposed accountability feels like pressure because it is pressure. Someone else's deadline, someone else's check-in, someone else's disappointment if you slip. That model works for people who are motivated by not letting others down. If you are wired the opposite way, it does not just fail, it actively makes you want to quit.

The version that works for you is structural, not social.

Make the commitment to a system, not to a person

Instead of telling a friend to check on you, tell yourself what the rule is. Not the goal, the rule. A goal is "finish the project." A rule is "I work on this for forty minutes every Tuesday and Thursday before anything else gets scheduled." A rule does not care how you feel. It is not watching you. It does not send a disappointed message. You either ran it or you did not, and next session you run it again.

The difference is similar to what separates enduring a job from extracting from it. One puts you in a passive position where something is happening to you. The other puts you in an active position where you are executing a decision you already made.

Use evidence instead of encouragement

Keep a simple log. Not a journal, not a reflection, just a mark. Did the thing: mark it. Did not: blank. After a few weeks the log tells you the truth without editorialising. You can see the pattern, adjust the rule, and move on. No one is cheering or lecturing. The data is neutral and that is exactly why it is easier to face.

This connects to the documentation instinct. Writing down what you actually did, plainly and for yourself, is not so different from writing down how you solved a problem for someone else. Both are evidence. Both are more honest than a feeling.

Set your own date, then hold it privately

Decide when something will be done, write it somewhere only you see it, and treat that date the way you would treat a flight. The flight does not negotiate. It does not care that you are tired. You are either on it or you are not. Chosen deadlines have a different quality than imposed ones because you cannot blame anyone else for them, and that, counterintuitively, is what makes them stick.

If you miss the date, you do not spiral. You set a new one. The point is the habit of deciding, not a perfect record.

One exception worth considering

The one form of external accountability that tends to work for pressure-averse people is a peer, not a supervisor. Someone who is running their own system alongside you, not someone whose job it is to hold you to yours. You report to each other as equals. The dynamic is completely different, closer to two people training in the same gym than one person coaching the other. You can take or leave their observations because neither of you is in charge.