Public accountability for academic work I have realised that my performance improves when I make my progress publicly accountable. For example, my jogging times improve and I lose more weight when I enter myself onto a public rankings list. I would imagine that my academic progress would also improve if I make my progress publicly visible. 

I'm wondering what online rankings or any other publicly visible progress reports might be available in academia? I've heard of impact factors, but is there anything else? I'm sure there are people against turning academia into a competition, but I find some sort of competitive element really improves my performance.
You can always compare the length of publication lists, e.g., using Google Scholar, ResearchGate or even your colleagues' homepages.

Summaries of publications and their impact are (attempted to be) provided by the h-index and similar measures. (Impact factors really pertain to journals, not researchers... but indices for researchers may take into account whether the researcher publishes in a low- or high-impact journal.)

There can be, uh, lively discussions about the merits or not of such measures, especially in the context of hiring and remuneration decisions.

One problem with using such measures for short- and medium-term motivation as you propose is the lag between the work and the publication - feedback is far too slow. If you are looking for motivation, you may want to check Productivity.SE.com.