A Life Principle: Do What You Said You Would Do

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Hey, life gets in the way! It’s hard to have a 100% batting record with the commitments you make. In fact, it’s probably impossible to have a 100% batting record. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try though.

Do What You Said You Would Do and Honoring Your Word are different phrases for the same concept. Whatever you want to call it, this concept drives your credibility. Your credibility is one of the most important things in work and life.

Commitments Made To Others

Those commitments we make to others— every time we break one, a little trust erodes. A little credibility erodes. A little bit of relationship goodwill is tapped. At some point, your word loses most, if not all, of it’s meaning with that person. When you tell them you’ll do something, they instantly question if it’ll actually get done. At worst, they’ll expect you to not do it.

Not only does it wreck your credibility, it makes you look incredibly stupid. It’s a challenging situation to work out of once we end up here. It impedes our growth and opportunities — at work and at home. I’ve been there, It sucks.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a large commitment or a small commitment. Every single commitment we make, and subsequently break, cause erosion. Sure, larger commitments cause more erosion. Let’s not forget death by 1000 cuts though.

Commitments Made to Ourselves

An often overlooked part of Do What You Said You Would Do. Just like how we make commitments to others, we make commitments to ourselves. Usually in the form of goals, hopes, or dreams.

Every time we break a commitment with ourselves, a little bit of our hopes and dreams die. Our expectation, trust, and confidence in ourselves erode. We eventually give up on commitments that we break day in and day. Over time, we feel like we’ve lost power over it. We feel like we can’t get there. We give up.

How Do We Improve?

It’s not easy to practice Do What You Said You Would Do. It’s extremely challenging actually. We all make tens, if not hundreds of commitments daily. Sometimes without even noticing.

Reaching what you believe to be a sufficient level of Do What You Said You Would Do will likely take years of practice. It’s taken me several to get to the point where I feel better, yet not quite perfect. On my journey, I’ve personally found a two things that have helped me.

1. Hone Your Commitment Filter

Be mindful of what you commit to. Most people over-commit and set themselves up for failure later. Over-commitment can happen for a variety of reasons:

• Unrealistic expectations: you think you can get 20 things done in a given day, but in reality you can only complete 5 things.
• “It sounded fun at the time”: now it’s time to do it and you’re dreading it.
• You know you’ll never do it, yet commit anyway. Why? Afraid to tell someone no, set unrealistic expectations, just want to get out of the conversation, etc.

There are some other reasons, but these are usually the largest buckets.

When you reduce the number of commitments you make, you increase your chances of being able to honor all commitments. That compounds when you reduce the number of commitments made up front by filtering out bad commitments.

As you practice Do What You Said You Would Do, you’ll hone your ability to recognize and prevent these situations that lead to over-committing.

2. Just Do It

The age old adage. This one is simple — if you’ve made a commitment, just do it.

It might be painful. But by just doing it, you’ll get a few benefits:

• You’ll learn what situations your Commitment Filter needs to filter out in the future.
• You’ll save (maybe even build) credibility.

As your Commitment Filter gets better, just doing it will get easier.

Outro

Practicing Do What You Said You Would Do is a multi-year journey that increases our relationships with ourselves and others. We owe it to ourselves and others try our absolute best to honor the commitments we make. You owe it to yourself and others to Do What You Said You Would Do.