How do I start if I've never tracked commitments before?

Start with exactly one commitment. Make it the easiest one that's still meaningful — something you can confidently keep for 10 consecutive days. The first two weeks are about building the habit of tracking, not about ambitious behavior change.

What's the difference between a commitment and a goal?

Goals are outcomes: run a marathon. Commitments are the behaviors that produce outcomes: run 3 times per week. Commitments are fully within your control and evaluable daily. Goals depend on accumulation of commitments over time.

Should commitments be permanent or temporary?

Both. Some commitments reflect permanent values (exercise, reflection). Others are project-specific (complete a chapter daily while writing a book). Reviewing your commitment list monthly and retiring commitments that have become automatic or no longer serve current priorities keeps the list current.

How do I build commitment tracking into my daily routine?

Place commitment review at the end of your daily shutdown routine — after reflection, before closing the planner. It takes 30 seconds and creates the honest daily accounting that makes tracking meaningful.

Making commitments you keep: the design principles for behavioral promises that stick

Most commitments fail because they're vague, too ambitious, or disconnected from daily planning. Learn how to design commitments that hold — and what to do when they don't.

Why most commitments fail

The failure mode for most personal commitments is predictable: vague definition ('exercise more'), absence of environmental prerequisites (no gym bag in the car), motivation-dependence (relying on feeling motivated rather than feeling committed), and disconnection from daily planning (the commitment exists in your head but not in your daily workflow). Each of these failure modes has a specific fix. Vague commitments can be made binary and evaluable. Missing prerequisites can be built into a pre-commitment routine. Motivation dependence can be replaced with implementation intentions ('if/then' plans). Disconnection from daily planning can be solved by integrating commitments into the daily planner.

The commitment design test: can you evaluate it in 5 seconds?

A well-designed commitment can be evaluated in 5 seconds at day's end: did this happen or not? 'Exercise' fails this test. '30-minute walk before starting work' passes it — you either walked or you didn't. 'Be more intentional' fails. 'Complete today's outcome block before checking email' passes. 'Read more' fails. 'Read for 20 minutes before bed' passes. The evaluability criterion is the most reliable quality filter for commitment design. If the evaluation requires judgment rather than observation, the commitment is too vague. Redesign it until the end-of-day evaluation is truly binary.

Pre-commitment: making the behavior easy before willpower is required

Pre-commitment is setting up the conditions for a behavior in advance so that executing it requires less friction and less willpower in the moment. For a commitment to walk before work: lay out your walking shoes the night before, keep the route planned, check the weather and set a go/no-go threshold for rain. For a commitment to write before email: open your writing tool before your email client when starting the computer. For a commitment to close the laptop by 7pm: set an alarm at 6:45pm and put your phone somewhere that requires getting up to silence it. Pre-commitment engineering removes the decision from the moment of execution.

What to do when a commitment breaks

A broken commitment is a diagnostic event, not just a failure. The first question: was the commitment designed for success? Binary, evaluable, prerequisite-complete commitments break for identifiable reasons — the prerequisite failed (you didn't sleep well enough to walk before work), an external disruption hit (an early call prevented the pre-work routine), or the commitment's motivation has weakened (it no longer serves a priority you care about). The second question: what structural change would prevent the same break next time? A commitment that breaks identically three times in a row is telling you something specific about the design. Fix the design rather than increasing the willpower.

Frequently asked questions