Why I don’t promise anymore

Why am I against promises? How can I live without promises? What to do instead?

In the past, I had a hard time considering promising and keeping those promises. I misinterpreted the concept of promises wrongly and made several mistakes along the way until I got it right.

What were my promises’ mistakes?

Example 1 - different truths

There’s my of seeing world and there’s someone else’s truth.

I like the story brought by Seth Godin in his book “Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?“.

A guy is riding in the first-class cabin of a train in Spain and to his delight, he notices that he’s sitting next to Pablo Picasso. Gathering up his courage, he turns to the master and says, “Señor Picasso, you are a great artist, but why is all your art, all modern art, so screwed up? Why don’t you paint reality instead of these distortions?” Picasso hesitates for a moment and asks, “So what do you think reality looks like?” The man grabs his wallet and pulls out a picture of his wife. “Here, like this. It’s my wife.” Picasso takes the photograph, looks at it, and grins. “Really? She’s very small. And flat, too.”

It’s all about the perspective and someone else’s.

When I promised something, I had a picture of what my promise would have looked like when it was done. The benefiter of my promise had a different picture. That person had one’s image of my promise. I had a different one. How could have I fulfilled the promise that missed the target? It was almost impossible.

Here’s an example. As a child, I promised I’d have cleaned my room. My image of the cleaned room differed completely from my parents’ image.

What I thought, it was a decent cleaned room, my parents thought it was just a beginning on the road to have my room cleaned. The misunderstanding and clash was natural and obvious.

Those and similar situations brought constant felling of dissatisfaction for both parties.

Example 2 - let’s better to avoid it

A promise with the goal of avoiding something unpleasant.

I wanted to avoid:

1. letting somebody down
2. speaking out loud because being quiet was easy
3. having own opinion, because I liked being liked

I promised something to someone, because I wanted to be accepted.

I promised something to someone, because I couldn’t have handled tough conversations.

Example 3 - the pressure

Making a promise put a pressure on me.

That pressure is not from the kind of good pressures, the pressures that associate with the feelings of:

1. excitement
2. leaving my comfort zone
3. commitment
4. significance

That pressure is a dull pressure, which associate with the feelings of fear, e.g., the fear of failure - I’d fail myself, my peers, etc.

It creates a tension, and the tension creates stress. Was it indeed that good, I put myself voluntarily in stress? I doubt it.

Example 4 - creditability

When I failed, my creditability in the eyes of my partner or friends plunged. My reputability was that I over-promised and under-delivered. I wanted to straighten my reputability and prove others wrong, so I promised more, better, or faster.

Example 5 - one promise = halfway done

Making a promise let me off the hook. Once promised, the job was halfway done, right? Wrong.

I mean, that was my understanding. It didn’t matter that no action came after the promise.

Example 6 - after all, it’s your fault

When I didn’t keep my promises,

1. I blamed myself
2. or I blamed others
3. or I did both.

Nothing good came out of the guilt and anger that followed the blame. Who wants to live in the constant guilt? Let’s convert that to blame. It’s easier to digest.

Conclusion?

Let’s mix up the examples I gave you, and it’s a recipe for the disaster.

What others say about promises?

I came across several pieces about the approach of promising.

Promises are easy and cheap to make; actual work is hard and expensive. If it wasn’t, you’d just have done it now rather than promised it later.¹

It’s easy to make promises. It’s much harder to keep them. Make sure whatever it is that you’re doing is something you can actually sustain — organizationally, strategically, and financially.²

Do not promise what you cannot deliver.³

But the promises I make I make very seriously. So that’s good and it’s bad. It means that I hesitate to make big promises that might create the possibility that the big thing is going to happen. But on the other hand, I can live with the confidence of knowing that you can count on me to keep that promise.⁴

What to do instead of promising?

Rule 1: Don’t promise, commit.

I’d rather to differ a promise from a commitment. For me:

1. A commitment is a firm decision to do something. When I commit, I consciously decide.
2. A promise is just letting someone know I’ll do something. There’s no conscious decision on that.

The clue is being intentional. That was a part I did wrong.

Rule 2: When committed, deliver.

1. When I commit to something, I intentionally decide this is something important to me. It’s beneficial to other person, too. I don’t mind, it’s even better.
2. The genuine question I want to honestly answer is, why I want to do that.
3. The most important catch here is to be honest with myself. Without honesty, I probably repeat the mistakes I mentioned above.
4. When I catch the glimpse of the real reason, I’m half-way there.

Written in Difree | Graphics thanks to #dalle , Bing Image Creator

Footnotes

1. https://world.hey.com/jason/promise-not-to-promise-18eca88a ↩

2. https://basecamp.com/gettingreal/05.5-can-you-handle-it ↩

3. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4865.How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People ↩

4. https://tim.blog/2023/05/18/seth-godin-2-transcript/ ↩