How to stop overcommitting

Be kind to your future self

I think we can all recall promises for the distant future that we made — and later regretted. Perhaps it was a promise that your family could get a dog once everybody was out of diapers…which made you ambivalent when your youngest was finally toilet trained. Or maybe it was declining to chair the gala this year but promising to chair it next year…when apparently your future self would somehow have more than 24 hours in a day.

Why do we do this to ourselves? What’s going on is that it is hard to say no. In the abstract, we view our future selves almost as strangers. You personally don’t want to chair the gala, but you feel bad saying no, so you assign that responsibility to someone else who — conveniently enough — you have the ability to commit to things! Phew, problem solved. Except eventually the piper must be paid and future you turns out to be the exact same person as current you. She has no more time than you do, and maybe even has less since she just got that promotion that current you has been working toward, and her family adopted the dog that current you said yes to. Whoops.

Of course, there are some things we can and should commit to for the future. Any long project and any close relationship requires binding your future self to your current intentions.

But some plans for the future may need to be held a little more loosely. In these cases, you have two choices that can help you stop overcommitting.