Hey all,
Think of the thing you keep saying you'll do. Now picture putting fifty dollars on it happening by Friday.
Whatever you just felt is what this issue is about.
The point.
Commitment isn't a feeling that turns up. It's a thing you build, by rigging your week so that quitting costs you more than continuing does. And whether you're willing to build it tells you, in about ten seconds, whether you actually wanted the thing.
The picture.
I recently read Cate Hall's new book, You Can Just Do Things. And I loved her ideas around commitment, and how she gets there with something called forcing functions. A forcing function is a mechanism that makes failure harder than success.
You already use them; you just don't call them that. You invite six people over on Saturday night, and you clean the home on Saturday before they arrive, because the alternative is six people seeing it. Nobody cleaned the home out of discipline. The dinner party cleaned the flat.
Book the venue, and you'd lose the deposit. Invite people to a demo before the thing works. Tell a mate you're running with him at 6 am, so at 5:50 the cost of staying in bed is a text you'd have to send.
In 2010, three economists ran a trial with 2,000 smokers in Butuan City, Philippines. All of them had said they wanted to quit. The offer was a savings account: put your own money in, come back in six months, take a urine test. Pass, and you get every peso back. Fail, and it goes to charity.
The minimum to open one was about a dollar. Only eleven per cent said yes.
The eleven per cent did quit at higher rates, and were still passing surprise tests six months after that.
The number I keep thinking about is 89%. Nine in ten people who had just told a researcher they wanted to quit, yet they wouldn't put a dollar of their own money behind it. Their mouths said one thing and the dollar said another. The dollar was right.
That's the useful part, and you get it before you've done any of the work. Right now you have an opinion about how badly you want the thing. Try to set a forcing function for it, and you get a fact instead, in about an afternoon.
If you won't put anything behind it, that's your answer. Maybe you don't want it as much as you say. Maybe you already know you won't do it. Both are worth knowing, and both point the same way. Take it off the list, and go and do something you would bet on.
Julie Powell bet on hers. In 2002, she gave herself 365 days to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and blogged it every night.
Every part of that is a forcing function. A number she couldn't fudge, a deadline, and an audience watching the count go up. She couldn't quietly stop.
It worked, too. About 400,000 page views by the end of the year, then a book deal, then Nora Ephron made a film starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams.
Slack replies in seconds. Not minutes.
Dictate into Slack, email, LinkedIn, or any app and get polished, send-ready text. Wispr Flow strips filler and formats everything. 89% of messages sent with zero edits. Works on Mac, Windows, and iPhone.
The practice.
Pick the thing you've been meaning to do for the last six months. Then write its forcing function. Three parts, no exceptions.
A date. In the next seven days if it'll fit. In the diary, not in your intentions.
A witness. One named person who will know whether it happened. Not "I'll tell a few people". A name.
A cost. Something that actually stings if you don't. Money is the reliable one. Embarrassment works if the witness is someone whose opinion you care about.
Send it to the witness today.
Then watch what you do while you're sending it. If you catch yourself softening the wording, pushing the date back a fortnight, or picking a witness you know won't chase you, there's your answer. You don't want it. Cross it off.
That's a win too. You get the hours back, and you stop paying rent on a project you were never going to start.
Mine this week: I've gone slack on my steps, so it's 10,000 a day for the rest of September. It's on Beeminder, wired to my phone so I don't get to be honest about it, with $30 on the line the first time I slip.
Start lower than you think. The stakes want to be big enough to sting and small enough that failing doesn't cost you anything real. It's a diving board, not a cliff, and you can raise it next month. Also: don't run this on something someone else put on your list. A forcing function on a goal you didn't choose is just an obligation with a deadline.
Quick links.
The book this came from: Cate Hall, You Can Just Do Things, written with Sasha Chapin.
The smoking study: Giné, Karlan & Zinman, "Put Your Money Where Your Butt Is" (2010).
Hit reply with what force function you're committing to.
Tommy