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The 365 Commitment: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Guy Reams
The 365 Commitment Podcast focuses on helping people make and keep life changing commitments.
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- Today3 min
Day 3,228 - Reduce Decision Latency
I recognized something about myself recently. I get annoyed when people take too long to make decisions. Not when the decision is genuinely difficult, but when we have discussed the problem, considered the options, understood the consequences, and still nobody is willing to make a call. I can feel my patience disappearing. This got me wondering whether I am simply impatient or whether there is something important about the cost of indecision. I recently read an interview with Jon McNeill, a former Tesla executive who worked with Elon Musk. He described an environment where decision speed was a fundamental operating principle. Bad news was surfaced immediately, problems were summarized in three sentences, and chains of command could be bypassed when they became obstacles. He also described a five-step simplification process designed to eliminate unnecessary complexity before accelerating execution. What struck me was not the speed itself, but the discipline required to make that speed possible. If you cannot explain a problem in three sentences, perhaps you have not identified the real problem yet. If bad news travels slowly because people are afraid to share it, then decisions are being delayed unnecessarily. Sometimes the very processes we create to help us make better decisions are preventing us from making any at all. I suspect we frequently confuse deliberation with wisdom. Certainly, some decisions deserve careful thought, but sometimes we ask for another meeting, another analysis, or another opinion because we are afraid of being wrong. Waiting feels safer, even when waiting is itself a decision with consequences. My 365 Commitment is built around a different approach. Every morning, determine what matters, identify the next action, and move. When something gets in the way, name the obstacle in plain language. Do not invent complicated reasons for avoiding progress. Decide what you can do today and then do it. There is an important caveat. Speed without reflection is just recklessness. Making decisions quickly only works when we are equally willing to receive honest feedback, acknowledge mistakes, and reverse course when necessary. The objective is not to always be right. It is to discover what is right through action rather than endless speculation. I think I will work on reducing my own decision latency. Less time circling problems and more time discovering solutions. Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that we do not need certainty to move forward. We need enough clarity to take the next step and enough humility to change direction when we learn something new.
- Yesterday2 min
Day 3,227 - Growth Requires Excursions
I have learned to appreciate the comfort of a familiar route. When I go out for a run, I like knowing where I am headed, how far I intend to go, and what I hope to accomplish before I get home. There is something satisfying about following through on a commitment made before the day has a chance to interfere. But imagine if I refused to ever turn down a different street. Eventually, I would know every crack in the sidewalk, every turn, and every obstacle along the way. I might become exceptionally good at walking that particular route without becoming much better at navigating anywhere else. I think we do this with our lives more often than we realize. We establish routines, develop habits, and make commitments to ourselves. We discover something that works and then spend considerable effort protecting it from disruption. This is generally a good thing. Consistency is the foundation upon which almost everything meaningful is built. However, there is a danger in becoming so committed to the routine that we forget why we started it in the first place. The purpose of consistency is not to become really good at repeating yesterday. The purpose is to create enough stability that we can venture into tomorrow. Growth requires excursions. We need to occasionally wander away from the comfortable and familiar. We need to attempt things we are not particularly good at, engage in conversations we would rather avoid, explore ideas that challenge our assumptions, and put ourselves into situations where we are not entirely certain of the outcome. These excursions are uncomfortable precisely because they interrupt our familiar rhythm. We lose some of our confidence, perhaps even our sense of direction. We might fail, get embarrassed, or discover that something we believed was entirely wrong. That is exactly where growth begins. The important thing is that we eventually return to what matters. Our commitments provide the stable theme of our lives, while these excursions introduce new experiences, understanding, and capability. When we return, we are not quite the same person who left. I have come to believe that consistency is not rigid repetition. It is the ability to wander without losing the thread that holds our lives together. Perhaps the challenge today is not to strengthen your routine, but to deliberately step outside of it. Try something uncomfortable, explore something unfamiliar, or take a different path. Then come home to your commitments, bringing whatever you learned along with you. That is how consistency becomes growth.
- 2 days ago2 min
Day 3,226 - Your Desk Is Your Brain
Look at your desk right now. The one you work at, if you have one. You are not just looking at your desk; you're looking at your brain. Is it messy, chaotic, and disorganized? Perhaps it is structured and clean with everything in the proper place? Are there doodles everywhere, discarded candy wrappers perhaps? Are there notes of things that were really important to remember from months ago? What you are looking at is not just a messy desk, you are looking at a snapshot of what your brain looks like as well. Now, I am not suggesting that a clean desk means you are intelligent or that a messy desk means you are not. I have known some brilliant people who operate in complete chaos. However, I do believe that our physical environment is often a reflection of the things we are allowing to occupy our minds. Consider that stack of papers sitting off to the side. Why is it there? Perhaps it represents decisions you have been avoiding. That sticky note with a phone number on it? Maybe that is a conversation you have been putting off. That unfinished project sitting in the corner? Perhaps it represents something you started with great enthusiasm but never found the discipline to finish. We tend to think of our thoughts as something completely separate from our physical surroundings, but I am beginning to believe that the two are far more connected than we realize. We leave things on our desks because we do not want to forget them. Eventually, however, we become so accustomed to seeing them that we forget them anyway. I have noticed something about myself. When I take the time to organize my workspace, I often find myself organizing my thoughts at the same time. I am forced to make decisions. Do I really need this? Is this still important? Why have I been holding on to this? Those questions are not really about the objects on my desk. They are about the priorities in my life. Perhaps the exercise we should all consider is not simply cleaning our desks, but deliberately deciding what deserves to remain there. So here is my challenge for today. Take fifteen minutes and examine your desk. Pick up each item and ask yourself why it is there. Make a decision about it. Keep it, act on it, or get rid of it. You might discover that you are doing something far more important than cleaning a desk. You might just be clearing your mind.
- 3 days ago2 min
Day 3,225 - The Sunk Cost Fallacy
You cannot recover yesterday's investment by wasting tomorrow's energy. This is an important life lesson that I learned after spending way too much time chasing a losing proposition, thinking that I could not stop because of everything that I had already put in. This is the sunk cost fallacy. A sunk cost is something you have already spent and cannot recover. It might be money, time, effort, or emotional investment. The fallacy occurs when you allow that unrecoverable investment to influence what you decide to do next, rather than evaluating whether continuing makes sense. This is a tendency that most of us share. We put time, money, and energy into something, and we expect a return. We do not get what we hoped for, so we continue to pour our resources into it, hoping that we will eventually get the return. This underlying belief that you have already put so much into it that you cannot quit now is what results in greater losses, lost time, and tremendous regret. We celebrate persistence. We admire people who refuse to quit. We teach our children that perseverance is the key to success. Yet the sunk cost fallacy suggests that sometimes the very characteristic we admire most, persistence, can become our greatest liability. So the important consideration is why you choose to continue. Do you honestly believe that the future reward justifies the additional investment? If so, then persist. However, if you are saying, "I have to keep going because I have put so much in," then you are in the danger zone. You have already lost the time, the money, or the effort. It is already spent and gone. The key question is this: knowing everything you know today, would you choose to start this again? If the answer is no, then cut bait now and stop falling into the sunk cost fallacy.
- 4 days ago2 min
Day 3,224 - The Ponder Process
I have always been a person who likes to think things through. Give me a difficult problem and I will carry it around for days. I will think about it when I am walking, driving, or trying to sleep. Sometimes something useful emerges. Other times I realize I have spent hours circling the same thought without moving an inch. That is the danger of random pondering. We confuse the amount of time spent thinking with the quality of the thinking. They are not the same thing. I have been trying to approach pondering more like a practice than a pastime. Here is a simple process that helps. First, write down the question you are actually trying to answer. Not the general situation, not the feeling surrounding it, but the specific question. "Why is everything so difficult?" is not particularly useful. "What is the one obstacle preventing me from making progress?" is much better. Second, separate what you know from what you assume. This is harder than it sounds. Much of our mental energy goes toward reacting to stories we have invented about what other people think or what might happen next. We can spend an incredible amount of time solving problems that do not actually exist. Third, consider what is within your influence. There is little value in spending an hour designing solutions to things you cannot change. Find the part of the problem where your decisions matter. This is usually where the most productive thinking begins. Fourth, deliberately consider several paths forward. Even an imperfect alternative can reveal something important. Ask what would happen if you did nothing, if you acted today, or if you asked someone else for help. Force yourself to consider possibilities beyond your first reaction. Finally, decide on one action and give the pondering session an ending. Not every question needs to be solved today. Some questions need to rest. But you should leave with either a step to take or a clear reason to revisit it later. I think we underestimate how much energy we waste thinking without purpose. Our minds are powerful tools, but they require direction just like anything else. The purpose of pondering is not to make ourselves feel busy inside our own heads. It is to produce clarity. And clarity, if we are willing, eventually asks us to do something. Next time you find yourself lost in thought, perhaps the first thing to ponder is whether you are actually getting anywhere.
- 5 days ago3 min
Day 3,223 - How to Ask for Help
I have been an impostor my entire life. I suppose that is a rather strange thing to admit, but it is true. I have spent a considerable amount of my life pretending that I knew how to do things when, in fact, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I developed this particular skill when I was young. I wanted to participate in conversations with adults, and I discovered that if I acted like I knew what they were talking about, they would include me. I learned to nod at the appropriate moments, ask intelligent-sounding questions, and confidently contribute to conversations about subjects I barely understood. It worked remarkably well, perhaps too well. The problem with developing a successful survival tactic as a child is that you tend to carry it into adulthood, even when it is no longer necessary. Somewhere along the way, pretending to know became more comfortable than admitting that I did not. I became rather good at figuring things out on my own, often because I had convinced everyone around me that I already knew how. For the last two decades, I have been trying to cure myself of this habit. It has proven surprisingly difficult. I have had to learn something that probably seems obvious to most people. Asking for help is not an admission of failure. It is an acknowledgment that another human being might know something that I do not. So how do you actually ask for help? I think the first step is to get comfortable saying three simple words. "I don't know." That sounds easy enough, but for someone who has spent a lifetime avoiding those words, they can be extraordinarily difficult to pronounce. I have discovered that the world does not come crashing down when I say them. In fact, quite the opposite happens. People become more willing to engage with me. The second step is to be specific about what you need. I have learned that saying "I need help" is a good start, but explaining what I am trying to accomplish, what I have already attempted, and where I am stuck is much more effective. People generally want to help, but they need something concrete to work with. The third step, and perhaps the hardest for me, is to actually accept the help. There is a peculiar tendency among people like me to ask for assistance and then spend the entire conversation demonstrating how much we already know. We interrupt, explain, justify, and sometimes even argue with the person trying to help us. I have caught myself doing this more times than I care to admit. I am learning to listen instead. To allow someone else to know more than I do. To appreciate their experience without feeling compelled to prove my own. There is one more thing I have discovered. Asking someone for help is often a gift to them as well. It communicates trust, respect, and an acknowledgment that they have something valuable to contribute. What I spent years perceiving as a weakness can actually strengthen relationships. I still struggle with this. I suspect I always will. That little boy who desperately wanted to be included in the grown-up conversations is still somewhere inside me, confidently nodding along when he has no idea what anyone is talking about. Perhaps the next time I catch him doing that, I will interrupt him with a simple question. "Could you help me understand?" That might be the most important thing I can learn to say.
- 6 days ago3 min
Day 3,222 - Get Uncomfortable
I have been in a lot of meetings in my life. Some have been incredibly productive, others have been a complete waste of time. I have noticed something interesting about the difference between the two. The productive meetings almost always involved someone getting uncomfortable. Sometimes that person was me. We have developed a strange expectation in our professional lives that meetings should be pleasant experiences. Everyone should get along, everyone should feel heard, and nobody should leave feeling upset. We have become so concerned about making people uncomfortable that we have forgotten the entire reason we bring human beings together in the first place. We have meetings to resolve conflict. Think about that for a moment. If everyone agreed on everything, understood all the facts, had the same priorities, and knew exactly what needed to happen, why would we need a meeting? We could simply exchange a few messages and get back to work. The very existence of a meeting suggests that something needs to be discussed, debated, decided, or resolved. That process is not always going to be comfortable. I think we have confused being respectful with being agreeable. They are not the same thing. I can respect someone tremendously and still tell them that I think their idea is terrible. I can genuinely care about someone and still confront them about a responsibility they have failed to fulfill. I can listen carefully to another person's perspective and still refuse to accept their conclusion. In fact, I would argue that avoiding these conversations is often the greater act of disrespect. When we refuse to challenge someone because we are afraid of how they might react, we deny them the opportunity to improve. We also deny ourselves the benefit of discovering that perhaps we are the ones who are wrong. That last part is important. Getting uncomfortable is not just something we should be willing to impose on others. It is something we should actively invite for ourselves. I want people around me who will challenge my assumptions, question my conclusions, and tell me when I am making a mistake. I may not enjoy hearing it. I might even get a little defensive. However, my emotional reaction does not determine whether their criticism has merit. There is, of course, a difference between productive discomfort and simply being a jerk. Humiliating someone, attacking their character, or raising your voice to establish dominance does not make a meeting more effective. It usually accomplishes the opposite. The objective is not to win an argument or demonstrate intellectual superiority. The objective is to solve a problem, and sometimes that requires saying things that neither party particularly wants to hear. I wonder how many organizations are struggling with problems that everyone knows exist but nobody is willing to discuss. How many meetings end with polite agreement, only to have the real conversation take place afterward in the hallway? How much time do we waste protecting feelings while allowing unresolved problems to grow? Perhaps we should change our expectations. The next time you walk into a meeting, do not measure its success by how comfortable everyone felt when it ended. Measure it by whether something important was confronted, understood, and resolved. And if you find yourself getting uncomfortable, consider the possibility that something valuable is finally happening. Get uncomfortable. It might be the most productive thing you do today.
- 6 days ago4 min
Day 3,221 - You Are What You Do Not Think About
I was thinking recently about how much attention we give to the things we believe we need to change in our lives. We decide we need more protein, so we start drinking a protein shake every morning. We recognize that we consume too much caffeine, so we make a deliberate effort to cut back. Perhaps we need more exercise, better sleep, or less sugar in our diet. Whatever the concern, we identify a problem and then focus our attention on doing something about it. This seems perfectly reasonable. After all, how else are we supposed to improve ourselves? However, I have started to wonder if we are paying attention to the wrong things. Or perhaps, more accurately, we are paying attention to only a very small portion of what actually determines who we are. Consider how much of your day you spend consciously thinking about your actions. You might spend five minutes deciding what to eat for breakfast, but what about everything else you consume throughout the day? The handful of something you grab while walking through the kitchen. The snack you eat while concentrating on work. The extra portion you take without really considering whether you are hungry. At the end of the day, you might remember the healthy breakfast you deliberately prepared, but have almost no recollection of the other things you consumed. Yet your body remembers all of it. The same thing happens with our physical activity. We congratulate ourselves for a thirty-minute workout, which is certainly worth celebrating, but what about the other fifteen waking hours? How often do we sit when we could stand, drive when we could walk, or avoid some small physical effort because convenience has become our natural response? These little decisions are rarely decisions at all. They are simply what we do. I think this extends far beyond physical health. Consider the way we respond to frustration, how quickly we reach for our phones, what we do when we have an unexpected ten minutes, or how we treat people when we are distracted. We develop patterns of behavior that eventually become so familiar that we stop noticing them. We no longer consciously choose these actions because our minds have already established a preferred path. Over time, these unconscious patterns become a remarkably accurate description of who we really are. There is something both frightening and encouraging about this realization. The frightening part is that we may be undermining our most carefully considered goals through hundreds of little actions that never receive our attention. The encouraging part is that the opposite is equally possible. We can build patterns of behavior that consistently move us toward the person we want to become, without requiring a tremendous amount of conscious effort every time. Perhaps that is the real purpose of developing good habits. We are not simply trying to force ourselves to do something difficult every day. We are trying to make that behavior so natural that eventually we do it without thinking. I have spent years working on the idea of daily commitment, and I am beginning to appreciate that the ultimate achievement may not be what I consciously accomplish each morning. It may be what those commitments eventually cause me to do automatically throughout the rest of the day. So here is something worth trying. Tomorrow, pay attention to what you do when you are not paying attention. Notice the little things, the automatic responses, and the choices you barely remember making. You might discover that the most important changes you need to make are hiding in the parts of your life you never think about. After all, you are not merely what you intend to do. You are what you do not think about.
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The 365 Commitment Podcast focuses on helping people make and keep life changing commitments.
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