On Commitment

2024.10.20

LXX

Or what not starting a podcast taught me about focus.

Commitment to What?

The chaos of spending so many hours on startups is making me evaluate what it means to “commit” to something. When there are so many things subject to change and yesterday's decisions are todays disproven assumptions, what is the constant you are committed to? 

How can you both care infinitely about creating something valuable and powerful and of the highest quality while at the same time be psychotically detached from past decisions and choices and overwrite them at a whim? How can you get so excited about a feature you’re going to ship and decide not to write a single line of code for it?

I think breaking the commitment up into a sort of hierarchy of commitments and priorities can help clarify the whole thing a bit. If we do that, then we can see that pure time spent is not the only thing that matters—how that time is committed is also critical.

Writing

Take this blog, for instance. 

On the highest level, I am committed to becoming a better writer. Meaning, I am committed to communicating complex ideas, clearly, succinctly, and in an entertaining way. This is part of the reason I started a weekly blog, to become a better writer. In this context, the blog is on a lower level than my goal to be a better writer.

Now, this is where it can get tricky–if I focus on the lower level of commitment to write a weekly blog, and forget about the higher level of becoming a better writer, than I can spend hours writing each week without becoming a better writer. 

If I wasn’t careful, I could write long, rambling philosophical musings for fun without putting pressure on myself to make them concise and impactful. I would still be succeeding at the lower level goal of writing a weekly blog, but I may not be getting better all that fast.

This is particularly a concern as I enjoy writing long, philosophical musings. On the other hand, it takes some effort to make the writing truly focused and impactful. And since I, like all humans, have a natural pressure to do comfortable, easy things, it is very possible that I do write long, philosophical musings sometimes. 

In those instances, I maintain my lower level commitment to write a weekly blog without necessarily maintaining my commitment to becoming a better writer. This isn’t inherently bad, as there are other reasons I write this blog. It is misleading, however, if I mistake that day’s post with contributing to my commitment to being a better writer. 

A Lie 

A few weeks ago, I told you that BirdDog was going to add the option for users to edit the keywords attached to the questions they asked. In a way, me saying that in my blog was a public commitment to that.

Well, we haven’t done that yet, nor do we have immediate plans to do it. GASP. 

So, we broke a commitment to something we said we would do for BirdDog… does this mean we are no longer committed to BirdDog? Certainly not!

As a matter of fact, we’re even still committed to the idea that spawned that short lived decision, which was wanting to make the platform more usable. We’ve been focused aggressively on that and are convinced that there are more important ways to do it than what we originally suggested. And, the reason we’re committed to making the platform more usable is to make BirdDog have a higher probability of success.

While I hate saying things and then not doing them, I also hate anchoring on decisions simply because they were made. One of the asymmetries of a startup against incumbents is that startups are able to rapidly make and remake decisions when needed.

A Podcast 

Maybe a month ago, I was going to start a podcast to have more content for BirdDog, to get more feedback on our ideas and product and direction, and to force myself to learn from people who are smarter than me. I didn’t, though, and I no longer plan on it. Again, this instance of de-committing from something comes from a higher commitment. 

I spoke with somebody who's been successful with podcasts, and he told me that a decently done one would take me maybe 5 hours a week. And then, he asked if that time was best spent on a podcast or things like improving BirdDog’s product. 

While I think having a podcast would be cool, I don’t care about that more than BirdDog’s success right now. So, if I’m going to make a decision like starting a podcast for BirdDog, it should be done if it increases the probability of BirdDog’s success, not because I want to commit to a podcast. I know those five hours would be better served on improving our product and maybe my LinkedIn content. 

By not committing to something (a podcast) that was intended to be of lower order service to the higher order thing (BirdDog), and instead using those hours other tasks the serve the higher order thing, I’m still reaffirming my commitment to the higher order thing.

Commitment

While not committing to something or removing yourself from something can feel like you’re going backwards, it can also be a motion forwards, especially when the thing you're de-committing from always existed for the sake of a higher order thing anyways.

Committing to a startup is not committing to every little decision you make. 

Our UI/UX changes every week and we have the code base of Theseus. 

It can get really confusing when so many beliefs and decisions and pieces of your product are perpetually on the self imposed chopping block, but, really, it doesn’t matter so much if you know what you’re committed to at a higher level. 

The water is choppy, and the plan is not clear, but there is a North Star to follow.

Of course, all of this begs the question of what is the North Star–that might be a good post on its own…

Live Deeply,