The Commitment Strategy

Commitment even when resistance is strong

Ben Rodri
Ben Rodri
Aug 28, 2017 · 11 min read

In Rework, the authors, Jason Fried, and David Heinemeier Hansson say you need a “commitment strategy” and not an exit strategy when going into a business venture. This can be applied to anything in life not just a business venture. So, let it be known that this post will be my “commitment strategy.”


Naming the Enemy

It has been a while since I have posted anything. Sometimes I posted photos from my photography escapades, but even then, it was sporadic at best. The last time I posted a photo was July 24th. It is a photo of two people walking in West Village, NYC from the vantage point of the street. The last time I wrote a post was July 16th. The post is a reflection about Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work!, which I have not been doing the past month.

So, why did I stop writing for a while? Especially since I started like a ball of fire (somewhat), and made all these references to certain types of resistance excuses (lack of time, for example). Let’s start with that — the resistance excuses.

According to Steven Pressfield, in his work, The War of Art, on page 7,

“Resistance can not be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt. We experience it as an energy field radiating from a work-in potential. It’s a repelling force. It’s negative. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.”

Lack of Time

Early on, I said many different times that “lack of time” is an excuse but I fell right into it.

So, what happened?

Well, I work a 9–5 job as a software engineer, and recently worked has picked up, so it was more of an 8–7 job for the past couple of weeks. I had to prepare for this talk/presentation at work, and that took up most of my time. Just because I have to prepare for that does not mean that my projects, and assignments get to be put on hold. I did push off my projects to prepare for the talk, which means that I had a lot more to do as the deadlines came closer.

I came back home everyday mentally drained. I went to the gym, and went to yoga a total of 6 times together this month (something I also keep making excuses for). Now, many of you might say that I need the rest, and while certain days, that may be true, it’s not true for almost a month straight especially on weekends. I could have finished writing some of my unfinished posts on the weekend, but I didn’t. I just kept thinking, “I have no time.”

Perfectionism

This is also another thing that I harped on. This has been a thorn in my side for a while. I am very surprised I get anything done these days. In software engineering, especially if you’re on a “rapid development” team, perfectionism is the kiss of death. Yes, you should always strive to make the best possible solution you can but a lot of development is the maintenance of the solution after being released into production.

The problem with me is that, I always try to make every solution I make perfect usually not for the better, but for the worst. Every second I spend trying to perfect a solution or perfect anything, is a second lost to put my work out there.

I have a ton on of started but unfinished blog posts and projects I want to put out but I have problems with the follow through.

“This has to be perfect and no mistakes can be made.” — Ben 2017

Fear

Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon or fraud syndrome or the impostor experience) is a concept describing individuals who are marked by an inability to internalize their accomplishments and a persistent fear of being exposed as a “fraud”. The term was coined in 1978 by clinical psychologists Pauline R. Clance and Suzanne A. Imes.[1]. Despite external evidence of their competence, those exhibiting the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be. — Wikipedia

This is actually quite crippling in me sometimes. There are days where I wake up just feeling like a fraud. I didn’t write because

“I was not trained as a writer so everything I make will be bad.”

I didn’t program because

“I am not good enough to be a developer. It’s only a matter of time where I will be exposed as a fraud.”

I barely took any photos because I would look at some other people’s Instagrams and think

“These people are so much better than me. I don’t deserve to put anything of mine up. My work will just be more noise.”

I think by now, you get the point.

I always find myself in a “fear question” trap.

What if my work sucks? What if I get criticism? What if I am just not cut out for this? What if I will never learn anything and just keep making mistakes? What if I am wasting my time? What if I am wasting my potential readers’ time? What if I am wasting your time? — Ben 2017

And it’s just this endless cycle of fear and self loathing.

Amplifying the Wins Instead of Losses

A Time This Month When I Defeated the “Lack of Time” Excuse

Lack of time is the excuse many of us use to justify our inaction. Some of us may actually have a packed day, and lack of time is actually justified, but that does not mean we can’t squeeze out an extra 10 minutes in the beginning or at the end of our days. Assuming a 30 day month, 10 minutes a day means 70 minutes a week, and 300 minutes in a month. That’s 5 hours a month. It doesn’t seem like much but lot can be done in 5 hours, like writing a post or writing parts of a program or whatever is it you want to do but resist doing. With how fast the world seems like it’s moving — technology being a huge reason for that — 5 hours a month, or a total of 60 hours a year seems like nothing. But let me reframe this to you in terms of a life of a software developer.

As mentioned before, I work 40 hours a week. I’m on a “rapid development” team, which basically means we pump out features for our applications frequently. I’m on a client facing team, which means that our features help our clients (traders) do their day to day work. In terms of my team, we have a release every two weeks. So, that means, generally, every 80 hours, we have to release many features (let’s ignore that a lot of software engineers work more than 40 hours a week). Let’s take one of my most recent projects: I had to redesign an entire screen in one of our internal applications.

This is a heavily used screen in our application. The screen uses 13 queries from our database, and I had to redesign it in such a way that makes sense for our clients’ eyes. Data is useless if presented in a non-intuitive way. The problem with the previous screen is that, data they need access to requires endless scrolling, and was all stacked to the left side of the screen. They also wanted more data to be displayed so that means more queries have to be written, and if presented the way it originally was, it would be more scrolling, and less reading of the actual data.

The screen now presents data that spans the entire screen real estate in 4 different panels, and is able to show more data with less real estate. The screen now uses 30+ queries, in which I had to write/rewrite all of them.

I’m not trying to play up my work, but rather trying to explain the timing I was able to do it. I did it in about 40 hours, and was able to do proper testing, and provide a few demos to the clients. Keep in mind that I’m by no means a front end developer. I have very little experience to no experience in it, I did not learn it in school, and it is not part of my day-to-day work.

But that’s the point I am trying to make. In whatever we want to do, even in learning something new, allocating time to do a little everyday when able, we can achieve great things.

Going back to the example I made, I know all of us are more than capable to do something similar, whether it be in software, or another industry. Let’s increase the time example to 20 minutes a day. That’s not much more time than 10 minutes. So, it becomes 120 hours a year. Suddenly, it looks time isn’t much of a factor. Something like writing or software development takes a ton of time to harness, and the only way to be able to harness it is to do something about it. We’ll find time, if we commit to finding time. My solution to the clients is definitely not perfect, but I can iterate on it to make it better over time.

A Time This Month When I Defeated Perfectionism

As I said in the previous paragraph, the solution I created wasn’t perfect, but I released it anyway. Software is always a work in progress, so throughout the week after the product was released, I let the clients play with it in production, and let them give me feedback. There were a few things I did not account for while in production, but that’s the nature of software engineering. I got a bunch of positive feedback, and as expected feedback on what I can do to make it better. So, I collected this feedback, and released an updated version at the end of the week (August 25th). So, the following week, I’ll be looking for feedback and monitoring how it works in production.

This is all part of the learning process. This is something we should focus on, not if the solution is perfect from the get go. We should trust in our abilities to deliver a “good enough” solution and iterate on it.

A Time This Month When I Defeated Fear

Paul Jarvis, in his book, “Everything I Know” talks about grateful fears.

“She realized that everything she was afraid to lose was something she was grateful to have.” — Paul Jarvis

“So turn your fear into gratitude. Be happy that it’s there, because it means you’ve got something worth losing.” — Paul Jarvis

“Courage creates possibility… The only way to push past fear is to acknowledge it and fight it with first-hand experiments.” — Paul Jarvis

I can go on and on quoting this man but I think you get the idea.

In the example I have been using about a project at work, I was afraid but not in the way you think. Yes, obviously if I don’t do work at work, I will be canned, but that’s not what actually caused my fear. My fear was tied towards my ability to program (hence imposter syndrome). I was afraid to let my work out and even demo the prototype. My ability to program is something I never want to lose. I love creating things especially in software, but I was able to push through this fear and create something respectable that the clients liked.

I know the example I am presenting is from work, but it helps put things in perspective in terms of my own projects. If I don’t do work, something bad will happen. This is not the most uplifting thing to think about and make us more afraid to pursue some of our own personal project, but it’s the truth. Fear is good to an extent. If we treat our projects as something we are afraid to lose, but not let that fear cripple us, we can start to make great things.


Taking Action

The (Mini) Drawdown Period

In part one of his book, “The Perennial Seller”, Ryan Holiday talks about drawdown periods. It’s the idea to take some (or a lot) time to let idea(s) develop.

“Another reason for the drawdown period is simply to prepare for the mammoth nature of the task ahead.” — Ryan Holiday

Now, in his book, he talks about making the “perennial seller” or one of those works that withstands the test of time and are not simply trendy fads of a specific time period. I’m certainly not trying to go for one of those, which is why I called it a “mini” drawdown period.

After wrestling with my own mind a week after I stopped doing anything, I decided to come back to basics. I asked myself, “Why?” a lot.

Why do I want to write? Why do I want to do these projects?

I really am not the type of person to just coast. I like to challenge myself, which is the antithesis of how I actually act. I’m a walking oxymoron. I want to challenge myself, but I am fearful of doing so, and I end up never starting, or starting, and then stopping really early.

So, when I got home after work, I spent a lot of time defining my “whys” and mentally prepping myself for the “mammoth nature of the task ahead.” I definitely did underestimate writing. I underestimate a lot of things. But apparently, I also underestimate my abilities. I spent these past couple of weeks really trying to rewire how I go about my projects going forward.

My Whys

These are really quite simple.

  1. To get incrementally better at what I do everyday.
  2. To show people the process of a real person.
  3. To satisfy my thirst to create things, whether it be writing, photography or software.
  4. To develop more courage.

So, how will I commit to my projects and myself?

The Commitment Strategy

I am finishing up this post on August 27th, 2017, which happens to be my 25th birthday. No better time to start than on a birthday.

In order to commit to my projects, I will do the following:

Break my projects into the smallest possible tasks

What this does is help me see the progress I make daily, no matter how small. Practice and progress, not perfection.

Show my work

This will hold me accountable for the duration of the project and keep me on release schedules to show progress until the specific task(s) is done. I will put myself out there no matter how dumb I may look.

Be organized

By keeping a simple system, I will spend more time doing, and less time organizing. I already started a minified version of something called the Bullet Journal. I will keep track of daily tasks, and I set up a monthly habit tracker, where I keep track of good and bad habits, and mark an ‘X’ on days I do whichever.

Be experimental

“If you frame ideas as experiments, you can’t technically fail at anything. You’re just going to prove or disprove a theory you’ve arrived at through experimenting. And if it doesn’t work the first time, you can iterate and try something different. It doesn’t work until it does… All you can do is generate ideas and test them. Succeed or fail, at least you’ve done the necessary work.” — Paul Jarvis

Be consistent and persistent

I will always show up.

Fail, fail, and fail again until it’s a success and make sure I learn from that success.

Be transparent

I will show what my intentions are and how I am getting there. No shady business.

See things through to the end

I will start and finish projects. I may have to walk away in the middle to get a fresh perspective if I am stuck in a slump, but I will see things through.

Keep questioning, learning, and staying curious

One of the best ways to keep trucking along and engaged is to be a forever learner, and that’s what I intend to be.


Let’s start now, shall we?

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Ben Rodri

Written by

Ben Rodri

Scratching, scribbling and smearing at the cross section of technology, philosophy and investing while staying ahead of a creeping self identity crisis.

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