Rule #2: Limit recurring commitments
Recurring commitments are the “yes” that keeps on taking.
They eat time not once, but over and over again, consuming a bit of Agency with each bite.
As creatures of pattern and routine, we’re all too willing to give over time without end to periodic engagements — meetings, get-togethers, societies and clubs, phone calls — the reservation on our calendar substituting for the careful consideration of need or utility in the moment, appointments stretching out for months and years.
This desire to auto-pilot our lives has benefits: reducing cognitive load, keeping our social connections alive without undue effort, and guaranteeing some form of “progress” within our work groups — yet it has the insidious drawback of taking huge amounts of aggregate time without asking us to wrestle with the magnitude of time actually required. We spend a somewhat trivial hour this week and the same hour next week and so on, but after a year, we’ve spent the equivalent of 4 days and 4 hours in this particular 60-minute meeting — and we’ve torched the near equivalent of a full working week (or an “unlimited” tech company vacation).
In service of maximizing Agency and Impact, we’re better served to keep our commitments discrete, with one “yes” needed for every time block used, and recurring commitments made only after extraordinary and careful consideration.
Limit recurring commitments.
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