Uncommitment

In my previous post, I shared how to say no to non-essential requests. I talked about the importance of focusing on getting the right things done instead of doing everything you can. This is how you achieve efficiency while protecting your wellbeing.

Many of you wrote back sharing some of the ridiculous tasks you’ve found yourself saying yes to. Clearly, many of us suffer from an inability to say no.

Today I want to talk about getting out of commitments you’ve already made. Instead of pushing yourself to your limit, this is about learning to let things go. I call this uncommitting.

Let’s start with an example. I offer free talks open to the public, even though just one of these sessions takes about five hours of my time to prepare. I do it because I enjoy sharing my expertise with my audience, and I get to connect with new people while creating a community. Naturally it also helps communicate my services to a wider audience.

But I realised I was overdoing it. Like everyone, my time, energy, and focus are limited, and I can only commit to so many talks. I had a discussion with my team, and we decided to decrease the frequency of these public events.

I’m aware this feels uncomfortable. Often, we’ve already invested time and energy in a piece of work before we realise it wasn’t the right decision. Then, because we said yes earlier, we guilt ourselves into persevering and delivering.

To be clear, I’m not cancelling my free talks completely. Instead, I’ll be approaching them in a way that protects my sanity while remaining helpful to others. This gives me more time to focus on higher value tasks. That could mean designing a new series of classes, being a more effective therapist, or writing more posts like the one you’re reading now.

I love quality work, and I’ll do anything to maintain quality. But I also see how when I overcommit, either the quality drops or I do (yep, even people who talk about burnout get burnout).

Uncommitting isn’t only about tasks you’re actively doing. Sometimes, you have commitments where you keep procrastinating. Although these don’t seem to take up your time—since you’re not doing them—they still occupy your mind and cause stress. You can simply take these items off your to do list and add them back later. There’s no need for them to sit on a list and stress you out.

Most importantly, you don’t have to uncommit in a way that makes you or others miserable.

Below are some tips to make uncommitting as painless as possible.

First, acknowledge that uncommitting doesn’t mean you’re a failure. You may not consciously think of uncommitting as failure, but when you dig deep and unpack why we’re so afraid to uncommit, this fear of failure emerges.

The reality is uncommitting requires courage and assertiveness. Uncommitting doesn’t mean giving up. It means reprioritising. It shows you value your goals and your resources. It means you’re good (or getting better) at designing your life in a way that makes it more meaningful, and that you care about your wellbeing.

It takes courage to admit that something is wrong, or that we made a mistake by taking on something we shouldn’t have.

The difficulty here is natural because it’s hard to let a task go when you’ve already invested time, energy, and attention. But we have a tendency to be biased against ourselves. Imagine you were talking to a friend who was in your situation. Would you tell them to finish what they started no matter what, just so people won’t be disappointed in them? Unlikely! Instead, wouldn’t you help your friend see the cost to their mental health of sticking to a task they have no time for?

When we’re biased because of our own investment into something, we lose sight of what matters. For me, talking to someone I trust, someone who can offer me some perspective and be more objective has always proven helpful.

One time I struggled to let go of a project I was working on. I knew I was struggling because the project wasn’t adding value to my life, and there was no enjoyment in it. I was spending a lot of time and effort, but ultimately, I refused to let it go because of personal pride. I didn’t want to disappoint myself.

But it wasn’t worth the cost. I talked to a friend and he said “The discomfort of uncommitting from this one task won’t be more than the discomfort you’re feeling right now. But at least you’ll have the time, space, and energy to focus on what’s actually important to you. Like all emotions, discomfort is temporary.”

That really resonated with me. The day I let go of the project I felt a wave of relief. I admit I also felt some guilt and frustration with myself, but as my friend said, those feelings were normal and temporary.

Now I ask some questions to myself to identify what I can eliminate:

How essential is this? How much value does it add to my goals/business/career? Is it in line with what I want to do?

If someone approached me with this same request today, would I still say yes?

Will uncommitting affect other people?

You see, you don’t have to make a sudden decision. There are many questions you can ask yourself first. In the end you might even conclude you’re trying to uncommit from the wrong task or activity.

The important part is to identify what’s essential in terms of what you want to achieve, where you want to go, how much you’re enjoying it, how much value it adds to your work, and how meaningful you find it. Then you’ll know what’s essential and what’s trivial.

Like finding the courage to say no to a request, you can find the same courage to uncommit. Remember: taking steps to protect your wellbeing is a service to your values.