Am I an over-commit or under-commit person?
In our daily life, all of us will experience either receiving assignment or assigning task to another person. No matter, you are the receiving or assigning party, it is about commitment! We want to be at our best and honour our promises. Usually, we don’t want to say “no” to others. Just don’t want to disappoint anyone. Another reason is because we also don’t want to miss any opportunity. Hence, we commit and commit and commit.
Sometimes, unforeseen circumstance happened along the way. Or committed too many that causes us difficult to keep up to its. We also often heard salespersons shared with us how great their product or service is. But many times, it is not as expected. We start to lost confidence on others or even ourselves. Either someone else has over-committed to you or we have over-committed.
On the other side, there are people that don’t commit. Worry about their capability so set a low standard or expectation. You will hear statements like “I will try”, “Let see how it goes”, “I’m not sure”, etc. Or they might encountered a lot of setbacks causes them don’t dare to commit anymore. They just want to play safe and don’t wish to take the extra mile to achieve new tasks.
There are people using under promise and over deliver method too. This might not be a good idea to deliver the assignment. The question here is How much effort you are putting into the task? If you believe in improving yourself, your services or even your product in every of your tasks, then under promising and over delivering will not bring you to the next level of achievement.
I used to be in the dilemma on such situation. Should I accept the assignment? Or should I say no? Or should I set a very low expectation?Through the process of writing this Life Sucks! manuscript, I have found the answer without compromising my commitment and passion in helping others. We just need to know our limit and boundaries. How much more we can do? Sometimes, it is not because of our capabilities, it is because of time constraint. One day only has 24 hours. We can’t work on many tasks within a day.
We have to set the right expectation. Don’t give high expectation that might cause lot of disappointment. Let others know that how many items are on your plate already. We also need to prioritize the commitment assignments. Make the list and be clear about the timeline. This will give you the visibility of the items on your plate so that you will know when to say “no” to the new assignment. In the nutshell, we just need to know when is the right time and also able to be comfortable to yourself to say a “no”.
Feel free to give me your comments and share how we can improve ourselves in our daily life!
