“Break it down to this next breath, this next step; this next choice is one that I can make.”

— Queen Anna of Arendelle, The Next Right Thing

I have commitment issues. I don’t mean this in the relationship sense, though commitment issues might be a part of the reason why I’ve been single my whole life…

What I do mean is, I have trouble sticking to self-initiated projects. For example, during the summer between grade 8 and grade 9, I decided to go through 2000 kanji characters at a rate of 50 new characters a day via Anki. My initial surge of motivation allowed me to get through those first few days with ease, along with the fact that the first few hundred characters were pretty easy to remember… but quickly, I began to dread this daily study routine. If you don’t know what Anki is, it’s a free flashcard program that uses the idea of spaced-repetition to help you to most efficiently study material. Every time you indicate that you knew the answer to the flashcard, the duration of time before which that flashcard is shown to you again is increased. Thus, you only study the cards that Anki believes that you are about to forget.

While this is great in theory, the result is that your review cards will begin to pile up. You start with no review cards, obviously, and only new cards. Then, slowly, you get more and more review cards as you go on. While these review cards should be regulating themselves and declining over time, assuming you don’t forget the content on the cards, I found that my rate of 50 new cards a day was far outpacing my ability to “mature” my review cards. In the end, I ended up with something like 200~300 reviews a day, which took me 2~3 hours to complete.

Amazingly, I did not miss a day of my routine for the entire summer, and I actually reached my goal of getting through those 2000 kanji characters. The amount of willpower this took, however, made me hate Anki and never want to use it again. Soon after the summer break ended, and grade 9 began, I started to neglect my Anki flashcards. Now, 5~6 years later, all 2000+ of my review flashcards are due, and I honestly do not remember a lot of them. I continually have to relearn these kanji in my university Japanese classes. Ultimately, if I had gone at a slower pace and managed to stick with Anki for longer than one summer, I probably would’ve been better off…

Another example of my commitment issues is this very blog. I told myself that I would update it once a week on Saturdays, but I almost missed this week due to schoolwork and a lack of inspiration to write about anything. Ironically, it was this lack of inspiration that inspired me to write this post, so I guess things worked out?

Evidently, since I myself have commitment issues, I might not be in the right place to be offering the solution. However, I do have some ideas on how to combat these commitment issues that I use from time-to-time with varying levels of success. Hopefully, they will also help you with some level of success.

1. Do not be fooled by your initial excitement
When you first decide to take on a project, you are probably super motivated and hyped up to do it. It’s quite easy when you’re in this state to overestimate how much you’ll be willing to do once a month has passed, and life gets in the way. It’s completely normal to accomplish a lot in the beginning, and then slowly taper off until you give up entirely… but this is far from ideal.

I like to take a step back before I jump straight into a new commitment and think about what a realistic goal would be. And then I reduce that further. If you have a small, manageable commitment, then it won’t become as much of a dread-inducing task to your future-self, and you’ll be more likely to keep at it.

2. Stick to your routine
The longer you keep your “streak” going with your commitment, the less inclined you’ll be to break it. This is what kept me going with my kanji studies— I had already come so far, and I thought it’d be a waste if I stopped. (I am subject to sunk cost fallacy, but perhaps that is a good thing in this case.)

Once in a while, you’ll probably think to yourself… it’s okay if I just take this one time off; I can catch up another time. While these thoughts are seemingly rational, giving in to them is basically giving up on the commitment altogether. A commitment isn’t something that you just do when you feel like it— a commitment isn’t something that you can arbitrarily decide to take a break from even just this once.

Sure, if you have an emergency come up, I’m not saying that you should kill yourself to stick to the commitment. There exist justified reasons for taking a break (ie. mental health concerns, more pressing unexpected obligations for volunteering/work/school, etc.). But there’s definitely a difference between feeling a normal amount of dread, stress, and anxiety about doing something and having actual mental health issues, which I think is important to understand. Not doing something that you’ve committed to simply because you don’t want to is not exactly how a commitment works. If you truly no longer want to do your commitment, then you should probably uncommit.

I say this from experience, because I’ve fallen victim to this logic fallacy several times. I tell myself, it’s just a personal commitment… there’s no harm in giving it up for today. Except there is! The harm is that you will get into the habit of falling back to this same excuse, over and over again. You’ll see that your life has gone on fine after skipping a day of your commitment, and then the internal monologue goes something like, “there’s no harm in skipping just one more time… okay, I’m even busier today than last time so it’s justified if I skip… really, I swear, I’ll do it next time… oh, I haven’t done my supposed-commitment for a month, oops, I guess I’ll just not do it anymore!”

It’s like attending lectures. Once you start skipping, it becomes increasingly easy to skip… so don’t skip in the first place! Don’t fall victim to this trap!

3. Make adjustments if needed
If you find yourself truly struggling to stick to your routine, you might want to consider revising your goals. Instead of letting yourself take the day off, reduce the goal to something more manageable! This way, you can still keep your momentum going. Remember, once you start falling behind, it becomes easier to quit completely, and I’m assuming this isn’t what you want if you’re trying to commit to something.

For example, I eventually decreased my “50 new kanji a day” goal to “30 new kanji a day” which made my life a little less horrible. As I said, your ambition when you first start might lead you to formulate some unrealistic long-term goals, so it’s okay to reduce it once that initial motivation boost dies.

That being said, you don’t want to keep reducing your commitments until it reaches 0, since that clearly defies the purpose of your commitment. This brings us to our next point.

4. Remind yourself of the commitment’s true purpose
What made you commit to this in the first place? For me, it was my love for the Japanese language and my desire to one day become fluent. This underlying purpose has always existed within me, and will continue to exist. Likely, you have some sort of motive to pick up a commitment. Hopefully, it is a strong driving force, and not just a whim, as whims tend to not make good foundations for long-term commitments!

It’s easy when you’re feeling unmotivated to lose sight of what your true goal is. I became fixated on just finishing my flashcards and getting on with my life, forgetting that my goal wasn’t to simply complete a deck of cards… It was a step in my pursuit of my passion— Japanese.

So take a moment to reflect. Why did you start this commitment? What did you want to achieve? Do you still want to achieve that? Look towards that end goal, and understand that there will be some willpower required to get there, but it will be worth it! Hopefully.

5. Understand the possibility and consequences of mistakes
Okay, so despite all of this, let’s say you missed a day. Maybe you forgot, maybe you didn’t manage to convince yourself to do it before it was too late… now what?

Well, the past cannot be changed (yet); take this as an opportunity to honestly reflect on how things are going. Missing one day isn’t the end of the world, so try not to let this become the catalyst to your commitment’s demise. I’ve skipped one lecture in my life, but I forced myself to go to the next one to ensure that I wouldn’t create bad habits. I wouldn’t say that skipping that one lecture was a great idea, but I’m glad that it didn’t lead to something much worse.

This same idea applies to skipping a personal commitment. It’s not great and should be avoided, but it’s not the worst thing that could happen. That said, you must take care to get back on track as soon as possible. The longer you wait to return to your commitment, the less likely you are to return at all. Once breaking your good habit becomes a habit in itself, you have a problem.

A self-initiated project is reliant on self-accountability. Are you willing to put in the effort to continue, or do you want to quit? Rekindle that desire to accomplish your ultimate goal. Imagine your life after you achieve it. Does this bring you a sense of pride and happiness? If not, then perhaps you are working towards something that doesn’t really matter to you. You don’t need to stick with a commitment just for the sake of it. If there’s no longer anything that you are getting out of it, and there’s no point, then that’s just it: There’s no point. Only you can decide whether your commitment is meaningful to you or not.