Blockr.me displays a quote of your choosing for about five seconds before fading out; leaving you with the blank page and the blinking cursor.

For the longest time, my quote was Paul Graham’s “always produce.” The concept that action will guide you to work you love remains one of my favorite ideas. After a few years though, I found that I wasn’t always producing as much as I wanted to be. Did it mean that I wasn’t bound for interesting work that I loved?

I tried “be purposeful" for awhile, but that was even worse. It’s hard to even remember what I was thinking with that one. I guess I wanted to be more deliberate in my actions. I wanted to feel like I was going somewhere rather than just being blown about by the winds of circumstance and society and upbringing. "Be purposeful" sounded good but it was so vague that it didn’t really guide me anywhere.

A few weeks ago I came across the Goethe quote at the top of this page and now I’m going to try a succinct version of that for awhile: “the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too."

This seems much more useful because commitment is something I understand: I know what it is to be committed.

When I look back on the things I have fully committed to, they have been some of the greatest experiences of my life: quitting my job in LA and moving to SF, ultimate, learning to program, Sauce Labs, Nepal. When I look at things that seemed exciting but which were ultimately unfulfilling or left me with regret (Clothesliner, withered novels, songs, and other projects) I see now that I never really committed to those things.

Why is commitment so powerful?

Commitment begets concentrated time. That this would increase your likelihood of satisfaction with your effort [1] is no surprise. When you’re working on something intensely you learn more, get more done, and do both faster. A week of passionate work on something is probably a lot more effective than those same hours would be spread out over three months. And it will be a lot more satisfying. Obviously, more time is good. But concentrated time is especially good.

There is a positive [2] feedback loop to concentrated time. The more you work on something the more it seeps into your consciousness. So when you’re cooking or running or taking a shower you stumble upon insights. How many times have you been working on something so intensely that you end up dreaming about it. And then, one morning, you wake up with a new epiphany.

Commitment provides an intrinsic motivation not to fail. The common phrase I hear about this one is “burning one’s ships.” When you’ve committed to something you have no choice but to make it successful. This is something I’ve experienced a lot personally. When I have several options or projects going at once, no particular project is all that important. If one fails that’s okay because there are other options. When you commit to something fully, you are letting people know that this is what you’re focused on. And so you have no choice but to see it through.

Commitment sets your inner rationalizer to work. My friend likes to say that few people regret their tattoos, even those that say “No regets”. He says we’re kind to past versions of ourselves. We forgive and understand.

We are expert rationalizers. Whether you believe that “everything happens for a reason” or not, you can be rest assured that we are damn good at giving reasons for why things happen the way they do. And I think commitment helps with this too.

When you commit you free your mind to start writing your narrative. Commitment is like a constraint for a great writer. You've given them this limited scope of material so they better get cracking away at it. The uncommitted person is like every Jack Moxon who never quite finishes their poems or essays; the committed is like Miller Williams writing the Lonesome Shrinking Sestina - making masterful use of his constraints.

If you commit to something it will work out because, even if it's a failure your narrative will talk about it as a growth experience. And without those growth experiences it’s really hard to move forward in life.

Commitment unleashes Providence (i.e. other people). Our mythology around the lone hero actor misses out on a huge fact: humans are social beings who need other people to get things done. Whenever we read exaltations about Steve Jobs we forget that there were dozens or more people working 18 hours a day on the Mac. Even fine art is surprisingly collaborative. Picasso met people in his youth who helped him sell paintings, introduced him to art collectors, gave him pointers, or criticized him in a way that was motivating. When you commit to something you place a flag in the ground that the rest of the world starts to organize around. People look at you and your projects differently. They can smell it. Usually they want to be helpful and will go surprisingly far to be so. And those that aren’t helpful can be as motivating as the 34 players that were selected above Draymond Green in the 2012 draft.

Committed people talk to other people about their ideas because they have no other options. They cross pollinate and learn and find flaws and holes in their thinking. Someone who is just kind half-assing something is probably too afraid to talk about it with anyone and ends up just kind of sitting on the idea alone, imagining what might be great about it and fearful of finding out what won’t work.

Commitment breeds focus. Focus is very satisfying and increasingly rare for many people. Mindfulness is in the zeitgeist right now. Everyone is coming to see the benefits of living in the present moment. And yet at the same time, our technology and culture is making multi-tasking an ever more common pursuit. I think of myself as a pretty mindful person and yet when I come home even when I’m cooking I have a podcast going.

The scariest thing about commitment is that it feels limiting. But this is a red herring. Life is full of constraints. Everyone commits to something even if they don’t realize it. Life is merely a question of what you commit to. Many people don’t make an explicit choice. They just float along in the name of “keeping options open”. Which is fine. But it’s probably helpful to recognize that in that case you’re committing to nothing. And committing to nothing is a recipe for coming to the end of your life and absent-mindedly feeling around in your pockets, wondering where you could have put it. [3]