Must we commit to something?

I have often been told that commitments are important and once you say you will do something, it must be done. I wanted to explore this line of reasoning. The dictionary defines commitment as an agreement or pledge to doing something in the future, an act of committing to a charge or trust. But does everything we say qualify to be a commitment? The answer is, perhaps not. Could we say (speak) something that we do not commit to? Sure, why not?

Let us assume everybody said something without intentions to do it, or, everybody said something and intended to do it, but just changed his/her intentions over time. How chaotic would the world be? The airline agent would say, “I’ll block your tickets for the cheapest rate” and rightfully forget to do so. The father could say he would be at the daughter’s wedding, but could rush to work because he preferred that. At any point in time, one must wonder or predict whether the speaker would really do what they said they would do.

I believe it is a much better world, where people intend to do what they say they will do and further do what they said, where people are committed to delivering on their words. However you might not agree with, “Do unto your neighbor as you would have them do unto you.” Lets assume you really did not care about others not committing or not keeping their commitments. Do you still have to keep commitments? I definitely believe it is favorable to do so.

A person’s credibility is based on the ability of a person to commit to something and to deliver upon it. If a person repeatedly commits and fails to deliver, people’s reliance on him/her will reduce drastically. People would start taking the slacker less seriously and trust would decline on his/her ability to keep commitments.

For techies, I’d like to present another analogy. We all know about how commitment control is implemented in transaction processing. What would happen if the database did not commit transactions? This could have serious and unpleasant consequences in real-world businesses. We know its implication and as software developers we take up the task of using commitment control seriously whenever we code OLTP systems. Software that has no commitment control or improper commitment control is termed as unreliable, useless, buggy, and inconsistent. The goal of commitment control is consistency and integrity. This can be extended to humans. Without it we are unreliable, our integrity is questionable and we cannot be trusted.

Commitments do not have to be written or carved in stone. Commitments could be verbal or even a thought in one’s mind. Commitments could be towards yourself, towards your future, towards financial or governmental institutions, towards your family. The important thing is to think twice before committing to something, but when you do, make sure you make your best attempt to deliver whatever it is you committed to.