Undercommit and overdeliver

I was listening to a great podcast by Kelly Forrister at the David Allen Company this morning. She was giving great tips about the GTD (Getting Things Done) methodology and she said that when you have trouble staying on the GTD system, you need to undercommit and overdeliver.

So rather than saying "I'm off the wagon again. I broke another commitment to myself. I need to start all over." you can more gently tell yourself, "I'm just going to do ubiquitous capture" and simply write down all the things that are stressing you out that you have to do.

What a great principle for everything in life that we struggle with staying on – our workouts, our diet, our communication skills. It’s a way of being gentle with ourselves – you make small goals that you know that you can reach, then you knock them out of the park! You don’t overcommit and then scramble and your performance isn’t as good as you’d like it would be. Instead, you take a deep breath and focus.

“Undercommit, overdeliver.”