A Promise Is a Debt

A good reputation does not remove the need for clear agreements.

“I’ll try”, “we’ll see” and “I’ll do it” mark different degrees of commitment. The problem arises when the speaker uses the first and the listener remembers the third.

You should promise only what lies in a reasonable zone of control. Nobody can honestly guarantee the absence of delays, illness or a change in circumstances. You can promise to give warning, to prepare, and to do an agreed amount of work.

Someone else’s promise is not a resource either, until there is:

• a clear action;
• a deadline;
• responsibility;
• confirmation;
• sometimes, security.

This does not mean everyone who promises is manipulating. People overestimate their capacity, forget, and sincerely count on a better version of themselves.

The more important the agreement, the more useful it is to put it in writing. Especially with friends and relatives: closeness increases the number of implied terms.

A short message after the conversation settles a lot:

Have I got this right: I do this by Wednesday, you send the data on Monday, the price is such-and-such?

Writing something down does not express distrust. It protects both memories from later creativity.

Reliability is better handed to an external system than to good intentions. Calendars, reminders, lists and automatic payments exist because memory does not treat promises as a separate biological priority.

Remembering the birthday of someone close is nice. Setting a reminder is more reliable. The sincerity of the greeting does not suffer for it.

The costliest agreements are those with people close to you: in them nobody spells out the obvious. A friend does your renovation “as a favour”. No deadline is named, the scope is described as “turnkey”, the money is handed over in instalments and without receipts. Three months later both sides quite sincerely remember different versions: one that the discount was for being patient about the schedule, the other that the schedule was approximate because the price was a friendly one. Nobody is lying. The agreement simply existed in two heads, differently in each.

A short message after the conversation looks like distrust exactly once — in the minute it is sent. For all the months that follow it works as a shared memory, and the first person to consult it is usually the one who thought it unnecessary at the start.