I want you to take a moment and think about the many responsibilities you have. And intentionally, if you're comfortable with it, allow this feeling, this weight of responsibility to start to overwhelm your ability to kind of manage it all, to process all of the responsibilities. How do we end up in a place where our responsibilities, or maybe more accurately, our commitments, seem to outrun our cognitive ability to even process them, much less fulfill them? That's what we're talking about in today's episode. My name is Jonathan Cottrell. You're listening to Developer Tea, and my goal on this show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective, and purpose in their careers. Thank you. So you've probably felt this at work. You've probably felt it at home, maybe with your family. You probably even felt it when you were younger, perhaps when you were in school. Maybe you're in school now, and all of the things that you have to do, all of your assignments, they feel overwhelming. And much of this we bring on ourselves. All of the responsibilities that we have, we choose them to some degree. Some responsibilities are forced on us. Like, for example, paying taxes. But for the most part, we choose how we relate to the world around us. And many of our choices are what cause or what our responsibilities are a result of. And so when we make choices about responsibilities, really what we're doing is we're committing ourselves to those responsibilities. Here's what often happens. We make a single commitment because it seems reasonable. And then we make another commitment, and the two commitments may collide. They may have some competing priorities. For example, we commit to fulfill our job duties, and then we also commit to being a good friend. But sometimes our job comes in the way of being a good friend, or maybe sometimes being a good friend comes in the way of our jobs. And even if we prioritize these things, the matrix that we would have to understand, once again, can cognitively overwhelm us. In today's episode, I want to discuss a way that you can think about your commitments differently so that you're not as overwhelmed, and instead you can live, hopefully, more day-to-day, rather than feeling like your days are kind of running the show. Before we talk about that, I want to talk about the fact that we're not alone. We're not alone. We're not alone. We're not alone. We're not alone. We're not alone. We're not alone. We're not alone. We're not alone. We're not alone. We're not alone. I want to talk about today's sponsor, Abstract. Designers today spend a frustrating amount of hours searching for files, consolidating feedback from multiple sources, never really knowing what changes have been incorporated and approved. And while we've come a long way from having to email Photoshop files, we still haven't really found that single source of truth. Developers have had this for a while. We have version control with GitHub. But it's not... Not until Abstract came along, created by Twitter's principal designer, former Twitter principal designer, Josh Brewer, Abstract acts as that single source of truth for design work. This brings all of your design workflow into a single unified place. And it's not just for designers. Developers can come as well as stakeholders to provide feedback on that work. Companies that you've certainly heard of, like Microsoft, Spotify, Cisco, and thousands of others across 75 countries, already rely on Abstract to improve their design workflows and to increase collaboration across functions in their teams. And with Abstract, you can version your design files, present work, request reviews, collect feedback, and you can give developers direct access to all the specs all from one place. With Abstract, you'll spend less time searching for design. files and tracking down feedback and spend more time focusing on innovation and collaboration. Sign your team up for a free 14-day trial by going to www.abstract.com. Thanks again to Abstract for sponsoring today's episode. There's a nuance in the discussion about why we feel overwhelmed. Sure, it's absolutely possible that you're quite simply taking on too much. Many times that is true. And we don't say no, generally speaking, often enough. This is both a cultural and a human thing, fundamental to our being, but also something that has been kind of exacerbated by our always-on availability and our culture of being a part of everything we can possibly be a part of. And so saying no feels... It's like a rare instance. But beyond the fact that many of us are taking on too much, sometimes the way that we make commitments can cause the problem. More specifically, we often commit to outcomes rather than actions. And this is what we need to flip on its head, because we don't have direct control over outcomes. We might commit to drive towards. But at the end of the day, if we make commitments to outcomes that we fundamentally cannot control, and as many of these different commitments kind of collide into each other, and many of them end up being out of our control, then we end up compounding the problem. We don't necessarily understand what we're committing to if we commit to an outcome, but if we can commit to an action. If we can commit to how we will spend our time. And the way that I want you to think about this, the takeaway from this episode is, when you make a commitment, translate your commitments to calendar events. And no, I don't mean a deadline on your calendar. I mean the action that you will take to fulfill that commitment. This seems reductive, but at the end of the day, the way you spend your time is reflective of the commitments that you've made. And perhaps more explicitly, the way you spend your time is the commitments that you've made. Instead of committing to something that you can't control, you commit to something that is at least more in your control. You commit to actions. You commit to actually doing something specific. This is the heart of many of the original promises of agile software development. And that is working on the most important thing continuously. If we make a commitment to working on the most important thing, much of the management that we otherwise have to do is eliminated. We won't get into every detail here in this episode of how that would happen and how you might be able to avoid setting unrealistic goals or engaging in a death march. Instead, you can focus on collaborating. And that's what we're going to do today. When you focus on collaborating, when you focus on making commitments to actions rather than outcomes, the work becomes more about relationships than it does about risk management. Thank you for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. Obviously, this is a challenging way of thinking about commitments, and it's not something that you can do overnight. Most employers are wired to operate a different way than this. And it's reasonable to expect that you'll have pushback on this concept. But if you as a manager can establish this practice, and if you can, as an individual contributor, if you can find a way in your life to establish this as often as possible, you're very likely to see the way that you think about work and the way you think about being overwhelmed much differently. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. Thank you again to Avid. And to the team at Abstract for sponsoring today's episode. Start your team's free 14-day trial by heading over to www.abstract.com. Today's episode and every other episode of Developer Tea can be found at spec.fm. That is the network that Developer Tea is a part of. Head over to spec.fm to find other shows like Developer Tea that are designed for designers and developers who are looking to level up in their careers. Today's episode was produced by Sarah Jackson. My name is Jonathan Cottrell. And until next time, enjoy your tea. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.