Under-promise and Over-deliver

Day 214 / 365

“Always promise less and deliver more”, was an advise a senior gave me back in college when I first started doing freelance work. And it has stuck with me ever since.

The idea is simple, keep the expectations of people low and you have fewer chances of disappointing them when you finally deliver. But it doesn’t come naturally to people. Our default setting is always to oversell. Think of this situation, you are working on a project and you are about halfway done. Your boss comes and asks you about the progress. Most of us will answer that it’s going great and that its almost done. I think it goes back to our desire for instant gratification. The smile on our bosses face when we lie to him about our progress is enough of a win for us.

But inevitably the future versions of us will suffer when the deadline comes and the project is not done. But screw future me, who cares about him right?

Like everything though, even this strategy has its pros and cons. If you get into a habit of doing this too much, you start using this as a safety net. People start with the under-promise part but forget about the over-delivering. You know people aren’t expecting much, so why put in the effort to exceed expectations?

I guess it differs from person to person. If you can handle pressure well, then over-promising can be a better idea for you. You would treat the higher expectations as a challenge and that will motivate you to perform well. But you should definitely avoid over-promising just for the sake of making your boss happy at the moment.

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — How McDonalds’ reuse their cooking oil for fuel