7 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Committing to Anything

Because you don’t get a medal for overcommitting

Illustration: Caitlin Keegan

If you, like me, are a person alive in the world with an email address, you probably get asked to do things fairly often: Moderate panels, help with fundraisers, attend parties for people you know and people you don’t. Early in your career, it can feel flattering just to be asked for anything, like a shy kid at a school dance. But soon enough, you realize that the math isn’t in your favor. For every useful networking event or friend’s thing you want to be supportive of, you’ve been invited to 14 pointless “opportunities” you end up going to and regretting.

I know I’m not the only one who feels this way because I recently tweeted the secret weapon I use to protect myself from overcommitting, and the internet went bonkers over it.

My partner and I are both writers. I run a boutique speaking agency for poets. We both travel for speaking engagements ourselves. So while we often attend events and conferences we enjoy, we also frequently find ourselves in the car ride home from the airport, repeating a lot of the same things: That three-day trip could have been one day. I wish I’d known what was actually being asked of me. It wasn’t worth it. Only this part was worth it. I should have stayed home.

At dinner one night, after a three-hour drive home from another non-paying gig organized by a stranger in an unfamiliar place, I asked my partner what makes a commitment worth doing, an invitation worth accepting. As we ate, we came up with a rubric, one that we’ve used ever since to help take some of the emotion and guesswork out of these decisions. Here are the questions we came up with (in our household, answering yes to four out of these seven means the invitation is worth accepting):

Does this make financial sense?

If it’s work-related, am I being compensated for my time? Am I spending my own money to go (i.e. for travel, admission fees, hotel, meals)? If someone else is paying my way, do I have expenses at home that need to be paid…