Commitments vs. Communication: The Mindset Shift Every Solopreneur Needs

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Communication is the exchange of information (emails, Slack messages, meeting conversations). A commitment is a specific, trackable promise with three parts: what is being done, who owns it, and when it's due. The problem most solopreneurs face is that commitments get made inside communication channels but never get pulled out and tracked separately. A promise buried in a Slack thread from Tuesday is effectively invisible by Friday.

Why do solopreneurs struggle with productivity despite being busy all day?

Many solopreneurs spend their mornings reacting to messages instead of proactively advancing their business. Every email, text, and notification feels equally urgent because they all arrive in the same stream. Without a system to separate actionable commitments from general communication, it's easy to spend hours responding to things without completing a single meaningful task. Joe Rando describes losing an entire morning responding to emails with nothing to show for it.

What is the What-Who-When framework for tracking commitments?

The What-Who-When framework is a three-part structure for defining any commitment clearly. "What" is the specific deliverable or action (not "marketing project" but "create a new marketing plan for Q3"). "Who" is the single person responsible; every commitment needs exactly one owner, because shared ownership leads to no one being accountable. "When" is the deadline or timeframe. This structure eliminates ambiguity and makes it easy to follow up.

Why should every commitment have only one owner?

When a task is assigned to multiple people, nobody feels individually responsible for it. This leads to delays, finger-pointing, and dropped balls. By assigning each commitment to a single owner, there's always one person on the hook. If that person needs something from someone else to complete the work, they create a separate commitment assigned back, maintaining a clear chain of accountability.

How do you track commitments other people make to you?

This is where most systems fall short. You might track your own to-do list, but when someone else promises to deliver something by Friday, that promise usually lives in your memory or in a buried message thread. The solution is to log incoming commitments (what was promised, by whom, and by when) in the same system you use for your own tasks. This way you can set reminders and follow up before deadlines pass, rather than discovering on Tuesday that Friday's deliverable never arrived.

What is the best habit for capturing commitments?

After every call, email, or meeting, take 60 seconds to ask yourself: "What did I just commit to? What did they commit to?" Write it down immediately in whatever system you trust (a notebook, a spreadsheet, an app). For client interactions, close with a quick recap: "Here's what we agreed on: I'm handling X by Wednesday, and you're sending me Y by Friday. Sound right?" This small habit dramatically reduces miscommunication and forgotten promises.

How do tags and context filtering help solopreneurs stay focused?

Tagging commitments by project, area of life, or business function lets you filter your view depending on what you're working on. When you're in heads-down mode on a marketing project, you only see marketing commitments, not grocery lists or unrelated tasks. This can be as simple as keeping separate lists (one for work, one for personal) or as structured as using tags in a digital tool. The goal is to reduce noise so you can focus on what's relevant right now.

What tools can solopreneurs use to manage commitments?

The tool matters far less than the habit. Options range from a simple notebook (Joe used a card-based analog system inspired by David Allen's Getting Things Done for years) to spreadsheets, task management apps, or dedicated tools like the LifeStar app discussed in this episode. The key elements any system needs: a place to record your commitments, a place to record commitments others made to you, the ability to assign a single owner and deadline to each item, and a way to review and filter by context.

Episode from The Aspiring Solopreneur podcast by LifeStarr. Now in the top 2% of podcasts globally.

Episode Transcript

Carly Ries: Ever sit down on a Monday morning ready to crush it, only to spend two hours answering emails and Slack messages with nothing to show for it? You're not alone. And in this episode, we're breaking down a simple mindset shift that changed how we run our business, which is stop managing communication and start managing commitments. We'll walk you through the three part structure every commitment needs, why no task should ever have two owners, and how a sixty second habit at the end of every call or email can save you hours of follow-up. Whether you use a fancy app or a stack of index cards, this one's going to change how you get things done.

You're listening to The Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for those in pursuit of a life first business. I'm Carly Ries, and my cohost, Joe Rando, and I spend every episode with solopreneurs who are proving there's a better way to run a one person business and experts who are helping make it happen. We like to say life first, then business. So let's get right to it. Okay, Joe.

So I know I am preaching to the choir here. I'm going to paint you a little picture. It's Monday morning. You open your laptop or you have a big computer. You get a look at your computer. You have thirty thirty unread emails, eight Slack messages, which to you is just like the worst thing in the world.

A couple of texts from people, and you start reading, and then two hours later you've replied to everything and you've accomplished nothing. And maybe you felt busy, but you can't name a single thing that moved Lifestarr or The Aspiring Solopreneur podcast forward. And we've talked about this a lot, and the real problem isn't really volume because that can't just be there. But let's say you're treating every message as equally important because they all live in the same stream. so how many times have you reread the same email thread three or four times just to remember what you agreed to do?

Joe Rando: I mean, this is a problem everybody has. and I wanna say, I know we've been talking about this for a while, but I don't have this problem now because I'm using the beta version of the Lifestarr app, which has solved that problem.

Carly Ries: Shameless plug.

Joe Rando: Shameless plug. I'm not even trying to plug, but I'm just saying, but the scenario you just described of the eight Slack messages and I mean, how many unread emails? That was a good day back in the day. I mean, my story is I got to work on I think it was a Monday, got in about 08:30, all these plans, and I opened up my email, and I was responding and, going back through it and getting replies to my replies. And next thing, it was 01:00 in the afternoon and nothing had moved.

And I said, never again. And that's when I went on a quest to not have this be how my life goes. So, yeah, I get it. And it's painful. I have done all these things, way too many times. And I just won't do it anymore. I have a a new way that I like a lot better.

Carly Ries: Well, so you mentioned the app. And one of the things that we've been trying to figure out is what really does make it different, that makes it so streamlined as opposed to opening up. And again, is not an episode promoting the app. It's a nice add on to the episode. But we've identified

Joe Rando: Yeah. No. I mean, you can do this other ways. And we can talk about ways that anybody can do this using their email clients. But anyway, I didn't want to interrupt you, I just wanna say that, we don't have to talk about the app.

Carly Ries: No, fair. But I think it's one of the things we've identified through LifeStarr and through the app and everything is the difference between communication versus commitments. And we've really started leaning into commitments. So can you share with our audience the real difference there and why it's such a game changer to focus on commitments versus communication?

Joe Rando: I think what we do is we use communication to make commitments, but it's pretty soft. I mean, we send an email. We send a Slack message. Yeah. I'll get that to you by Friday. But where does it live?

You know, it lives in your head. It lives in a Slack thread that by the time Friday comes is two hundred forty lines above any place you're gonna scroll to. So, the problem is that, and this is especially true. A lot of people use to do lists, right? And that's great. You might say, I'll get that to you by Friday. Goes on my to do list.

Maybe you put it on your calendar. I don't love that because I don't like using calendars for to do lists. But when somebody says, Gee, I'm gonna get that to you by Friday.

Where does that live? Well, that lives in a commitment that they made that's in an email, in a Slack message, in a text message, that you are now relying on your memory and pretty much trusting them to follow through on that. And I had the experience way too many times of that trust being misplaced. people get busy. I use a to do list, they don't use a to do list.

And the next thing, it was due on Friday and Tuesday afternoon I realized, hey, where is that? And now I've got a problem because I needed that and two days of work after it to do what I was supposed to do for Wednesday. And now I'm nudging somebody saying, where is it? And just, everything falls apart. So this idea of tracking commitments is kind of saying, if somebody says they're gonna do something, well that thing should live in a place that can be tracked and accessed and remembered and reminded. So you can be reminded or they can be reminded of it so that it's not a situation where somebody makes a promise, forgets, and the next thing you know, the project or whatever it is you're working on is off the rails.

Carly Ries: Joe, let's kind of introduce what we think a commitment is. it's like a three part structure. You have the what, which is the specific deliverable or action. The who, who owns it, you or your client. And the when, the deadline or the time frame. Those are the three parts, right?

Joe Rando: And really, I'm glad you brought that up. So the issue here is when you talk about making a commitment, don't just say marketing project, Don't just say, new bike, say, create a new marketing plan or find a new bike that I can use for my pan mass challenge. You wanna be very specific when you start talking about, tracking and recording commitments, because if you aren't, if it isn't clear what is being committed to, then they can be up for interpretation. And that's another place where things can fall apart.

So I was expecting x. Somebody else thought it was y. They give me y on time, but I'm still nowhere because it's not what I needed.

Carly Ries: and I think to some people that might sound really formal, but you and I, we talk all the time, all day, every day. we can kinda read each other's minds to an extent at some point. And so you think in the terms of our situation, it could be really easy for me to just write something and I just assume that you know what I'm talking about. But we have blog posts. We have the podcast. We have everything going on with LifeStarr.

I mean, just so many balls are moving at all times. so if I want you to write a blog post and I just put life first business, you'd be like, what am I doing? And in my mind I'm like, well, he totally understands what I'm saying because we talked about it in our last status. But no, you need that context because there's just always so much going on.

It helps to narrow things down to help you remember what you're supposed to be doing.

Joe Rando: Right. So that's very specific. And the next thing you said is right on the money, and this is something that I take issue with some tools that are out there for helping people manage their commitments or their to dos or the projects and that kind of thing. That is that every commitment needs an owner. And this ability to assign, usually it's a task in some kind of a task management system, and to be able to assign it to more than one person, That's just asking for failure because nobody is on the hook for it. so the way we do it is that, if I come back and I assign something to you and say, Carly, I need you to review this blog by Wednesday. And then you say, I need the link. I mean, that's a little silly, but you know, let's say that you said, well, you review it and say, I need you to make these changes. You could then create a task back to me, review the changes that I suggested for your blog. And that's on me, right?

And so you're really kind of saying somebody owns each commitment and it feels a little formal, as you said, but it's the only way that things don't fall apart. so this idea of being able to assign, to agree on a commitment and have it be in the hands of one person is really crucial to successfully running a business on commitment managements.

Carly Ries: Anyways, the more and more you do this, it really does become a habit. Again, it might not be second nature at first because you're not used to viewing things as commitments. But every time you finish a call, close an email, wrap up a meeting, whatever, just think what did I just commit to? And then write it down immediately. And the thing is we haven't talked about your commitments to yourself. It's not just commitments to other people, it's commitments to yourself too. So if you have to even go to the grocery store or whatever, doesn't have to be work related, write it down immediately in whatever system you're using. I mean, our audience at this point, nobody has access to the LifeStarr app, so you're not gonna be using that at the time of this recording, and even the time of this release. But whatever system you trust, whether it's a notebook, a spreadsheet, whatever, the tool doesn't matter, but the habit does.

And if it is a commitment to your clients, not just yourself, train them to do it too. Because every interaction with a short recap, so here's what we agreed on, I'm doing x y and z, and you're getting me z by Friday. Does that sound right? Getting that verbal confirmation. It just takes sixty seconds to add that into your conversation or your email or whatever, but it will reduce the overall time that you allocate to this commitment or to the task within the commitment by so much.

Joe Rando: Yeah. And you as you said, track those commitments you're making to other people, track the ones that you're making to yourself, but track the ones that other people are making to you because those are the ones where I usually saw the most failure, Where all of a sudden it was like somebody promised to do something and then didn't do it on time. And then you're stuck, with the leftover of being, three days late on what you were expecting to do your part of things. So it just really is helpful.

And then, another aspect is that you really want to try to classify these things in the context of what aspect your business or your life. We use what we call tags, We just tag things and we all have our own system of tags that we like to use. But the concept of adding that can help you to filter when you're working on X, can be only looking at the items that match X. You're not looking at buy toothpicks at the grocery store, which might be something you would be looking at when you were going grocery shopping.

So just having that concept of separating, and maybe even keeping separate lists for different aspects of your life so that the grocery shopping stuff isn't mixed in with your work stuff, have those lists separate. That can be a helpful approach. I did all of this on paper. I have this whole paper thing that I used for a few years actually as I figured out how I wanted to be able to to manage commitments, and I had this my to do list. I had a list of things that I was waiting for from other people.

This is all David Allen's getting things done, by the way. And then I had a list of projects I was working on, and I've had at one point, I used these cards that went inside of a book, and each card was a project. And I would write the name of the project. I could see that tucked into this thing, it's like a bunch of cards. I have it somewhere here.

I'll find it sometime. And it would say the name, and then I could pull the card out and then write what was the status of the project was. You run out of room sometimes, and then you'd have to add another card. Some of them, were four thick in the little pocket, but it was at least organized, and I was keeping track of these things and what I was expecting and from other people and what I was committing to do. And then all of that also my stuff went on a to do list or waiting for list, etcetera.

So a little manual, ittle a little time consuming, but way better than the alternative.

Carly Ries: Yeah. Of just tracking every single conversation communication you

Joe Rando: In email threads, and then text messages, Slack messages, whoever, whatever else messaging app you're using, and then really just try to keep keep in your head and remember it. And if you can do that, you're a genius. I am not. I couldn't remember them.

Carly Ries: You're a genius in your own right.

Joe Rando: In my own mind. treat us in my own mind.

Carly Ries: Exactly. Well, listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. As always, leave that five star review. It helps us spread the word to other solopreneurs who are trying to lay lead a life first business and get organized like we're talking about today. Subscribe to our show on your favorite podcast platform, including YouTube.

And oh, and pause. I have a pause from Joe.

Joe Rando: I just wanna mention one thing because it's official. We are now in the top 2% of all podcasts globally, and I'm very excited for that. And thank you all for making that a reality by, listening to the show. Please keep doing it. I just wanted to throw that out there because I'm excited.

Carly Ries: Thank you. Yes. I am so excited, too. So glad you said that. Share this episode with friends, and we can get to the top 1%, you guys. we will see you next time on the Aspiring Solopreneur. You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone. In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures? At LifeStarr, we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs.

Be sure to join in on conversations at community.lifestarr.com