# Philosophy: what to commit to
**URL:** https://forum.beeminder.com/t/philosophy-what-to-commit-to/4572
**Category:** CommitsTo
**Created:** [November 19, 2018, 1:37am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/philosophy-what-to-commit-to/4572 "2018-11-19T01:37:55Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@shanaqui](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/shanaqui)
#### Post date: [November 19, 2018, 1:37am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/philosophy-what-to-commit-to/4572/1 "2018-11-19T01:37:55Z")
From the Beeminder Slack:
> So far I have resisted using commits.to for reading anything even when I genuinely do say I will/I should. It feels like cheating. On the other hand, a significant amount of my life involves reviews and ARCs and so on so maybe I should be committing to book related things (so people can see how reliable or not I am at following through, esp publicists and publishers). I… should put this on the forum for a proper discussion, shouldn’t I?
DONE.
So basically the question is about line-drawing. Say I promise @adamwolf that I’ll go pick up _A Local Habitation_ and get on with rereading the first few books and then finishing reading the October Daye series – is that a commits.to thing? Does it become one if I’ve had one of the books in the series as an ARC and owe a review since, um, several years ago (in this case I do)? What about a book club, is that a commitment worth logging?
(Insert other often frivolous things here – video games, catching up with TV, etc etc.)
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### Author:  [@adamwolf](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/adamwolf)
#### Post date: [November 19, 2018, 1:46am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/philosophy-what-to-commit-to/4572/2 "2018-11-19T01:46:10Z")
I think “things that other people are relying upon” may be a useful line in the sand for me.
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### Author:  [@dreev](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/dreev)
#### Post date: [November 19, 2018, 6:29am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/philosophy-what-to-commit-to/4572/3 "2018-11-19T06:29:41Z")
Great question about having a bright line. My answer is based on Natural Utterance:
> [@The "I will" Trigger-Action Plan](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/the-i-will-trigger-action-plan/4472):
>
> Here’s a dialog (well, mostly monolog) in our internal chat today in which I explained how my Trigger-Action Plan (TAP) for Commits.to works: First, me to @hmowilliams: You know more about [blah blah] so I’ll shut up after this but [blah blah blah]. Then a bot chimes in, that we have programmed to say things like the following when it hears strings like “I will”, “I’ll”, “I need to”, etc: Was that an I-will statement? Then me again: Oops, “so I shall shut up now”. (I’m very serious ab…
But it seems that only a few people I already know really well in real life have adopted anything like that system. I can’t tell if most people don’t like it or if I’ve done a poor job of pitching the idea.
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### Author:  [@shanaqui](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/shanaqui)
#### Post date: [November 22, 2018, 9:51am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/philosophy-what-to-commit-to/4572/4 "2018-11-22T09:51:53Z")
See, the natural utterance bit makes sense to me… and I naturally say “I will” about books (and it is a trigger I should act on)… but it feels like a frivolous use of commits.to!
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### Author:  [@dreev](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/dreev)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2018, 5:12am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/philosophy-what-to-commit-to/4572/5 "2018-11-26T05:12:22Z")
My solution to that is to retrain myself not to utter “I will” frivolously. But if I accidentally do then I stick to the natural utterance criterion because that’s the nice bright line.