Stephanie Leue described a dynamic I’ve seen many times:
This sparked a lot of thoughts and I immediately went into writing about this.
The result is that overcommitment becomes normalized.
This doesn’t happen because people don’t care.
It happens because three forces converge: psychology, culture, and systems.
1. Psychology
Several human tendencies make overcommitment feel natural:
Fear of rejection and conflict. Saying yes avoids discomfort in the moment, even if it creates bigger problems later. But the later part takes the burden away from us and we can still hope for that wonder to happen.
Optimism bias. We underestimate complexity and overestimate capacity. A project that “should only take a month” often drags on for months or even years. But the next time we estimate, it definitely will be different (Spoiler: It won’t)
Escalation of commitment. Once effort is invested, stopping feels like failure. We double down. And we think back on all the conversations we would need to have to reverse it.
Short-term relief. Agreeing resolves tension now, while declining creates immediate friction people prefer to avoid, especially if they are overloaded already.
Each of these biases creates drag. Together they form a gravitational pull toward commitments we cannot realistically keep.
2. Culture
The surrounding culture determines whether these tendencies get amplified or balanced:
Output over outcomes. When success is measured by volume of delivery, more is always seen as better—even when it creates little value.
Roadmaps as contracts. Tentative plans harden into promises the moment they’re shared. Changing them later feels politically dangerous and we are being told from early childhood that we should avoid anything that is dangerous.
Lack of psychological safety. In many environments, raising concerns is not rewarded. People learn that silence is safer than dissent. And this does not even need to be rational and based on the organization they now work in but rather something they bring along from their past.
In such cultures, overcommitment isn’t a mistake. It’s a survival tactic.
3. Systems
The structure of work itself reinforces the default of yes:
Incentives misaligned with value. Funding and recognition are often tied to the size of an initiative. The bigger the budget or headcount, the more important the work appears. This encourages teams to inflate scope to secure resources, rather than narrowing focus to deliver real value.
High work in progress. Starting more feels productive, but excessive WIP slows everything, hides bottlenecks, and erodes trust in delivery. At the same time it creates the illusion that we are actually working on all these things (Try Henrik Kniberg’s name-game to see that you are actually not working on all these things)
Leadership unable to say no. Customer escalations, competitive moves, or stakeholder demands often get accepted without trade-offs. Teams learn resistance rarely changes anything.
When the system rewards saying yes, individuals adapt accordingly.
The Cost
Overcommitment is like starting a race with weights strapped to your ankles. (Just had to think about a race as the Ironman Switzerland is going on outside my window)
You’re moving, you’re expending energy, but the drag is built in from the beginning.
The harder you push, the heavier it feels.
The costs pile up:
Focus is scattered.
Delivery slows instead of speeds up.
Technical debt and rework accumulate.
Burnout becomes normalized.
Trust between teams and leadership steadily erodes.
In time, people stop believing promises at all. Both leaders and teams lose confidence in each other.
What Can Be Done
The antidote is not to demand more discipline or tougher commitments.
It is to change the conditions so that saying no is safer and smarter than saying yes.
Some practical shifts:
Measure outcomes, not just output.
Value should be tracked by problems solved and impact delivered, not by volume of features shipped.Keep plans adaptable.
Treat roadmaps as hypotheses that evolve with new evidence. Avoid locking in promises that cannot survive contact with reality.Make it safe to push back.
Leaders can model this by showing vulnerability, asking for feedback, and treating dissent as ownership.Limit WIP and finish what is started.
Reduce parallel commitments so work flows faster, bottlenecks surface earlier, and predictability improves.Model saying no at the top.
If leaders cannot decline requests or defer work, teams will not feel safe doing so either.Create evidence that supports pushback.
This is where tools like Lighthouse come in. By showing probabilistic forecasts, cycle times, and WIP trends, teams can point to data instead of opinions. Pushback becomes less about courage and more about evidence. When delivery ranges are visible, the myth of “we can do it all” is harder to sustain.Reward learning and finishing.
Celebrate outcomes achieved, insights gained, and improvements made to the system. Over time, this builds a new norm where sustainable focus replaces constant overload.
When these conditions are in place, the gravitational pull shifts.
Overcommitment stops being the default.
Pushing back becomes the responsible, expected thing to do.
The Open Question
Pushing back will always require some courage. But courage alone is not enough.
It needs the right environment, supportive systems, and leaders who invite it.
So the real question is:
How do we create organizations where effective pushback is encouraged before overcommitment becomes the norm?