The Weight of Small Promises

Hello!

It’s Thursday, 9^th October 2025. Welcome back to Bold Efforts, my weekly letter on the future of work and living. I try to keep this honest, useful, and a little uncomfortable. Today’s topic is the quiet thing that drains most people at work. Not the big deadline. The stack of tiny promises we make without thinking.

You know the script.

“I’ll revert after lunch.”

“Give me ten minutes.”

“I’ll review tonight.”

None of these sounds heavy. You say them to be helpful. You mean them. Then 6 pm arrives and your day tilts. Dinner slips. Sleep gets shallow.

The trouble is not the size of each promise. It is the number.

It keeps a light on in the back room so you will not forget. One light is fine. Twenty lights hum. By evening you are tired without doing anything obviously hard. That is the cost of small promises.

Big projects have plans and owners. Small promises have hope. You make them in hallways and chats. They feel easy because they borrow time from your future self. That future self already has plans. You pay with guilt when the gap shows up.

Watch a normal week. On Monday morning you agree to send notes after lunch. A real task lands at noon. You push the notes to 4 pm and tell yourself it is fine. At 4 pm a call runs long. Now it is 6 pm and your message sits in the corner like a plant that needs water. You send a quick sorry and move it to evening. You unlock your phone at 10. You type with one eye closed. The draft is not good. You promise to finish in the morning. The loop never closed. Sleep did not either.

The same story plays out with reviews, intros, and follow ups. State changes run your day. You move from writing to calls to decisions to hiring to numbers. Tiny promises ignore state. They assume you can switch and still think well. You can, but you pay a tax on every jump. That tax is invisible so you forget to price it.

Most people try to fix this with speed. They text faster. They process faster. They live inside the inbox so nothing slips. It works for a week. Then the rest of the job bends. Thinking time shrinks. Quality wobbles. You feel busy and underperforming at the same time. That is the trap.

The way out is not another app. It is cleaner promises.

Event-based promises are easier to keep than time-based ones. Say what will happen when a clear trigger occurs and your word stops fighting the clock.

Work stays small when the target is visible. A clear spec, a simple definition of done, and a line on how it will be used keep scope from smuggling friends. When the target is fuzzy, a small promise breeds three more by night.

The team version of small promises is even more important. When response norms are public (what urgent means, how weekends are treated, what a good ask looks like) pressure drops. Short screen recordings and working links replace most status chatter.

The mind has gears. Mornings run hot for some people. Afternoons run soft. Pair the task with the gear and the week feels humane. Small promises ignore gears. They drag you into the wrong state and pile on hidden cognitive load. By night your brain feels busy even when the output is thin.

Deep work hates this switching of context. Every switch resets the mind and loses the thread. Micro promises create context switches that do not look like context switches: one “quick” reply, one “two‑minute” review, one “just checking”. Add ten of those and you have an hour of fragments and no work done.

We think burnout comes from big pushes. Sometimes it does. More often it comes from a hundred small cuts that no one tracked. Track them. Promise less. Finish more. Let the day end.

Thank you for reading! Close one loop tonight. Let your brain rest.

Best,
Kartik

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Who am I?
I’m Kartik, founder of Polynomial Studio, a holding company and product studio building AI-driven businesses for the future of work. The way we work and live is being rewritten. AI, remote work, and shifting economic forces are reshaping careers, businesses, and entire industries. The big question is where it’s all heading.

For the past eight years, I’ve been at the forefront of these shifts, working across real estate, technology, startups, and corporate strategy. I’ve helped businesses navigate change and stay ahead of what’s next, always focused on understanding the forces shaping our future and how we can use them to build something better. Click here to know more about me.

Why Bold Efforts?
I started Bold Efforts because I believe work should fit into life, not the other way around. Too many people are stuck in outdated systems that don’t serve them. This newsletter is about challenging the status quo and making the effort to design work around life. It brings together bold ideas and actionable insights to help you build a healthier, more balanced relationship with work, leading to greater purpose and fulfillment. If you’re looking for fresh perspectives on how to work and live better, you’re in the right place.

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