There is a massive wall in our apartment…

….that is just one massive whiteboard (except it’s black). You can draw directly on the wall using dry-erase markers. This wall stands about 12 feet high and 15 feet long and provides an immense canvas for my roommates and me to vandalize responsibly.

When we first moved in, the wall was completely blank, but after a couple of years, we had started to fill every last square inch of the wall with an interesting type of graffiti. We had pictures of strange alien creatures, beautiful avatar-like fauna, and a few leud sayings and drawings just to round out the work.

It wasn’t until the start of our third year in the apartment that we were confronted with the graffiti wall problem.

What now?

Eventually, there was no more space to work. After countless hours adding to the work, we had no more wall left. For a while, we were okay with that. It felt like we had completed our mission. However, after a few weeks of a completed canvas, we sat down and discussed what our options were.

Erase it and start fresh?

One of my roommates proposed erasing everything and starting fresh. Immediately the idea received some pushback. A completely blank canvas made us nervous. We had grown so accustomed to the drawings on this wall that the idea of going back to nothing felt strange and uncomfortable. We had spent so much time developing this wall, the idea of restarting sounded daunting. Plus, the wall had become sort of a cultural icon with our friend group. We were known as those guys with the massive wall of art.

Plan it out, then erase?

My other roommate argued that we should first have a solid idea of what we want to replace the current art with before we start fresh. He didn’t like the idea of staring at a big blank wall for a few weeks while we experimented with new ideas. He proposed that we draw it out as much as possible on paper beforehand.

This proposal also received pushback. The argument was that art requires a blank canvas and that until we have somewhere to develop new ideas, we’ll never create anything.

As I sat back and listened to the dialogue, I realized this silly struggle actually represented a much larger discussion over an important question…

Should I wait until I have a plan?

We face the Graffiti Wall Problem (GWP) during some of the most important moments of our lives. Should you quit your job and start a new business after you have a business plan, or will having no job help you to develop one? Should you wait until you have a job to move across the country or should you move first and then figure out the job? Should I commit to the race and then start training or should I be in shape first and then sign up?

In the case of the graffiti wall, after we had erased the original artwork it stood idle for a while. The blank canvas was overwhelming. No one knew where to start with any of their ideas. Initially, the roommate that feared a big blank black wall was vindicated.

“See!” he said

It would have looked as though it makes more sense to have a plan before committing.

But eventually, the artist returned. Gradually, piece by piece, we started developing the wall with new and interesting artwork.

The power of pre-commitment

In the year 1519, Hernan Cortes landed in Veracruz with 600 men. They had just spent several months at sea and were exhausted. Cortes knew that he needed to motivate them were he to conquer Mexico, so he ordered that they scuttle their ships. The message was clear, there is no path but forward.

The idea of burning the boats is a popular one, however, it sounds more like desperation than inspiration to me. Plus, our lives involve a lot less conquering today and therefore the stakes of our decisions feel much less visceral. Thankfully, we do not find ourselves in these life-or-death moments.

That being said, the lesson is still very useful. The best way to get something done is by pre-committing. This doesn’t mean stranding ourselves in a foreign land, but it does mean taking some meaningful, irreversible action in the right direction.

Pay the registration fee

I recently completed a 54-mile ultramarathon through the Green Mountains of Vermont. It was undoubtedly the hardest thing I have put my body through in a single day. Whenever people ask me how I did it, my answer is infuriatingly simple:

“I signed up”.

And it’s true. If I hadn’t filled out the form, and paid the registration fee, I would not have spent the next few months bruising my toenails, falling over rocks, and just suffering generally during my training.

In short, I pre-committed.

My fiancee and I did something similar for our backpacking trip through Utah and Colorado. We put the dates aside and spent the money on the airline tickets to get out there, and then we figured out how we were going to spend 18 days. If we had instead tried to plan everything in advance, we may have gotten discouraged or frustrated. Maybe after finally having the last sentence in our itinerary completed we would have gone to purchase tickets only to learn that the price had risen 30% since we first looked.

We gave ourselves a blank canvas, and we had an amazing fucking trip.

I did the same thing when I decided to drop-out of college. I had no idea what my plan was but I figured that by getting out of my standard coursework, I’d have the space and freedom to figure it out.

Tell people about it

Beyond paying for a registration fee or an airline ticket, another powerful tool for pre-committing to a new challenge or adventure is to make it known publicly. If you’ve ever seen someone post on Instagram about how they are getting off of Instagram, you know what I mean.

When you tell others about your intentions, you’ll be far more likely to follow through for the sole reason of not wanting to seem like a flake or a failure. I remember when a close friend went on Keto. He made it clear that this was his intention and communicated this to our small group of friends. He became the Keto guy and this was everyone’s expectation of him. This pushed him to continue his regiment for the better part of 12 months, losing something like 40 pounds as a result of it.

I remember the first time I got into a cage for a kickboxing fight. My coach had asked me several weeks ahead of time if I wanted to try it and I said “yes”. Then I went home and told my girlfriend at the time and sent out invites to the fight night to my friends. Once my friends had it marked on their calendars, there was no way I was going to get cold feet or find an excuse not to get it done.

In short, if you want to push yourself to do things you may never have dreamed up, pre-commit and then figure it out.