Review commitments quarterly (monthly for high-stakes)…
Schedule commitment renewal reviews at fixed intervals (quarterly for most commitments, monthly for high-stakes or rapidly evolving ones) rather than waiting for subjective dissatisfaction, because perceptual thresholds prevent detection of gradual drift.
When This Fires
- When setting up a commitment portfolio management system
- When commitments accumulate without explicit renewal decisions
- When you discover you've been maintaining a commitment long past its value — a scheduled review would have caught this earlier
- Complements The zero-based commitment test (zero-based question) with the cadence that triggers it
Common Failure Mode
Renewal by default: commitments auto-renew because nobody explicitly reviewed them. The quarterly meeting continues because it was never evaluated. The subscription continues because cancellation requires effort. The volunteer role continues because nobody asked "should we still do this?" Scheduled reviews convert renewal-by-default into renewal-by-decision.
The Protocol
(1) Categorize each commitment: Standard (stable context, predictable value) → quarterly review. High-stakes or evolving (significant resources, changing conditions) → monthly review. (2) Schedule the reviews as recurring calendar events — they're commitments about commitments, and they need the same structural support (The first five consecutive executions of a new trigger…, Document every agent with five components). (3) At each review: apply the zero-based question (The zero-based commitment test) to every commitment in that review's scope. (4) For each commitment: renew (passes on current merits), modify (partially valuable but needs restructuring), or exit (doesn't pass zero-based test). (5) The review output: an updated commitment portfolio with explicit renewal decisions for each item.