How I Use AI So Nothing Slips Through the Cracks

You told someone you’d send that article. You offered to make an intro. Neither is on your task list, and the person waiting hasn’t forgotten.

Another deadline had come and gone. I stood in the middle of a half-finished kitchen, bare studs and the smell of sawdust, and our contractor walked over with a big grin and a cheerful “Morning!” He didn’t mention the missed deadline. He never did.

That was about twenty-five years ago. Gail and I had bought a home that needed a huge renovation, and his bid was more than I’d hoped to spend. But I’d seen his past work. It was beautiful.

I really, really liked him. He was delightful, pleasant, and endlessly optimistic. I wanted it to work.

But one missed deadline turned into another, and then another. No acknowledgment. No apology. Before long, I was managing him instead of him managing himself. For what we were spending, that wasn’t what I’d signed up for.

I was way too patient. I kept telling myself the next date would hold. I should have fired him. By the time I finally admitted it, we were too far in to stop.

He finished months late, and the final cost was twice his bid. It was miserable. I’d lost all confidence in him, and I knew I’d never hire him again or recommend him to anyone.

He was the most likable person on that job. He was also the one person I couldn’t trust.

Most of us aren’t that contractor on purpose. We just say yes to more than we can remember, then count on goodwill to cover the gap. It works for a while. But the people counting on us aren’t keeping score of how pleasant we were. They’re keeping score of what we said we’d do.

If you lead anything, you should keep every promise you make, including the offhand ones in a hallway or a text thread. Each one you keep pays three dividends, and they compound faster than you’d think.

Dividend #1: Easier to Trust

My contractor taught me something I’ve seen confirmed many times since. Likability earns you a warm welcome. Trust is built one kept promise at a time. You can be the most pleasant person in the room and still be the one nobody counts on.

The research backs this up. Zenger Folkman looked at 1.8 million assessments of more than 162,000 leaders. Leaders rated as needing improvement in keeping commitments ranked in the 13th percentile on overall leadership effectiveness. Leaders with a profound strength in keeping commitments ranked in the 74th.¹ The gap between those two groups came down to whether they kept their word.

The big promises take care of themselves. You put the board meeting on your calendar. The small ones slip. “I’ll send you that article.” “Let me check and get back to you.” Each one feels too minor to track, but the person on the other end remembers. Every kept promise is a deposit. Every dropped one is a withdrawal, and you rarely know you made it.

Dividend #2: Easier to Lead

Halfway through that renovation, I was managing my contractor instead of him managing himself. I chased dates. I confirmed what he’d already confirmed. That’s the hidden tax of an unreliable person: somebody else has to carry their follow-through.

Now flip it. If your word holds, nobody has to manage you. Your team stops double-checking. Your assistant stops sending reminders about things you already said you’d handle. That frees you to do what only you can do, like setting direction and making the hard calls.

It also earns you the standing to expect the same from your team. A leader who drops their own promises can’t hold anyone else to theirs. They know it, and so does everyone else. When you keep yours, you don’t have to preach accountability. Your team watches it every day.

Dividend #3: Easier to Sell

By the end of that job, I knew I’d never hire him again or recommend him to anyone. His beautiful work stopped mattering once his word did.

Most small businesses run on repeat customers and referrals. Both depend on a record of kept promises. A client who got what you promised, when you promised it, comes back. Then they tell a friend who runs a company like theirs. Frankly, that’s the cheapest marketing you’ll ever do.

This is where the compounding kicks in. Trust makes leading easier. A team that trusts you keeps its own promises to customers. And a business that keeps its promises is easier to sell, because your best customers start selling for you.

How I Keep Them

I’m not naturally good at this. I say yes in hallways, at the end of calls, and in text threads while I’m walking to my next meeting. My memory can’t keep up with my mouth. So I built a routine to do the remembering for me.

I call it my Commitment Sweep. Once a day, around 6 in the evening, AI reviews the last twenty-four hours of my email, messages, meeting recordings, journal, and wearable transcripts. It pulls out two kinds of promises: the ones I made and the ones other people made to me. It links each one back to its source, so I can see exactly what was said and where.

Then it proposes each one for my approval. Nothing lands on my Master Task List until I say yes. That step matters, because not every “we should grab lunch sometime” is a real commitment.

Just to give you an example, on October 7, it found seventeen. Most of them were offhand. An introduction I’d offered to make between two people I know. A quick email I’d agreed to send a colleague after a meeting. A tool I’d told my team I’d share as soon as it was ready. Not one of them was on my task list. I used AI to fix that. You can too.

My contractor’s work was beautiful, and his dropped dates still cost him every job I could have sent his way. A simple habit would have saved him.

Tonight, spend fifteen minutes on a manual AI sweep. Search every inbox for commitments you made in the last twenty-four hours, starting with “I’ll” and “I will.” Capture each promise and put it in whatever system you trust: Reminders, Todoist, or your Full Focus Planner.² Then turn this into a skill and a scheduled task (or routine). Once it runs on its own, your word no longer depends on your memory.

In this week’s Implementation Kit, I’ll walk you through the exact system I’ve set up for myself.

What’s one offhand promise you made this week that’s still open?

Comments

If you have a question about using AI to keep every promise you make, click here to send me an email. I read every one. Seriously. Your experiences help me write better content, and sometimes the best insights come from readers like you. 

Transforming AI from noise to know-how,

P.S. Consider the AI Business Lab Mastermind: Running a $1M+ business? You’re past the startup chaos but not quite at autopilot. That’s exactly where AI changes everything. The AI Business Lab Mastermind isn’t another networking group—it’s a brain trust of leaders who are already implementing, not just ideating. We’re talking real numbers, real strategies, real results. If you’re tired of being the smartest person in the room, this is your new room. 👉🏼Learn more and apply here.

---

REFERENCE

1. Joe Folkman, “When Leaders Keep Their Word (And When They Don’t)”, Zenger Folkman, July 17, 2025. ↩︎
2. Full Focus Planner, Full Focus. ↩︎

How I use AI in my writing process →