The 4 Laws of Personal Reliability

Right away, I want to say three things:

One, while reliability is generally appreciated, it is still one of the most underrated qualities. In 98% of situations, the reliable person will be more useful, more impactful, and so much less of a pain in the neck to deal with than the more talented, but less reliable individual. Reliability is so very important. 

Two, reliability should have nothing to do with motivation. It is of course your right to demand better conditions, or leave a place if you are not happy with it, but, in my opinion, as long as we are somewhere, we should always be reliable at whatever we do there. We do this for others, but first and foremost, we do it for ourselves and our self respect as professionals. 

And three, reliability is not the same as absolute performance. A junior will be slow and make mistakes, so the absolute performance is bad, but a junior can still be reliable. Conversely, an expert can be awesome at what they do when they do it, but still be unreliable, and both situations should become clearer after the next section. 

The 4 Laws of Reliability 

These 4 behaviors/attitudes will make you, or anyone, reliable. The first three revolve around expectations and “contracts”, formal or informal, explicit or implicit. 

The text below is in first person not because I am in any way perfect at this, but because it just felt better to write it like that. I do hold reliability high on my personal scale, so maybe I just like telling that to myself :) 

1: It is my job to be clear

Whenever there is a decision, agreement, expectation that I will do or not do something, in a certain way, by a certain time, it is my job to be clear about it, be very direct and unambiguous about what I think I can and can not do. 

It doesn’t matter what other people say, how clear they are, how clear they should be, how vague the requirements are, when it comes to me, to expectations of me, I will proactively do all I can to make it clear.

There is no external circumstance which will stop me from seeking this clarity. 

2: It is my job to remember

When any agreement is made, any expectation confirmed, whenever a “task” of whatever type is given to me and I take it, it is my job to take any notes I need to, use the calendar, whatever I need, and to check them as frequently as I need to remember what I have to do and stay on top of my work and keep my promises. I do not forget what I said I will do and I do not need to be reminded. 

3: It is my job to manage change

Whenever something changes, in whatever way, be it because of a third party, or because maybe it’s just more difficult than I thought, or I had to change my priorities, the reason doesn’t matter, I will proactively consider who is expecting what of me, and if they are impacted by this change then I will notify them as soon as reasonably possible. 

4: It is my job to be pragmatic

When I do things “for myself”, I can be as experimental or creative as I want to. When I do things for others, unless there is an agreed special circumstance, then I will be pragmatic in the solutions I choose, because the first priority is not having fun with new toys, but being reliable. 

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And no, I’m not saying we need to be reliable and “predictable” in everything we do, there are other concerns too, it’s a choice, like everything else, but this is how I think reliably is achieved, and I do think that it’s generally very important. Few people can afford to consistently not be reliable and successful at the same time, and it usually requires them to be among the very best in their field, and, even then, if they managed to be reliable at the same time, they’d be unstoppable.