What is overcommitment causes psychology?

Overcommitment causes psychology is a concept in personal epistemology: If you consistently take on too much there is a pattern to examine.

Example: You agree to lead a side project at work because you felt put on the spot in the meeting. You volunteer to organize the neighborhood event because nobody else stepped up. You say yes to the freelance gig because the money would be nice and the deadline seems far away. You commit to a friend's moving day even though your weekend is already full. Individually, each yes felt reasonable — even generous. But by Thursday you are paralyzed, staring at a calendar that physically cannot hold everything you promised. This is not the first time. It happened last month, and the month before that, and six months before that. You keep arriving at the same overwhelmed place by a different sequence of yeses. The sequence changes. The destination does not. That repetition is the data point that matters.

This concept is part of Phase 34 (Commitment Architecture) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for commitment architecture.