Judging Ourselves by Intentions, Others by Actions

Chris Terrell
5 days ago
3 min read

Hey, it’s a new year. Which means two things are happening simultaneously.

A lot of people are quietly reflecting on what worked and what didn’t. And a lot of treadmills are about to become very expensive coat racks.

I’ve never really been a “New Year’s resolution” guy. Not because I don’t believe in improvement, but because I’ve noticed something uncomfortable about how we talk to ourselves this time of year. We judge ourselves by our intentions. And we judge everyone else by their actions.

That gap? That’s where process debt loves to hide.

Intentions feel productive. Actions are… inconvenient.

Internally, our stories are generous.

“I meant to send that email.”

“I planned to get back into shape.”

“I was going to clean that up after things slowed down.”

Those intentions act like a pressure-release valve. They make the stress go away for now. We feel responsible without actually being accountable.

But externally, we don’t extend the same grace.

“They didn’t deliver.”

“They dropped the ball.”

“They said they’d do it and didn’t.”

Same situation. Different scoreboard.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth: intentions don’t compound. Actions do.

Where process debt sneaks in

This shows up everywhere in work.

A team “intends” to roll out a new system. Leadership “intends” for adoption to be fast. The org “intends” for things to magically get easier once the check is written.

So the intention becomes the milestone.

But delivery lives in actions, habits, timing, and learning curves. None of which are free.

That’s how organizations end up with ERP implementations that cost tens of millions of dollars and still feel unfinished. The intention was strong. The actions were underestimated.

Process debt isn’t created by bad intent. It’s created when intent substitutes for execution.

Gardening is a brutal but honest teacher

I’ve been thinking about this a lot through a surprisingly humbling hobby: gardening.

You can intend to grow tomatoes all you want. Plants don’t care. They run on biology, not optimism.

You water. Nothing happens. You water some more. Still nothing. You wonder if it’s broken.

Then one day, things explode with growth.

Or… they don’t. Because you overwatered them. Or planted too late. Or didn’t know that strawberries don’t produce fruit in year one.

None of that makes you a failure. It makes you a beginner.

But if you judged yourself purely by intention, you’d quit early. If you judge yourself by action without allowing for learning, you’d quit even faster.

The trick is judging actions while separating them from identity.

“I failed” is different from “I am a failure.”

“I didn’t deliver yet” is different from “I can’t deliver.”

Time is the silent accomplice

Intentions are rarely tied to time. Actions always are.

We are famously terrible at estimating how long things take, especially the first time. Germination periods don’t care about executive deadlines. AI implementations don’t care about board decks. Fruit trees don’t care about quarterly targets.

Some things are tomatoes.Some things are strawberries.Some things are orchards.

Process debt explodes when we pretend they’re all sunflowers.

A practical shift that actually helps

One thing I’ve started doing is brutally simple: a daily punch list.

Not aspirational goals. Not visions. Just actions.

Check email. Approve time. Review the thing I said I’d review.

It’s not glamorous. But it’s honest

Intentions feel good. Checkmarks tell the truth.

And oddly enough, that honesty creates momentum. Flow doesn’t happen in intention. It happens in motion.

The Process Debt Truth

Most people don’t fail because they lack good intentions. They fail because intentions feel complete… and actions feel exposed.

Process debt accumulates when we confuse wanting with doing.