You have a backup plan.

You might not call it that. But it's there.

The job you'd go back to "if this doesn't work out."

The old life you could return to "if things get too hard."

The exit strategy you've quietly kept in your back pocket "just in case."

You think it's wisdom.

It's not. It's a leak. And it's draining everything.

A backup plan is a bet against yourself.

Read that again.

When you build a backup plan, you're saying: "I don't believe this is going to work."

Not out loud. You'd never say it out loud. But the backup plan says it for you.

And your commitment can feel it.

Here's how backup plans kill your execution:

When things get hard—and they will—your brain starts scanning for options.

If there's no backup plan, the only option is to push through. Figure it out. Make it work.

But if there's a backup plan? Your brain has an exit. A release valve. A way out that doesn't require you to suffer.

And in that moment—the moment that separates the men who build something from the men who almost did—you take the exit.

Not because you're weak. Because you gave yourself the option to be.

This is what half-in looks like at the strategic level.

You're not fully committed because you've engineered a way not to be.

The backup plan is the architectural expression of lukewarm.

It's the structure you built to make quitting comfortable.

And every day it exists, it whispers: "You don't have to do this."

Cortés burned the ships.

You know the story. 1519. Arrived in the New World. Burned the fleet.

His men had one option: forward.

People call it crazy. I call it clarity.

Because when retreat isn't an option, you find a level of resourcefulness and commitment you didn't know you had.

The backup plan doesn't just give you a way out. It prevents you from discovering what you're capable of when there is no way out.

I had backup plans everywhere.

The job I could go back to. The "safe" career path I could pivot to. The life I could return to if my ambitions didn't pan out.

And I thought that was smart. Responsible. Mature.

But what it actually did was guarantee I'd never go all the way.

Because I never had to. The exits were always there.

The day I burned them—mentally, strategically, practically—everything changed. Not because my circumstances changed. Because my commitment did.

When there's no plan B, plan A gets your full attention.

I'm not telling you to be reckless.

I'm not saying quit your job tomorrow with nothing lined up.

I'm saying examine the backup plans in your mind. The quiet exits you've preserved.

And ask yourself: Is this wisdom, or is this a pre-built escape from the hard thing I said I'd do?

If it's an escape—burn it.

Give yourself one option: make it work.

Watch what happens.

Done negotiating.

-Joel