The superior man wishes to be slow in his words and earnest in his conduct.

Talk is quick and cheap while action is slow and expensive, so the natural drift is to let your words run well ahead of your conduct. The correction is to slow the speech on purpose: say less than you intend to do, and commit only to what you can carry. Then what you say keeps its value, because people have learned it holds. Reputation is largely the accumulated gap between the two.

For a week, promise slightly less than you think you can manage, then deliver it. Stop announcing plans before they exist. Let people find out what you are doing from the fact that it is done.