#363 – What makes 'set it and forget it' your most effective strategy?

Setting the starting conditions and letting the micromanagement go

Even though you can never guarantee an outcome, setting your course allows you to ensure you're going in the right direction. Because if you're not, it doesn't matter how fast you're going––you'll never reach your goal.

In Determined, Robert Sapolsky shows how the most influential factor in the state of a given system subjected to a given set of rules is where it starts from. Even when a final state (or outcome) is unpredictable, it was determined by the interaction of the rules with the starting conditions.

Say you want to run a marathon. You could use one of two strategies:

Strategy A: Every morning, you decide whether or not you'll run, based on conditions of that particular day (is it raining, did you sleep well, do you need to wash your hair...).

Then, the day of the marathon, you assess whether you feel prepared––your Ghosts may try to "save" you.

Or,

Strategy B: The moment you make the decision to run a marathon, you choose one, sign up for it, get a training plan, and follow it.

The day of the marathon, even feeling nervous, you know you can run it.

In Strategy A, you have to make hundreds of decisions based on hundreds of variables and starting conditions. At each decision point, your Ego and Ghosts will chime in: "it's too cold," "it's too early," "you have a headache..."

In Strategy B, you make one decision and then blindly follow the rules. So when your Ghost of Idea Deflection shows up on a Tuesday morning, shoulder-shrugging and head-shaking, "why bother anyway? You're not gonna win!," you go to your rulebook: "if it's Tuesday and I'm alive, then I run."

Which strategy sounds less taxing? And which more likely to lead to a successful outcome?

What starting conditions will you set to ensure you're going to where you want to go?

Love,

Carolina