When a strategy stops working
Name the thing that stopped. A few short questions sort it into one of four kinds of not-working, and each kind needs a different answer.
The short version
- "This is not working" covers four separate situations, and only one of them means try harder.
- Telling them apart takes about five minutes and saves months. This tool asks the four questions that tell them apart, then hands back the one next move that fits your strategy.
- Giving something up is sometimes the correct move, and it is not the same as giving up. Nothing here is saved, it rearranges what you type and hands it back.
Three weeks in, the system you set up has quietly stopped. The lists are not being written. The calendar has last month in it. There is a feeling attached to this, and the feeling is usually some version of here we go again. The feeling is not information. The reason is, and there are four common reasons, pointing in four different directions.
Before you begin
Pick one strategy that stopped, the routine, system or habit that was working and then was not. Not the general sense that things are slipping; one specific thing. Nothing you type is saved.
Questions
Question 1 of 5
The next move
Copy it somewhere it will survive
Select the text below and copy it into whatever you already use. This page keeps nothing.
Before you rebuild anything
Some of what changed was never yours, a rota that moved, a meeting that grew from half an hour to a full one, a second deadline set by someone who could not see the first. Those conditions are more negotiable than they look. Ask whether one of them can go back before you redesign the strategy: this worked until the evenings changed, is there a version where I get one of them back? is a smaller request than it sounds, and it points at the thing that actually moved.
Worth knowing. The trap this tool is built to avoid is redesigning instead of running. If you have reworked the same strategy several times without doing it once, the answer is almost always the fourth category (right, not done yet) and the reviewing has become the way of not starting. When that is the case, the tool says so rather than offering another redesign. It sorts, it does not diagnose you, and it returns nothing about you as a person: the history of things not sticking is usually a mix of all four reasons, and "try harder" was only ever the right response to some of it.
Nothing here is saved or sent anywhere. What you type exists only while this page is open.
Written for Thought Club as general guidance, not medical advice. Free to read, print, and share.