When I first tried to learn to do Murphyjitsu a few months back, I kept having the problem that the most likely failure scenario of any plan was “I just run out of energy and focus and/or get really anxious and can’t do anything”, and this seems impossible to completely reliably prevent, and so I could never get to a point where I would actually be shocked if a plan failed.
Nevertheless it’s a good technique. But I’ve decided that my goal with it isn’t to make my plan actually failproof but to make it as close to failproof as I actually can—which is actually closer to what it achieves, I just find I have to make that explicit for it to not feel like I’m fooling myself. And of course it also helps to think about what are the things that make it more likely that I’ll run out of energy (e.g. too many other plans, staying up late the night before) and try to minimize those. (That part is easier to do for me now than it was a few months ago, since I am currently not swamped with more plans than I can carry out and have more freedom/ability to arrange my plans in a way that’s likely to succeed.)
When they fail, it is because of one of the following reasons:
a predicted reason (you took a risk / made a tradeoff, saw it as low probability or unavoidable)
violation of an explicit assumption (encryption used is secure, won’t crash on the way to the airport)
a black swan (coronavirus, 9/11, stock market crash)
When they fail for reasons other than these, you are extremely surprised and can point to exactly what about your worldview and anticipations misled you.
When I first tried to learn to do Murphyjitsu a few months back, I kept having the problem that the most likely failure scenario of any plan was “I just run out of energy and focus and/or get really anxious and can’t do anything”, and this seems impossible to completely reliably prevent, and so I could never get to a point where I would actually be shocked if a plan failed.
Nevertheless it’s a good technique. But I’ve decided that my goal with it isn’t to make my plan actually failproof but to make it as close to failproof as I actually can—which is actually closer to what it achieves, I just find I have to make that explicit for it to not feel like I’m fooling myself. And of course it also helps to think about what are the things that make it more likely that I’ll run out of energy (e.g. too many other plans, staying up late the night before) and try to minimize those. (That part is easier to do for me now than it was a few months ago, since I am currently not swamped with more plans than I can carry out and have more freedom/ability to arrange my plans in a way that’s likely to succeed.)
Just wanted to say I’ve appreciated reading along with your exploration of this sequence.
Thanks :)
I expanded ‘shocked at failure’ into:
The plans you make work.
When they fail, it is because of one of the following reasons:
a predicted reason (you took a risk / made a tradeoff, saw it as low probability or unavoidable)
violation of an explicit assumption (encryption used is secure, won’t crash on the way to the airport)
a black swan (coronavirus, 9/11, stock market crash)
When they fail for reasons other than these, you are extremely surprised and can point to exactly what about your worldview and anticipations misled you.