September starts Tuesday. Before you plan it, I want you to run the technique that research psychologist Gary Klein built for teams whose plans kept dying on contact with reality.
It's called a premortem, and it flips planning on its head.
A postmortem asks 'what went wrong?' after the failure. A premortem asks BEFORE you start:
"Imagine it's September 30th. The plan failed completely. Nothing changed. Now — write the story of why."
That's it. You imagine the failure as already real, then explain it.
Why it works: research on 'prospective hindsight' found that imagining an outcome as certain — instead of merely possible — dramatically improves your ability to identify the reasons for it. Your brain is bad at predicting problems but excellent at explaining them. The premortem tricks it into explaining problems that haven't happened yet — while there's still time to remove them.
Try it right now for your September. Finish these sentences:
"It's September 30th and nothing changed, because... I relied on motivation that faded by week two."
"...because the plan needed 2 hours a day and my life had 20 minutes."
"...because nobody knew about my goal, so quitting cost nothing."
Whatever your honest endings are — those are September's real risks. Not the ones you fear. The ones you already know.
Copy-paste this template:
"It's Sep 30 and I failed because _____. So starting Sep 1, I will _____ to make that impossible."
Five minutes tonight. Your September plan will be the first one built to survive its own autopsy.
Kevin | TodayIsTheDay
