The one sentence rule

A lot of times when working on a project—or your life—you find yourself stuck. And the ideas come in. Should I do this? Should I do that?

Especially at the exhaustion stages of a project—or your life—it’s common to just want to pick one and get it over with. But which one?

Pay attention, class, here’s where I get as life coach as I ever get: As a boy in Sweden I read a chess book that said, paraphrasing, “If you can’t tell yourself in one sentence what a move will accomplish, it’s not a good move.”

That’s Sun Tzu level discipline.

“If you can’t tell yourself in one sentence what a move will accomplish, it’s not a good move.”

Try it the next time you have an urge to do something. Can you tell yourself, in one sentence, what that action will accomplish?

If you can’t, that action will most likely take you to the same place you’re at, or worse, just a little farther down the road.