The Stoplight Contract

Precommit green, amber, and red triggers so evidence, not hope or sunk cost, decides what happens next.

Three weekends into your family's ambitious hiking project, everyone swears they'll "adjust if it stops being fun." But nobody defined what that means, so each Saturday the tired kids get talked into one more mile, because hope and sunk cost are making the call that evidence was supposed to make. Vague promises to adapt are how bad plans outlive their welcome.

The Stoplight Contract precommits the triggers. The cue: people say they'll respond to evidence but have named no thresholds. The move: write three lines before the next outing. Green, continue: energy stays stable and people talk about next week unprompted. Amber, revise or gather evidence: irritability rises or someone starts dreading Fridays. Red, stop or escalate: safety or health is compromised. Give each an observable trigger and set a review date. What changes: the decision to push on, scale back, or quit gets made by the contract you wrote when you were clear-headed, not by whoever argues hardest when everyone's exhausted. The warning: don't let one noisy datapoint fire a red light unless the harm is severe; require persistence or confirmation for signals that naturally bounce around.