D · DESTINATION
Quick Recipes
Short methods that combine cognitive moves. Explore situations, examples, and related possibilities.
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Choose a named move in this branch to open its working page and checks.
- The So-That Ladder
Add 'so that...' to your goal 3 times until you reach a state that's valuable in itself.
- Metric Courtroom
Put your metric on trial for 40 seconds: what does it predict, how can it be gamed, and what would expose the game?
- The Beneficiary Seat
Draw 3 seats, who benefits, who pays, and who can veto, and put a named person in each.
- The After Photo
Imagine one photo before and after success: what could an observer literally see done differently in 30 days?
- The Counterfactual Twin
Compare your plan against a twin reality using the same time and money on the best alternative.
- Draw the Enough Line
Mark the smallest amount that solves the problem and the point where extra gains stop mattering.
- Floor Before Flight
Complete 'even if we hit the goal, it's failure unless ____' and protect those 1 or 2 conditions.
- Install a Ceiling Cap
Set a hard maximum on the resource being overdrawn and decide in advance where spare capacity goes.
- The Goldilocks Band
Replace an exact target with 3 zones, too little, workable, too much, each with an observable boundary.
- The Winning-Losing Flip
Write 3 endings to 'we hit the target, but it was a real failure because...' and turn the most plausible into an anti-goal.
- The Sacrifice Budget
Price the maximum time, money, risk, and stress you'll spend, and mark the one resource that can't be traded away.
- The Empty-Chair Veto
Give the absent person who absorbs consequences a seat, voice their strongest objection, and decide if it's a veto, floor, or question.
- Goal Triage
Sort conflicting outcomes into must-protect, threshold, optimize, and bonus, plus one tie-break rule.
- The Three Clocks
Write Now, Next, and Later with one desired state and one cost under each, and stop borrowing from protected later states.
- The Lead–Lag Couple
Pair one weekly steerable behavior with one delayed real result, and set a date to distrust the lead if the lag doesn't move.
- The Bad-Weather Test
Stress the goal with 3 ordinary shocks and design a minimum version that survives them.
- Turn It into a Two-Way Door
Shrink a big uncertain commitment to about 10%, keep the exit open, and name the evidence needed before going all in.
- Learn Before Earn
When the mechanism is unknown, run the cheapest decision-linked test with a deadline before setting a performance target.
- The Minimum Viable Win
Find the smallest real result that would change your next decision or prove the core mechanism.
- The Stoplight Contract
Precommit green, amber, and red triggers so evidence, not hope or sunk cost, decides what happens next.
- The Portfolio Pie
Allocate 100 points across the outcomes that must coexist to expose what one salient goal is consuming.
- The Goal Rehire Interview
Fire the goal for 60 seconds and ask, with today's evidence, whether you would hire it back and at what scope.
- Sacred Activity Check
Ask whether measuring an intrinsically valuable activity would improve it or replace its point, and protect what shouldn't be scored.