4 - x

”The right question is usually more important than the right answer.”

- Plato

We’ll call him X.

X said goodbye as his colleague left the company. A better offer had come her way. As the door closed, X returned to the task at hand.

Time passed.

3 years later, the former colleague paid a visit to her old office. X was still there, sitting in the same seat, doing the same job. As the colleague greeted her old friends, her eyes fell on X. Never knowing each other that well, the moment was awkward: an echo of their unfamiliarity from 3 years ago. The conversation was stilted – what do you say to someone whom you don’t know, but have to acknowledge? The former colleague broke the silence with a question.

Though the question itself was a shallow one, (intended simply to avoid an uncomfortable silence), it’s timing was perfect.

It resulted in a lesson of such profundity, that it changed X’s perception of himself and the world around him.

The question?

“Hi X, What have you been up to?”

X attempted to answer, but in the gap between stimulus and response, he was made aware of his reality. It made him see something that he had never realized.

In the 3 years since the colleague had left, what had he been up to? He didn’t have an answer for the question. There was not one solid achievement or particularly memorable moment that he could point to as a highlight of the last 3 years.

That was 1095 days. A lot of time to spend on nothing.

X didn’t remember what he said in response to the question, only that the conversation ended quickly. The former colleague left the office, but her question remained long after, humming inside X’s head.

What had he actually done in that time? What had he accomplished? On the surface he couldn’t specify anything, but he could look deeper, and find out the truth.

X used planners each year and never threw them away. They sat in his bottom drawer gathering dust. Kept for no reason, they suddenly served a purpose. X could use them to see what he had accomplished in the last 3 years.

Looking at the start of each book, he noticed something.

These were his goals:

• pay off student loan

• pay off additional 250k debt

• start a family

• write a book

• learn how to make a website

• get to conversational level in Russian

• change job

The same goals appeared in each planner. 3 years in a row.

Of all of these things, X had achieved precisely none of them. At that moment, the truth of his existence hit him. He’d been doing the same thing, day after day, year on year, for 3 years.

For someone that used a planner, this is not what he had planned.

He’d been expecting things to happen, for example:

• a substantial pay rise would come his way

• his dream job would fall into his lap

• or, he would move to another country

But none of these had happened. This brought up another question – what could he have achieved in that time?

X looked up various achievements that took approximately 3 years:

• achieving the rank of blue belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (or a purple belt if he quit his job and trained full time)

• learning another language to an upper intermediate, or conversational level

• starting a family, (the child would would have been talking by now)

• having 1095 dollars in cash if he saved a dollar a day (he didn’t)

• learning how to play a musical instrument, or at least a few melodies

• having trained for and completed a marathon

• completing a degree, or a masters and be on the way to a PHD

• writing a book (it was in X’s goals, but he was waiting for the right time)

• creating and running his own website

So much possibility, none of it realized.

X’s realization turned into crushing disappointment. He’d spent 3 years thinking that things would just happen for him, that the universe would work in his favor. Only it hadn’t bent the knee to his dreams, and it never would. As painful as the moment was, there was an important message within it:

The universe doesn’t give you what you want, but it does offer what you need - if you know where to look.

X saw something. Signs of a pattern. Traces of a loop. He went home that night with a mixture of regret and fascination: regret that he had bullshitted himself for 3 years, but fascination at unearthing his behavioral loops. If these loops could be analyzed, they could be understood. If they could be understood, they could be adjusted, and if they could be adjusted, they could be changed.

*

The next day, X began to pay attention to things he hadn’t noticed before. He analyzed the people around him, those he’d seen everyday for the last 3 years.

Something became immediately apparent.

Loops were everywhere. They were a behavioral pattern which every group adhered to. The more he looked, the more he noticed it in every group of people.

What did X do once he discovered this? He spent the next year studying loops:

• habit loops

• success loops

• failure loops

• relationship loops

• fear loops

Everything.

A picture formed, revealing a startling truth. There is a clear blueprint on how we function as human beings. Everything we do is in a loop. From our daily habits, to long-term goals, and all else in between. But to use these loops to our benefit, we must first understand the different types. Once we know what type of loop we are in, we will know what to do with it.

Next - loops