Get Out of Your Own Way · Level 0

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0.1 What is actually in the way

Level 0 · 20 min · 2 knowledge checks

Level 0: 0 of 7 gates ticked0 of 7 tasks done

Every stuck situation comes with an explanation attached. The explanation is usually fluent, frequently partly true, and always doing work: it accounts for the lack of movement in a way that requires nothing further from you.

This level takes that explanation apart into three components: what happened, what you concluded from it, and what the conclusion now allows you to avoid. Separating them does not require you to decide your conclusion was wrong. It requires you to notice that the conclusion is a separate object from the event.

The second half of the level moves from what you say to what you do, because your calendar, your spending and your completed work constitute a record of your priorities compiled without your cooperation.

Level 0 lessons

0 of 5 done

Replace the explanation you give for being stuck with a description someone else could check.

0.1What is actually in the way20 min 0.2Fact, conclusion, avoidance22 min 0.3Stories that sound like facts18 min 0.4Behaviour as evidence22 min 0.5Contradiction without collapse18 min

Level 0 exercises

0 of 2 done

Done against a real organisation you choose, not a case study. The gates below are about what these produce.

Exercise 0.A - The examined story

Choose the subject you will carry through the course, then run the five questions on the explanation you give for it.

Produce a single page with six labelled lines: the subject in one sentence naming a person or organisation and the date it stopped moving; the explanation you give most often; what happened as a matter of fact, dated, in a version a neutral observer would sign; the conclusion you drew; one counterexample; and the specific act the conclusion allows you to avoid, named precisely enough to be reversed by one nameable thing.

Expect ninety minutes, most of it on the fact line. Write the fact line first without the conclusion in it, which is harder than it reads.

This fails in three ways. It fails if the fact line still contains an interpretation, which you test by asking whether anyone else present would sign it. It fails if the counterexample is refused because the circumstances were different, since that reasoning removes every counterexample that will ever exist. And it fails if the avoidance is written as a state rather than an act.

Show the page to one person who knows the situation and ask which line they would challenge. Record their answer verbatim, including the parts you disagree with. Two things make that easier than it sounds: people underestimate how often others agree to a request by about 48 per cent, and asking someone for advice raises rather than lowers how competent they judge you, unless you ask someone who has already told you they are not qualified.

Exercise 0.B - The seven day behaviour read

Read your own last seven days across four records and find one contradiction.

Write your three stated priorities. Then, without adjusting them, extract from your calendar the hours that went to each, from your bank statement the discretionary money that supported each, from your message history what you repeatedly discussed, and from your own output what you actually finished. Use real figures. Approximate hours are acceptable, invented ones are not.

Name the single largest contradiction in one sentence. Then schedule one corrective action with four components: date, start time, duration, defined output. Put it in the same calendar you just audited.

This takes about two hours, most of it reconstructing the week. It fails if the read produces a paragraph of self-assessment and no scheduled hour. It fails if the corrective action has no defined output. And it fails if the money column is skipped, because that column is doing specific work: restating a cost in terms of what it displaces moved purchase decisions by twenty percentage points in one experiment, and your spending record performs that restatement on a year of your own choices.

Keep the page. Level 4 asks you to run this read again and compare.

Level 0 gates

0 of 7 ticked

What you should be able to do after this level. Tick each one when it is true. Nobody marks these. Sign in to tick them.

You can state your subject in one sentence naming a person or organisation, the outcome you want, and the date it stopped moving.

Not ticked

You can separate one of your own limiting stories into fact, conclusion and avoidance, with the fact written in a version a neutral observer would sign.

Evidence that shows it: Attach the artefact, or attest with a date if it lives somewhere you cannot upload from.

Not ticked

You have produced one counterexample to a conclusion you have held for more than a year.

Not ticked

You have read seven days of your own calendar, spending, attention and completed work, and named one contradiction in a single sentence.

Not ticked

You have scheduled one corrective action carrying a date, a start time, a duration and a defined output.

Not ticked

You can name the specific act your main explanation allows you to avoid, precisely enough that one nameable action would reverse it.

Not ticked

You have shown your examined story to one person who knows the situation and recorded what they challenged.

Not ticked

Tools in this level

Story examination

Use this to pull one limiting story about your stuck subject apart into the fact, the conclusion you drew from it, and what that conclusion lets you avoid. Write the dated fact, the conclusion, one counterexample, the avoidance, and the smallest action the fact does not prevent.

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Behaviour evidence audit

This checks the priorities you state against what your last seven days actually show. Write your three priorities, what your calendar, spending, recurring conversations and finished work recorded for each, and the one contradiction you found.

Write it, get automatic feedback