The Path Method: The Art of Organizing Uncertainty
There are times when parts of our life become a space of chaos. Sometimes we create our own chaos, and sometimes it just happens to us. It can be a new challenge, change, passion, project - or a mix of these. Moving forward means organizing the uncertainty. A path method makes this possible. It translates the overwhelm of unknowns into clear paths of progress. The process is simple. Here's how it works.
Opportunity question
We start by identifying an opportunity question. This is a "How can we...?" question. It can be as simple as: "How can I make the most of this aspect of my life?" This gives us clarity of focus. Clarity is the optimal antidote to uncertainty. Opportunity questions engage our energy, talents, and imaginations. The more our imagination is engaged, the less unproductive worrying we do. It shifts us from feeling lost or powerless to empowered and productive.
Benefits
Then we identify all the possible benefits of working on our opportunity question. These include long and short term, tangible and intangible, as well as personal and altruistic benefits. Awareness of these benefits gets and keeps us inspired. It infuses our opportunity with meaning and purpose. We are optimally creative and resilient when we live with meaning and purpose.
More on opportunity questions and benefits…
Knowns
In any space of uncertainty, our unknowns are gold. They fuel the currency of our progress. The best way to identify our unknowns is to first start with our knowns. Knowns are anything that is reality, a fact, what we have evidence for. They are things we have already verified, researched, decided.
Unknowns
Unknowns are things we don't know for sure. They include the assumptions of our hunches, guesses, speculations, and opinions. They are what we have not yet clarified, verified, researched, decided, or tried.
Path questions
We translate each unknown into questions of who, what, when, where, why, how, could we, should we, and what would happen if we. A path method works because it’s entirely based on questions that organize the uncertainty.
Actions
For each question, we identify at least one action to answer that question. Common actions include visualizing, asking, searching, and trying. Visualizing is sketching out in our mind or on paper/screen how something could work. Asking is clarifying or learning something from others. Searching is exploring the endless online resources. Trying is experimenting. We create our path by sequencing our actionable questions in the order we will work on and answer them.
More on path questions and actions…
Momentum
Finally, we decide how much time we will work on our path per day or week. This is our path momentum. Even when we have timeline targets we want to make possible, it’s our momentum that fuels our traction and velocity.
Refreshing our path
New unknowns will reveal themselves as we work on and answer our questions. The order and wording of questions can shift and change as we make progress on our Opportunity Question. We might alter our momentum as we go. We keep working from an agile path.
More on momentum and path refreshes…
An alternative to goals and plans
Because few of us have been trained in anything but goals and plans, experiences of uncertainty tempt us into either setting goals and making plans or winging it and hoping for the best.
Goals and plans fail 92% of the time for two reasons: they are based on assumptions and life doesn't work by assumptions. They evoke a continuous experience of doubt which saps our energy and diminishes our creativity. What goals and plans are useful for is generating assumptions we can translate into new questions for any path we're creating and working from. When it comes to organizing any kind of uncertainty, A Path Method is a uniquely functional alternative to goals and plans.
Whenever we want to organize any uncertainty, all it takes is a path method. Paths keep us continuously inspired, engaged, and realistic. They work every time because they are fueled by our most abundant resource in uncertainty - our unknowns.