Wisdom and philosophy
The dichotomy of control
Sort everything into what is up to you and what is not, and spend your effort and worry only on the first.
Epictetus (c. 50 to c. 135), the Stoic philosopher born a slave, in the opening line of the Enchiridion, the handbook of his teaching compiled by his student Arrian.
The Enchiridion opens: "Some things are in our control and others not." Epictetus lists what is in our control (opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, in a word our own actions) and what is not (body, property, reputation, command). His advice is to treat the second group as external: things that may happen to you, but that should not decide whether you act well.
It works because a lot of anxiety is effort spent on outcomes you cannot move. Pulling attention back to your own choices puts it where it can change something. It also makes you harder to manipulate: someone who controls your reputation or comfort has less hold on you if you have stopped staking your peace on them.
The split is rarely clean. Most outcomes are partly up to you, and the useful move is to find the part that is. The misuse is passivity: calling something outside your control to excuse not trying, or using calm acceptance to avoid fixing a problem you could fix. Epictetus asked for full effort on what is yours, not indifference to everything.
Example
On 9 September 1965 the US Navy pilot James Stockdale's A-4 jet was shot down over North Vietnam. As he ejected, he later said, he whispered to himself that he was leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus. Philip Rhinelander, a philosophy professor, had given him the Enchiridion while he was a graduate student at Stanford in the early 1960s. As the senior naval prisoner of war in Hanoi he was tortured fifteen times, kept in leg irons for two years and in solitary confinement for four. He used Epictetus's split between what was and was not up to him to keep command of his own conduct. He described it in a speech at King's College London on 15 November 1993.
Where it applies
During an incident, separate what your team controls (rollback, communication, mitigation) from what it does not (the cloud provider's status, the customer's mood) and put people only on the first. In a career, you control the quality of your work and what you ship, not the promotion committee.
Think about it
What are you worrying about this week that is not up to you, and what is the part of it that is?
Applied it to something real? Log it.
Test yourselfUnder the dichotomy of control, where should you put your effort when an outcome is only partly up to you?
On the part that is up to you: your own judgements, choices and actions. The result itself belongs with the things you accept rather than stake your peace on.
Related models
- Circle of competenceKnow where your real understanding ends, and keep your big bets inside that line.
- Regret minimizationFor a big personal choice, imagine yourself at 80 looking back, and pick the option you would be least likely to regret.
- Via negativaImprove things by removing what does harm before adding anything new, because we usually know more about what is wrong than about what is right.
- The fundamental attribution errorWe explain other people's behaviour by who they are and underrate the situation they were in.
- Deliberate practiceExpert skill is built by structured, effortful practice aimed at specific weaknesses with feedback, not by hours spent doing the activity.