How "premeditatio malorum" helped me keep my cool when I smashed my phone

Welcome to 2024 - your best year yet! 🎆 🍾

Whether you do resolutions or not, there's definite power in setting intention (goals) and figuring out your systems for achieving those goals. Prior to the holiday break I'd already done that in my professional life, and over the break I added in elements of my personal life; health and wellness, fitness, relationships, etc. For example, I want to hit a 200-lb clean and increase my VO2 max by three points.

Once you break a goal into the habits, systems, and process components, it's really empowering. These are the inputs that will drive your goal. You have a set of things that are well within your control. You can begin to act on these habits with relatively little friction (only those that exist when establishing any new habit).

Once you've designed the inputs this is where you let go of the goal because it's not something you control. You just get down to work on the process and achieving your goal comes down to luck, how well you designed your inputs, and whether you execute them consistently.

What goals have you set for yourself in the new year? Reply back and let me know. I'll help cheer you on! 📣

Kevin

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A Quote

“ A wise leader once told me, “Before you attempt to set things right, make sure you see things right.” That advice helped me to understand that most miscommunication is a result of people’s having different assumptions. We can correct those wrong assumptions and prevent miscommunication by asking questions. — John C. Maxwell

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Three Things

1 - 📶 In Defense of Raising the Bar - I recently subscribed to Wes Kao’s newsletter and enjoyed this one on having high standards. She challenges some common statements people make about the tradeoffs between speed and quality; “you likely have plenty of room to do both before needing to make this trade-off.” She reminds us that “working on a team with high standards will sharpen you more than any course, book, mentorship, or formal learning opportunity will.”

2 - 🔪 “Shia Lebouf” Live by Rob Cantor - At 83M views on YouTube (released nine years ago) this may not be new to you, but I’m willing to bet you haven’t heard it recently. There’s a lot to love here, but “normal Tuesday night” has to be one of my all-time great chuckle lyrics. My family listened to this a lot a few years ago. When it came on again recently I felt compelled to share it with you!

3 - 🦸‍♀️ Secret Identities - I had never heard of Todd Herman before listening to his podcast episode with Shane Parrish on The Knowledge Project, but now I want to read his book, “The Alter Ego Effect”. He had smart things to say about learning, challenging assumptions, and adding meaning to activities. He’s worked with several world class performers (e.g. Kobe Bryant and his Black Mamba persona) and had a lot to say about what differentiates operating at a world-class level.

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Deeper Dive

When was the last time you broke your phone?

Two Fridays ago I woke up to a cool and foggy morning. I was off work and looking forward to the pre-holiday weekend activities.

I took my two dogs out for a walk around the neighborhood. It wasn’t a work day and the walk was more relaxed; nothing to rush back home for.

I was listening to a podcast and thinking about what was being said. I had a thought I didn’t want to lose, so I had to grab my phone to note it. One hand held both leashes, so I used my other hand to reach across my body, into my pocket, to pull out the phone.

I’ve done this maneuver countless times with no issue. Until this day.

This was the day where my phone decided to take a detour out of my pants and nose-dive for the pebbled sidewalk.

This was not a tall drop, but two things conspired against me. One, the phone landed glass-side down - perfectly flat like a belly flop into the pool. Two, this brief stretch of sidewalk happens to be made of pebbles, not flat concrete. The three-foot belly flop connected with a particularly pointed pebble and the result was a non-functional phone.

Cue sad trombone sound.

To add insult to injury - in the tumult my brain also forgot whatever important thought I wanted to write down in the first place!

While I would like a do-over, this bad situation was less bad because I’d done a little premeditiatio malorum beforehand.

Premeditatio malorum - which roughly translates into “the premeditation of evils” - is a concept taken from Stoic philosophy. It’s a mental exercise of anticipating future problems.

This is not done so that you can worry endlessly about what could go wrong. It’s done so that you can prepare yourself for any bad outcomes.

Marcus Aurelius does this in Meditiations. He wakes up in the morning and imagines his day; all the obstacles he might meet.

In the case of my phone, I’d already thought, “What would happen if my phone was stolen?” I listed out all the bad things that might happen. For example: - No access to 2FA - No text message access to recover services - Compromised financial services - Lost photos

Because I’d anticipated these problems, I could figure out how to solve them before they were needed. This gave me time to research and execute when there wasn’t any pressure. I put mitigations in place and then went about my life.

Robert Greene has a quote on this from Cardinal Richelieu in his book, "The 48 Laws of Power."

When my phone completely broke over the break, instead of frantically trying to solve all of these problems in the moment, I was able to calmly execute repair/replacement actions knowing everything was backed up.

This is why premeditatio malorum is so helpful; as Machiavelli says, evils are easily cured ahead of time.

In today’s newsletter I’ll share some examples of premeditatio malorum, a couple tips, and close with a call to action on your 2024 goals.

Let’s explore a few areas where premeditatio malorum can apply to life.

While this concept can be used for literally anything that has an uncertain future outcome, we’ll focus our examples today on three areas:

1. Business Strategy
2. Financial Planning
3. Health and Wellness

This exercise can be done iteratively and consists roughly of two parts; anticipation and preparation. What could go wrong, and then act upon that information. I’ll use the anticipation / preparation framing in these three examples.

💼 Business Strategy

What are your business goals for the next 1-3 years? What could prevent you from achieving them?

Anticipation:

Maybe a team you depend on will not commit to (or will back out of a commitment) for resources. Maybe a team will produce a major milestone late. Your customer behavior might change. A competitor might beat you to market.

Preparation:

Maybe you choose to design around the dependencies or lower the scope of the ask. Maybe you test your assumptions early, like customer behavior for different options. Maybe you watch a key competitor more closely and prepare marketing material in advance so you can execute swiftly.

💵 Financial Planning

Think of your long-term financial goals. What’s your time horizon? What could go wrong?

Anticipation:

You could lose your job. The market could take a sharp downturn. Inflation goes up. Your bank goes under. Tax laws change. Change in medical circumstances.

You can zoom into each one of these to provide more granularity and detail to help your preparations.

The job loss might mean three months with no income and then an ongoing 10% decline relative to your prior job.

The medical circumstances might mean you have periodic large bills and ongoing prescriptions to fill.

Preparation:

For the job loss you might build up your savings, reduce your fixed expenses, learn a new skill, and start being more intentional about networking.

For the medical circumstances you may preemptively change your exercise and diet habits. You might increase the total amount you’re planning on saving.

🏋️ Health and Wellness

Are you trying to lose weight? Do you have a 5K race goal? Strength goals? Do you want to improve sleep quality?

Anticipation:

For losing weight, maybe you know of some large group events that will have unhealthy alcohol and food - and the social pressure to participate. Maybe it’s hard to regulate sugar when you’ve got cookie options in the pantry.

If you are planning on joining a gym, maybe the class schedules will periodically conflict with some family events. Maybe you know that the commute time will often be an excuse not to go.

Preparation:

For the group event, maybe you enlist an accountability buddy to go with you. You’ll both help each other not drink and make healthy choices. For cookies in the pantry, you could keep those off the grocery list - if you can make it through the store without buying, they won’t be at home to tempt you (speaking from experience here!).

For the gym, you may choose a different class time. You may choose to buy some equipment at home to solve the commute issue - paired with some online accountability to ensure you’ll commit.

Those three examples should give you a good general sense of how to approach this exercise. No matter what aspect of life you’re working on, the approach is straightforward. Anticipate what could go wrong, the prepare for the possibility in advance.

Here are two helpful tips when doing this yourself.

Play - I find it helpful to bring an element of play and creativity into brainstorming preparations. Focus on interesting ways to surmount the issue as opposed to the issue itself.

Detail - Think of this exercise like building a map. Using a globe to drive across the country isn’t as helpful as a detailed topographical and street level map. The detail provided by the latter will give you much more insight. The same is true here; if you can only name a general worry your corresponding action will lack the detail you need to solve it.

Now that you know so much about premeditatio malorum it’s time to put it to work!

Since you have goals for yourself in 2024 and beyond, this is the perfect time to apply this thinking. This week pick at least one of your goals for 2024 and do some premeditatio malorum.

Anticipate what could go wrong. List out the potential issues.

Prepare solutions to those problems in advance. Be creative while you’ve got the time!

Again, you’re doing this exercise not to get caught up in worry. You’re doing it so you can calmly execute plans when the universe inevitably throws curve balls - and pebbled concrete sidewalks - your way.

Good luck - and remember to have fun with it!

If you haven’t done so already, please email me and let me know what some of your 2024 goals are. I’d love to cheer you on!

Here’s to your successful 2024! 🥂

Kevin