It's easier to avoid stupidity than trying to be clever.
Playing a game not to lose is not the same thing as playing to win.
To unslip means avoiding stupidity to not lose a game.
In the attempt to find cleverness (successful strategy), you fail fast and fail often. To arrive at successful deterministic outcome, non-lethal failures are employed repeatedly. Successes seldom make good lessons.
For non-deterministic outcome, signals are hardly repeatable, success or failure.
Here you wanna pay attention to the non-stupid moves that you've accumulated. What you did not do wrong here matters more than what you did right.
Without some revision they will easily go unnoticed. Overtime, prudence simply feels like you've done nothing clever.
Like a gratitude journal, take note of stupid moves you did not make.
In poker, these are the raises you folded on.
In investments, these are the losing "opportunities" you passed on.
In coding, these are the technical debt, shortcuts, escalating risks that you decided to not take.
With people, these are the moments you hold your snaps back.
Revisit them mentally, increase the chances of you repeating the same move.
Originally published here