Fix or hope

Everything in the book so far comes down to one distinction. A fix removes a cause you can name. A hope is expected to remove a feeling. The listings can't tell you which one you're looking at, and neither can the preview, because the preview is the same for both. What tells you is a question, and it needs to be answered in writing, because in your head it will slide back into the preview.

The Thursday question. What, exactly, will be different at four o'clock on a Thursday afternoon? Not the first morning, and not a Sunday. Thursday at four, in the third month, when the season is over and the thing is just the thing. Write down where you'll be, what you'll be doing, and what will be different from where you are and what you're doing at four o'clock this Thursday.

Then look at what you wrote. A fix produces sentences with facts in them. "I'll be home by half past four instead of half past five." "I won't be in the room with the person who shouts." "The baby's room won't have mould on the wall." "I'll be able to walk to see the friend I now drive forty minutes to." Those are causes. Each names a thing that's true now and won't be, and each is a thing you can check in the third month. If the third-month Thursday has them in it, the change worked, whatever the hum is doing.

A hope produces sentences with feelings in them, or nothing. "I'll feel more settled." "It'll feel like a fresh start." "I'll be somewhere that feels like mine." Or the pen stops, because when you try to describe the Thursday all you can find is the feature you saw on the listing, the garden, and a garden at four on a Thursday in the third month is not different from a wall, it's the thing outside the window while you do what you'd be doing anyway.

The cause test. Having written the Thursday, underline every fact. Then ask of each one whether it's been true in the last two places or the last two jobs. A cause that follows you isn't a cause of the place. If the underlined facts are all things you've had before and the hum survived them, the change is a hope wearing a fix's clothes.

One honest paragraph. Finally write a paragraph that includes the things the preview leaves out. The same job, if you're moving house. The same tiredness, if you're changing job. The same argument, the same phone, the same Thursday. Wilson and Gilbert's finding is that forecasts fail by leaving those out, so put them in on purpose. If the change still looks worth it with the rest of your life written back in, it probably is.

Do this before any big change, and do it for the one you've got lined up now. It takes ten minutes. It's my method and it hasn't been tested as a package. What it's built on, the focusing illusion and the impact bias, has been, and the whole design is to force the forecast to contain a Thursday.