22d • General
The Strategist Plans the Route When It's Sunny
I had a conversation with James Lim, a productivity guru an hour ago with a problem that's been rattling around in my head for a few months.
We were talking about productivity systems—shocking, I know—but he said something that hit different: "The strategist makes a map when the day's dry, but when it's wet and you're late, you beat yourself up. When has it ever worked to never get lost?"
I've been thinking about that a lot.
The Problem With Only Planning for Peak Performance
Here's what I've been doing wrong: I map out my ideal week. I look at all the areas of my life and work—content creation, client calls, health, fitness, sleep—and I design what peak performance looks like in each one. Four focused hours on scripting. Daily workouts. Eight hours of sleep. Perfect meal timing. Structured prospecting calls.
And you know what? It works great. For about three days.
Then I have a bad night's sleep. Or a client call runs long. Or I get sucked into a research rabbit hole. And suddenly, I'm behind. The strategist's perfect plan starts crumbling, and the performer (the actual me, sitting here at 11pm, tired and scattered) feels like a failure for not keeping up.
James introduced me to this concept of upper and lower control limits—borrowed from quality control charts, of all things. The idea is simple but profound:
The upper limit is what the strategist wants. The lower limit is what the performer needs to maintain baseline function.
Why the Gap Matters
The problem with focusing solely on peak performance is that you create a binary: either you're crushing it, or you're failing. There's no middle ground. No grace. No acknowledgment that sometimes you're operating at 60% capacity, and that needs to be okay.
When you only have an upper bound, you're essentially telling yourself: "Perform at 100%, or you're not performing at all." And the moment you drop below that, the whole system collapses. You stop tracking. You stop showing up. Because if you can't do it perfectly, why bother doing it at all?
Synthesized strategic framework and implementation mechanics.
This is good so far. I'm capturing his voice and the core insight. Let me continue with the practical implications and how he's thinking about implementing this.
James's insight was this: Start with the lower bound first. Not as a floor you're afraid to hit, but as a baseline of familiarity. If you've never operated at your lower limit, it becomes a source of fear because it's unfamiliar. You don't trust that you can maintain things there. So when life gets messy (and it always does), you panic instead of downshifting.
What Does a Lower Bound Actually Look Like?
This is where I'm still working through the mechanics. I have about 100 waking hours per week. My strategist wants to optimize every single one. My performer needs to know: what's the minimum to keep the engine running?
For each area of my life and work, what's the "just maintain things as-is" level of input?
- Sleep: Not the optimal 8 hours, but the minimum 6.5 hours that keeps me functional
- Fitness: Not the perfect 5-day split, but the 2-3 sessions that maintain baseline strength
- Content: Not the 20 hours of deep work, but the 8-10 hours that keeps production moving forward
- Client work: Not the proactive outreach and perfect delivery, but the minimum to serve existing clients well
The question I'm wrestling with is whether to design this top-down (allocate my 100 hours across areas) or bottom-up (determine minimum hours per area, then see if it fits).
But I think I'm asking the wrong question. The point isn't to optimize the lower bound—that's still the strategist talking. The point is to establish a floor I trust I can maintain under all conditions, then track whether I'm actually operating within that range.
The 95% Confidence Window
James mentioned keeping 95% of your performance between the bounds. Not 100%. Not even trying for 100%. Just operating within the range most of the time.
That changes everything.
It means some days I'm at the upper bound—crushing four focused hours on content, getting my full sleep, hitting all my routines. Other days I'm at the lower bound—doing the minimum to keep things moving, maintaining the baseline. And both are okay. Both are within spec.
The failure point isn't dropping to the lower bound. It's consistently operating outside the range—either burning out above it, or falling below it for extended periods.
Tracking Input, Not Just Output
The other shift James emphasized: track the input (hours spent), not just the output. Use time as the unit of measurement.
This feels obvious in retrospect, but it's not how I've been operating. I've been obsessing over outputs: Did I finish the script? Did I publish the video? Did I close the client?
But outputs are downstream. They're the result of inputs. And when I'm scattered across multiple areas trying to hit peak outputs in all of them, I lose track of where my time is actually going.
The Units chart from my own QUEST framework tracks inputs for a reason. It tells you what's actually flowing through the system. In business, we track hours of production time. In life, I should track hours of focused input per area.
If I say my lower bound for content is 8 hours per week, and I'm actually spending 3, then I know why the output isn't there. But more importantly, I know what to adjust. I'm not failing at "being productive"—I'm just not hitting my minimum input in that area.
Starting Familiar
There's something deeply practical about this approach that appeals to me. It's the same principle I use with clients: make the constraint explicit, then manage it.
Right now, my constraint is that I'm operating with the fear of dropping below peak. So when conditions aren't perfect—when I'm tired, or scattered, or just having a human moment—I don't know how to downshift gracefully. I either white-knuckle through (and burn out), or I collapse completely (and beat myself up).
James's suggestion to start at the lower bound and increase by 10% each week is brilliant in its simplicity. It builds familiarity with the minimum viable operation. It proves that the floor holds. And it creates a foundation of confidence that makes the upper bound aspirational rather than mandatory.
The Routines for Life Areas Are the Same as Process Engine Areas
This clicked for me: I already know how to do this for businesses. Every engine in a company has a minimum throughput to maintain operations and an optimal throughput when resources are abundant. You design for both.
Why wouldn't I design my life the same way?
Sleep is an engine. Content production is an engine. Client service is an engine. Each needs a minimum input to maintain function and an optimal input when conditions allow.
The goal isn't to run every engine at optimal all the time. That's how you redline and break down. The goal is to know what each engine needs at minimum, ensure you're covering that baseline, and then allocate surplus capacity strategically.
What I'm Testing Next
So here's what I'm implementing:
- Map all life/work areas as engines with minimum and optimal inputs (hours per week)
- Ensure the minimums fit within 100 waking hours—if they don't, something's not sustainable
- Start operating at the lower bound for two weeks to build familiarity
- Track actual hours spent per area, not just outputs achieved
- Increase by 10% per week where capacity allows, but never at the expense of the baseline
The strategist in me wants to optimize this immediately. But that's the whole problem. The performer needs to trust the floor first.
When the day's dry and I'm feeling good, the strategist can plan ambitious routes. But when it's wet and I'm running late, the performer needs to know there's a path that just gets me home.
That's the map I'm building now.
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The Strategist Plans the Route When It's Sunny
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