Decide When to Quit Before You Start
Inspired by Annie Duke episode
Annie Duke on pre-mortems: Set kill criteria upfront. Same with parenting experiments. Decide in advance when to call it and try something else.
Annie Duke says a pre-mortem only works if you set up kill criteria. Commit to actions you'll take when you see those signals.
You're trying a new bedtime routine. Excellent. Very hopeful of you. But before you start, decide what makes you quit. Three nights of worse sleep? A week? Two weeks of the kid screaming like you're murdering them while you try gentle sleep training? Decide now. Not at 2am when you're googling "is four hours of sleep enough to drive safely."
Without kill criteria, you either bail after one bad night or you're still doing this stupid routine when the kid is in college. You need the exit plan before emotions run high. If we try the 7:30 bedtime and he's still awake at 10pm for three straight nights, we admit defeat and go back to chaos. Write it down. Sign it. Notarize it if you have to.
Otherwise you're arguing in the dark about whether to quit while someone small is throwing books at your head.
