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I like to use a room analogy when discussing change. It goes a little something like this: Picture yourself walking into an adjoining room that is exactly the same as the one you’re currently in…except for one thing. You get to pick one thing to change. It could be an artifact, a person’s presence, new information, whatever…add, alter or remove. Same thing as you walk into the next room…one more thing. How many rooms would you need to pass through to reach your ideal state? Would you spend more time in some rooms than others? Is there a final room? What can you do now to bypass rooms? It’s a positive (and less morbid) spin on Bill James’ thinking about capacity for action and steering away from situations:

It is not as if we walk through one doorway and decide that murder is acceptable. You have to walk through many doorways. The first doorway leads to a party, where people are doing drugs and having fun. The second doorway leads to more partying. It’s a long, long series of doorways, until you end up in a room where a terrible thing happens. So the question is, “How many doorways away are you?” It’s not a question about a person’s capacity to commit a murder. It’s a question of how many doorways we keep between ourselves and that situation.

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