Ask AltoTRY · 10 MIN
Not From Zero
TAIU
What you are already carrying into the next attempt.
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Tool 70 · Develop yourself
What survives from the old life, and what does not?
A guided 18 to 22 minutes conversation, here in TAIU. Nobody starts from nothing. Work out what you are actually carrying.
You are not starting from nothing. What are you actually carrying?
Some of it is an asset and some of it is weight.
It can be too early to move. That is a finding, not a failure.
What you'll look at
- 01What ended
- 02Where you are
- 03What survives
- 04What is fixed
A note from Mark
I've started again more than once. New countries, new businesses, new roles where nobody knew who I was.
The thing nobody tells you is that you're never starting from zero. You take the relationships, the judgement, the scar tissue and the reputation with you.
You also take some things you'd be better off putting down.
The work is knowing which is which, before you commit to anything.
What you'll get
This will not sort you into a personality type.It will give you answers about your own life that you can test.
01
What survives
02
What has gone
03
Fixed and open
04
The first move
+
Your TAIU handover: a summary of what the conversation found, written so you can take it with you.
See everything included ↓
- 01What ended
- 02Where you actually are
- 03What survives
- 04What genuinely does not
- 05What you are still trying to carry
- 06What is fixed and what is open
- 07The rival reading
- 08What deserves protecting
- 09What remains unresolved
- 10Where this goes next
When you finish
Bring it back to your tree.
Your tree is where TAIU keeps a picture of your whole life, in parts like work, money and health.
This session works on the whole of you, not one part of your life. Nothing is scored. At the end, you are asked once which part of your life this touched most. You can answer none.
The conversation writes this summary for you. Keep the sheet, print it or paste it into My Tree. Nothing from the conversation is stored by TAIU.
- Session
- Date
- The part of life this belongs to
- What we found
- The alternative we tested
- What deserves protecting
- What should change, if anything
- Next actions
- What to notice or find out
- What remains unresolved
What now?
01 · Save it
What survives.
02 · Test it
Write the list of what survives before you write anything else.
See more ↓
What I would do
- 01
Establish the practical position before anything else.
- 02
List what survives, specifically, before discussing anything new.
- 03
Say plainly what has gone rather than softening it.
- 04
Separate what is fixed for now from what is actually open.
- 05
Make one first move, or wait if it is too early.
Test it
- 01
What have you still got that the old life gave you?
- 02
What are you carrying that is not worth the weight?
- 03
What is genuinely fixed for now?
The alternative
The usual reading is that everything must change. Often less has ended than it feels like, and the useful work is smaller and duller than reinvention. The reverse also happens. Somebody insists that most of the old life carries forward when the evidence says the relationships, the standing or the market have gone with it, and rebuilding on that assumption costs another year.
Think about this
- What ended, and when.
- Where that leaves you practically.
- What the old life gave you that you still have.
- What has genuinely gone.
- What you are still trying to carry.
Take this to Ask Mark
You have done the exercise. Now look again at what it found.
This looks at what you found and helps you understand it. It is not another exercise to repeat.
Take this to Ask Mark →Want to go further?
Recommended by the TAIU community
What helped you?
If you've read, watched, listened to or tried something that helped you think about this differently, we'd like to hear about it.
We review recommendations before sharing them with the community.
Finished the exercise?
What did this uncover?
Tell us whether it helped and what you discovered. It takes less than a minute.
Next tool
What changes when time is finite
If the question is what to bring forward
Before you start
Reading, if you would rather understand the question first.
Further thinking
Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes
William Bridges
Working Identity
Herminia Ibarra
Effectuation: Elements of Entrepreneurial Expertise
Saras Sarasvathy
See the thinking ↓
Book
Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes
William Bridges
Bridges separates change, which is the external event, from transition, which is the slower internal business of letting go of who you were while it happens. His most useful claim is that the empty middle stretch is not a failure to move on. It is the part of the process where the next thing actually gets worked out, and rushing it usually produces a decision you reverse later.
Book
Working Identity
Herminia Ibarra
Ibarra followed people through major career and identity change and found that almost none of them thought their way to an answer first. They acted first, in small reversible experiments, and their sense of who they were caught up afterwards. It is the strongest available argument against sitting still until you feel certain.
Article
Effectuation: Elements of Entrepreneurial Expertise
Saras Sarasvathy
Expert founders were found to start from what they already have, who they know and what they can afford to lose, rather than from a goal and a plan. It reframes starting something as a question about available means rather than about vision.
Book
The Other Side of Sadness
George Bonanno
Bonanno's data shows that resilience is the most common response to loss, and that prescribed emotional processing can sometimes make things worse. It is a corrective to the assumption that an unremarkable account of a difficult event must be avoidance, and it is the reason nobody should be pushed to describe the worst part.