The Polymath Experiment

Adapt · 06 · Field manual · PDF

The Adaptation Manual

What to do when reality breaks the plan, one step at a time.

A customer who stopped coming, a plan that fell behind, an exam you didn't pass, a setback that landed all at once. This manual gives you a short, repeatable way to handle the moment a plan stops fitting: put the plan and the ground side by side, tell noise from change, find the assumption it touches, decide in advance whether to persist, adjust or let go, recover in the right order, and put a review on the calendar.

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The Adaptation Manual cover, with a plan and what is actually happening meeting at one assumption, and three options

Adapt · 06 · One idea, drawn twice

Draw it as it feels, then as it works

The manual uses the same grammar as the book: the plan as written, then the assumption checked against what's happening. Here's a pair from the book, Chapter 1 of The Adaptive Mind.

16 seconds · the first drawing, then the redrawingA restaurant's lunch plan: every slow month a reason to push harder, until the key assumption is checked against the ground.

The method: redraw the plan

  1. What did I expect, and what is actually happening?
  2. Is this noise, or a change?
  3. Which assumption does it touch?
  4. Persist, adjust or let go, and what would tell me which?
  5. What do I need to recover first?
  6. What will I review, and when?

How navigators adapt

Every unit has a navigator's view: how sailors, pilots, mountain guides, emergency physicians and coaches handle the same moment, translated for an ordinary week. Then three field cases, a driving school whose phones went quiet, a career changer who fails a key exam and a clinic that keeps running late, a printable Redraw Canvas and a Recovery Plan for the first days after a setback.

It doesn't pretend setbacks are secretly gifts. Some losses stay losses; the method helps you respond to them clearly.

Eleven units, one sentence each

Adapt · 06.01 – 06.11
  1. 06.01The plan and the groundA plan is a guess. Write down what it assumes, and check the assumptions against the ground.
  2. 06.02Weak signalsLog every warning in one place, and read them together.
  3. 06.03A fixed baselineCompare with where you started, not only with last time.
  4. 06.04Count the explanationsWhen a plan keeps disappointing, count the excuses and write down what each predicts.
  5. 06.05The second loopWhen fix after fix fails, question the assumption they all share.
  6. 06.06TripwiresDecide in calm what will make you change course, and when you'll check.
  7. 06.07Letting go wellWhen a goal is out of reach, keep what it was for and find another way to it.
  8. 06.08The first daysAfter a setback, split the problem: what's harmed, what's intact, what to do first.
  9. 06.09Small trialsBefore a big change, run the smallest version that can teach you something.
  10. 06.10Keep what it's forChange what you do; keep what it's for.
  11. 06.11The reviewReview what went well as carefully as what went badly, on a date in the calendar.

Inside the PDF

A5 pages · read on screen or print at home
Part 1, Redraw the Plan: a dog-grooming van's plan and what's actually happening, with three options and a test.
Unit 06, Tripwires: a renovation budget with a tripwire set before the work began, forked into three responses.
Field case C: a veterinary clinic's overruns, drawn as a first loop of fixes and a second loop that tests the assumption.
The Redraw Canvas: the six questions on one printable page.

Where it fits

The manual is the entry to the Adapt stage; the book, The Adaptive Mind, goes deeper, and you can get both as a set for €39. For the choices adapting forces on you, The Decision Field Manual helps you decide well and learn from how it turns out. For acting before you can know what happens next, try The Fear & Uncertainty Manual.

Start free

The way of thinking behind this manual grows out of The Polymath Bible, which is free. Get the book and a weekly letter with one idea, one diagram and one exercise.