Coaching practices for Adjacent Possible
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Adjacent Possible, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I keep planning by staring at the huge faraway goal and feeling stuck, when what I actually need is to look at what I already have right now and ask what that makes possible this week.
- I’m staring at this problem convinced I need some whole new skill I don’t have, when I have a hunch something I already do well in another part of my life could quietly solve most of it if I just turned it sideways.
- Everyone I talk to does basically what I do and reads what I read, so my ideas just keep recycling the same stuff
- I’m about to pour a year into learning something, and I keep second-guessing whether I’m betting everything on one narrow outcome or building something that would still pay off no matter which way the future breaks.
- I’m betting on "this will happen and then that will follow," and the link between them feels airtight to me
Practices that may help
- The Adjacent Possible, Made Practical
The adjacent possible, a concept from complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman and popularized by Steven Johnson in Where Good Ideas Come From, describes the set of next steps that are accessible from where you currently stand — not all future possibilities, only those one move away. In practice, it reframes innovation and personal development as disciplined boundary-expansion rather than heroic leaps: each new position opens a new adjacent possible that was not reachable before. - Map your current edge: what is one step away from where you are?
List everything that is genuinely accessible from your current skills, relationships, and resources — your adjacent possible is defined by what you already have.
The Adjacent Possible, Made Practical - Exaptation: look for how a tool or skill in one context could serve a different one
Ask of any existing skill, tool, or process you already use: "What else could this do that it was not designed for?"
The Adjacent Possible, Made Practical - Build a liquid network: expose yourself to people at the edge of different fields
Seek out conversations and environments where ideas from adjacent fields are in the air — most good ideas are collisions, not inventions.
The Adjacent Possible, Made Practical - Platform thinking: build capabilities that enable many futures rather than optimizing for one
Invest in skills, tools, and relationships that expand your adjacent possible in multiple directions rather than optimizing for a single outcome.
The Adjacent Possible, Made Practical - Red-team joint scenarios before betting on them
Before acting on a conjunction ("X will happen AND Y will follow"), assign a skeptic to attack the "and."
The Conjunction Fallacy — When "More Details" Feels More Likely - ZOPA: The Zone of Possible Agreement
ZOPA (Zone of Possible Agreement) is the range of outcomes that both parties would prefer to reaching no deal at all. If one party’s minimum acceptable term is better than the other’s maximum acceptable, a ZOPA exists and a deal is theoretically reachable. If there is no overlap, no mutually acceptable deal is possible and negotiators are wasting time pursuing one. - Test each component probability separately
Before judging a joint claim, estimate each element on its own, then check whether the conjunction is lower.
The Conjunction Fallacy — When "More Details" Feels More Likely - Treat errors as adjacent-possible expansion events
When something goes wrong, ask what new territory the failure has made visible that success would have hidden.
The Adjacent Possible, Made Practical - Use a stepping-stone idea: an intermediate impossible idea
Generate a deliberately impractical intermediate idea to use as a bridge to a practical one you could not have reached directly.
Lateral Thinking, Made Practical
Related concerns
- Adjacent Possible Exaptation
Ask of any existing skill, tool, or process you already use: "What else could this do that it was not designed for?"
Exaptation: look for how a tool or skill in one context could serve a different one
- The Adjacent Possible When Burned Out
The adjacent possible, a concept from complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman and popularized by Steven Johnson in Where Good Ideas Come From, describes the set of next steps that are accessible from where you currently stand — not all future possibilities, only those one move away. In practice, it reframes innovation and personal development as disciplined boundary-expansion rather than heroic leaps: each new position opens a new adjacent possible that was not reachable before.
- Adjacent Possible Capabilities
The adjacent possible, a concept from complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman and popularized by Steven Johnson in Where Good Ideas Come From, describes the set of next steps that are accessible from where you currently stand — not all future possibilities, only those one move away. In practice, it reframes innovation and personal development as disciplined boundary-expansion rather than heroic leaps: each new position opens a new adjacent possible that was not reachable before.
- The Adjacent Possible When Starting Out
The adjacent possible, a concept from complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman and popularized by Steven Johnson in Where Good Ideas Come From, describes the set of next steps that are accessible from where you currently stand — not all future possibilities, only those one move away. In practice, it reframes innovation and personal development as disciplined boundary-expansion rather than heroic leaps: each new position opens a new adjacent possible that was not reachable before.
- The Adjacent Possible As A Parent
The adjacent possible, a concept from complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman and popularized by Steven Johnson in Where Good Ideas Come From, describes the set of next steps that are accessible from where you currently stand — not all future possibilities, only those one move away. In practice, it reframes innovation and personal development as disciplined boundary-expansion rather than heroic leaps: each new position opens a new adjacent possible that was not reachable before.
- The Adjacent Possible At Work
The adjacent possible, a concept from complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman and popularized by Steven Johnson in Where Good Ideas Come From, describes the set of next steps that are accessible from where you currently stand — not all future possibilities, only those one move away. In practice, it reframes innovation and personal development as disciplined boundary-expansion rather than heroic leaps: each new position opens a new adjacent possible that was not reachable before.
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