Coaching practices for The Adjacent Possible During a Big Change
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For The Adjacent Possible During a Big Change, 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’ve got a big move (or a new job) coming up in a couple of months, and I can feel it’s a rare chance to start fresh
- 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.
- 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.
- A big change is coming and I’m so focused on what’s next that I’m treating the last weeks of this chapter as a waiting room
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 - Identify and anticipate upcoming transition windows
Treat approaching life changes as scheduled opportunities for habit installation — plan before the transition, not after.
The Habit Discontinuity Effect - 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 - 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 - The last chance before a transition
Before a major life change, fully inhabit what is ending, rather than only anticipating what comes next.
The Last Time Meditation - Use a life transition to break old environment-behavior links
Major context changes (a move, a new job) create a rare window where old habits are disrupted and new ones are easier to form.
Environment Design for Behavior Change - 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 - Update incrementally as evidence arrives rather than waiting for certainty
State your current best-guess probability, identify what would shift it, and update when that evidence arrives.
Ambiguity Aversion — Why Unknown Odds Feel Worse Than Bad Odds - 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
Related concerns
- Adjacent Possible
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 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 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Adjacent Field Exploration
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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