Extract your replicable success pattern from 5 fields…
For each genuine success in the past two years, document conditions present, behaviors that differed from defaults, people involved, internal state, and 48-hour setup—then surface elements appearing in three or more instances as your replicable success pattern.
When This Fires
- During annual or quarterly self-review when assessing performance
- Before starting a new project and wanting to maximize success probability
- When you want to understand why some projects succeed and others don't
- After a significant win, while the context is still fresh
Common Failure Mode
Analyzing only the obvious factor: "I succeeded because I worked hard." Hard work is present in your failures too. The five-field structure forces you to capture the full ecology, revealing the less obvious factors — the 48-hour setup routine, the specific collaborator, the energy state — that distinguish successes from failures.
The Protocol
(1) List 5-7 genuine successes from the past two years. (2) For each, fill five fields: conditions, non-default behaviors, people, internal state, 48-hour setup. (3) Compare across successes: which elements appear in three or more? (4) Those recurring elements are your replicable success pattern. (5) Before your next project, cross-reference the plan against these elements (Before starting a project, cross-reference your success…) and deliberately engineer the overlapping conditions from day one.