The Two But Rule

CHAPTER 12You and Your But

Now that we know how to get our buts in shape, share them with others, and manage them at scale, we're ready to take on truly thorny challenges—to overcome the hardest, most complex problems and capture the most innovative and unexpected opportunities.

We're about to find out how well our new but muscles perform to tackle various challenges, from everyday personal hindrances to big career-related questions and the complexities of starting and running your own business. We'll also talk about untangling new products and technologies, resolving social and political conflict, and finally the small matter of saving the world from calamity.

Each of these cases will present one or more intentions and a series of buts arranged loosely in pairs…naturally.

An odd-numbered but will look like this: But.

An even-numbered but will look like this: BUT.

Easy peasy.

We'll start with a pretty simple case and get progressively more ambitious. You may, along the way, experience but fatigue. That's OK. I didn't say that Momentum Thinking was easy. This isn't a book about decluttering your life. I'm not Marie Kondo. If the world were straightforward and simple, we wouldn't need the Two But Rule.

That said, for every pair of buts in the following cases, you're likely to see opportunities to add your own buts, such as in places where you see other options not explored or where the case doesn't go deep enough. Good! That's the point. Write those down, and start adding your ...