Aim Before You Act

When a body has gone foggy about why or where, stop and aim: an hour on purpose repays ten of wandering.

The move is called by a feeling rather than by a date. Work is happening, people are busy, and yet nobody at the table could say in one sentence what this season is for. That fog is not a character failing; it is what happens to every body over time as the original reason recedes behind the tasks that were meant to serve it. The instruction is to stop — which is the hard part, because stopping while busy feels like waste, and is the opposite.

Three questions do most of the work, and they are asked in this order. Why are we doing this at all — the purpose beneath the work, which is usually still there and has simply stopped being said (Purpose, One Purpose Above All). Where are we going — the picture of what will be true if this succeeds, stated concretely enough that someone could tell whether it happened (Vision, Best Possible Future). What is the next move — because an aim that does not change what is done on Monday has not been taken.

The arithmetic it rests on is ordinary and easily confirmed. An hour of aiming costs one hour. A season aimed wrongly costs a season, and costs it from everyone at the table. The ratio the canon gives — one to ten — is an estimate offered as a rule of thumb, not a measurement; the point survives any plausible version of it.

Two disciplines keep the hour from becoming theatre. Aim to the Goal rather than to the budget or the available effort: ask what would actually be worth doing and then find the way to it (Design To The Goal, Worthy Goal). And end the hour with something written — a line of purpose, a picture of done, a first next move — because an aim that lives only in the room dissolves before the week does (Choose a Quest, Every Quest Is A Project).

Aiming is not a founding ceremony performed once. It is a move available whenever the fog returns, and the fog returns.

Also called: aiming · an hour on vision and purpose Stands on: Purpose · Vision · The Goal · Intention Opens onto: Choose a Quest · Every Quest Is A Project · Design To The Goal · Worthy Goal · Best Possible Future · Keep Promises Visible · One Purpose Above All · The compass question In play: the table — called by fog, not by the calendar Sources: Play — Aim Before You Act, in The LIØNSBERG Playbook's Questing Plays (first-season vintage, five lines) · the instruments it names — a vision-and-purpose template, an aiming tool, a navigation chart — are listed in The LIØNSBERG Toolkit · lionsberg.wiki: The LIØNSBERG Playbook Open: The card is three sentences; the three instruments it points at carry whatever craft exists, and two of them are not yet written. · "An hour repays ten" is offered without a source and should be read as a figure of speech.