Retrograde Analysis: Build Your Life From The End Backwards
Photo by Vlad Sargu on Unsplash
My dream is to empower our generation to live intentionally. A life built deliberately by you. I’m the annoying(?) guy that interrogates his friends about their choices (and, in particular, whether those choices sabotage their goals). I’m not perfect at avoiding that self-sabotage myself, but I get better at it every year.
I’ve been reading John Leland’s Happiness Is A Choice You Make, and Leland talks about using retrograde analysis to figure out how we want to live our lives now in order to have the life we want to have later.
It is an exceptionally intentional way to set up your life, and I feel it’s worth exploring - maybe it’ll help me kick that self-sabotage for good.
What Is Retrograde Analysis?
Retrograde analysis can be summed up like this: Starting at the end with your goals, work backwards to figure out all all the steps you need to take to achieve those goals.
Leland explains why chess players find it so useful:
Instead of working forward from the beginning of a game, they work backward from an endgame, figuring out the sequence of moves that led to a particular arrangement of pieces. If white has a slight edge, what move did he or she make to get there, and what move before that one? And so on. The idea is that at the start of a game, each player has so many pieces on the board and potential ways to move them that it is very difficult to see which moves might lead to a desired result, but if you work backward from a destination, the choices become fewer and less opaque. You can ignore the moves that don’t get you where you want to go and focus on the ones that do.
So How Does This Work?
The first step is to figure out what you want your life to look like. Not just in the middle (big house, happy kids, flat stomach), but near the end. When you’re feeling the wear and tear of age, what would a happy and fulfilled life look like? Personally, I want a deep and loving partnership with my wife, strong connections with my children, and a sense of purpose and creativity each day.
Now what? Leland says:
Now think of the steps that will get you there. Fortunately, most are things that make us happier and more fulfilled throughout our lives. If you want close, supportive relationships with friends and family members when you’re eighty-five, trace a series of moves leading up to that, all the way back to the present time. Pleasant, right? That’s the universe telling you to spend more time with people you care about. If you want a life of purpose, don’t you think you’d better start finding your purpose now? You may not get there by working more hours, coming home late, putting off time with your friends and family. Maybe you want a different job, a long talk with your son, a move to a different part of the country. Maybe the answer is ending a marriage in which you’re no longer helping each other grow. I never said this was going to be easy.
And so what do I need to do to get to my goal? The answers seem almost easy: spend time with my wife and my son, leaving space for our relationship to grow instead of forcing my expectations on it; set aside time and space for being creative; and foster purpose-driven activities. I’ve been trying to do all of that, especially lately.
Of course, there’s more to retrograde analysis. Let’s take a sense of purpose. One might think that I need to find that purpose. But working backwards, as my life changes, I could see my purpose also change. So it’s not enough to have a specific purpose, I need to be the type of person that commits to my purpose. It needs to drive me. It’s really a question of mindset and drive as much as it is direction. So I need to cultivate that commitment to purpose now, and trust that the purpose itself will evolve.
The other benefit of retrograde analysis is that looking backwards helps to cut out the noise (e.g. all the moves I make that don’t bring me towards my goals). What are those things? Spending too much time on social media, even if it’s for the laudable goal of building my business. Focusing on the busy stuff instead of the important stuff. Cultivating a wide social net instead of a deep social net. Those types of things seem like they’re bringing me towards my goal, but when I work backwards they aren’t the things that add up to success.
What does this mean for you?
What do you want in life? Do you want:
A deep loving relationship with your kids?
Meaningful and nourishing friendships?
Work that you’re passionate about, that you’d do even if you weren’t paid?
A legacy?
What do those look like for you? If you were to have them, what would be the last step you took before getting them? Working backwards all the way to today, what are all of the steps you’d need to take to get there? What’s the step you need to take today?