Hello friends,
I have a friend whose job is to discourage me from starting businesses.
In the past few years Iāve considered launching an AI fundraising platform, a multipotentialite cohort course, a secondhand record store, a VW Bulli YouTube channel, an impact investment agency, a strategic consultancy for rewilding, a car detailing businessā¦
I canāt help myself.
Without guiderails, this approach to life and work can be utterly exhausting. But not for the reason we think. Itās not because we have too many options.
No, options are fine (in fact I often tell people: if you are stuck in making a decision, go for the choice with the most optionality).
Nope, this approach is doomed to fail because weāre classifying the options all wrong.
We tend to assess whatās possible, rather than what is adjacent possible.
That mistake generates a list that is effectively infinite and infinite lists don't produce decisions, my friends. They produce exhaustion.
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WHAT IS IT?
The adjacent possible was introduced by Stuart Kauffman, a theoretical biologist, in the late 90s to describe how evolution explores available possibilities in complex adaptive systems, not through giant leaps, but through incremental moves, each one reshaping what becomes available next.
Steven Johnson brought it to a wider audience in Where Good Ideas Come From (2010).
āA good idea is a network. A specific constellation of neuronsāthousands of themāfire in sync with each other for the first time in your brain, and an idea pops into your consciousness. A new idea is a network of cells exploring the adjacent possible of connections that they can make in your mind.ā
The definition is simple (though the implications, sadly, are not). The adjacent possible is the set of moves genuinely available to you from where you actually are right now. Not where you wish you were, not where you were two years ago, not where your friend with the book deal currently stands (hi Mark!). Just what's one door away. Nothing further.
Think of it as a house that expands with each door you open. The rooms you can enter tomorrow depend entirely on which rooms you've already walked through. You cannot skip floors and you can only open what's adjacent.
Which means the AI fundraising platform, the record store, the rewilding consultancyā¦ these weren't bad ideas. Some of them might even be genuinely available to me, eventually. But for these options to be useful and not overwhelming, I need to consider whatās actually available to me now, from here, with what I've actually built.
That's a much shorter list and with it we can reshape our careers, lives, and organisations.
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WHEN THINGS FALL APART
The adjacent possible short-circuits a bunch of anti-patterns; observable ways of thinking that indicate deeper problems.
Antipattern #1: The pivot loop
You've started more things than you've finished. Each one felt right at the time, and each one stalled or got quietly shelved when the next thing appeared on the horizon. You've probably called this a focus problem, or a commitment problem, or (if you've been watching my Youtube channel!) a multipotentiality problem.
But it isn't. It's what happens when you're optimising across an infinite list. The loop doesn't stop because you lack discipline; it stops when the list gets shorter. And (*spoiler alert*) the list only gets genuinely shorter when you filter by what's adjacent.
Antipattern #2: Comparison paralysis
You look at where a peer has got to (their role, their funding, their audience, their clarity, their pay bump) and feel a specific, unpleasant mixture of admiration and dread. You've called this imposter syndrome, or falling behind, or just a bad LinkedIn morning.
But what you're actually doing is comparing your current path to theirs, which is meaningless. Their adjacent possible is the product of their specific sequence of actualisations: the doors they opened, in their order, from their starting point. You didnāt start from the same place, you don't have access to that sequence. You have access to yours.
Antipattern #3: Productive stagnation
This one is the sneakiest. The research, the planning, the conversations about the idea, the deck that's nearly ready; all have the texture and colour of progress. But (and I hate to be the one to tell you this) you're not moving.
This is busy work. You're generating possibilities and leads without filtering by adjacency. You've called this overthinking or perfectionism but it is, fundamentally, just a list problem. And you know what we do with lists. (Snip... āļø)
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HOW TO MAKE IT WORK
The adjacent possible isn't a planning tool. It's a filter, something you run your options list through. Hereās how to operationalise it.
A. Map what you've already done
Before asking what's next, take an honest inventory of what's already real, a straightforward account of what you've actually built: skills, relationships, outputs, things you've shipped, credibility you've earned. Your adjacent possible is defined entirely by what you've already *shudders* actualised (your USP, I guess). The doors available tomorrow are determined by the rooms you've already walked through. Most people I coach skip this step because it feels like looking backwards but it's the only way to know which doors are genuinely in reach.
B. Filter by adjacency, not ambition
As discussed, the āwhat do I want?ā list is infinite and annoying and you've already paid that tax. Instead, ask: which of the things I want are one door away from where I actually stand? The adjacent possible doesn't shrink your ambition but sequences it. My rewilding consultancy might be real eventually. But itās not adjacent now: Iām good at strategy and I live in the forests of the Sauerland, but I would need to retrain. There's a door to walk through first. Ambition sets our destination, but adjacency sets the next move.
C. Do the boring thing that opens the next room
Your next genuine move is usually the least glamorous one available. Not the wild pivot, not the glitzy rebrand, but the thing that perhaps feels too small. Actualising one adjacent possible doesn't open one new door; it opens a cluster of them. The boring move unlocks more than you can see from where you're standing. Alas, you don't always get to know in advance which one so you just gotta open one of the doors nearest to you.
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TRY IT THIS WEEK
Letās pretend you run a small piece of community software. You've built something that works and now you need to grow it.
What the possible looks like: Enterprise clients. Consumer subscriptions. White-label licensing. NGOs. Local government. Faith communities. Professional associations. Alumni networks. Sports clubs. You could theoretically serve any of them. The product, with sufficient adaptation, could probably work for all of them.
That's your possible. It's a long list, eh? You know what long lists do.
What the adjacent possible looks like: Now filter. Where have you already been? What have you already built? Your first ten customers were indie podcasters who used the software to manage listener communities. You have case studies, testimonials, and a working knowledge of that world. One of those customers introduced you to a mid-sized media company who's been asking questions. A journalist wrote a small piece about you that got traction in creator economy circles.
Your adjacent possible is much shorter: creator communities, media organisations, and - at a stretch - professional associations with a publishing function. Everything else is possible but not adjacent. Not yet.
But how do you choose the right adjacent possible, then?
Three filters, in order:
1. Which option requires the least new infrastructure? Not the least work but the least that is genuinely new. Serving creator communities requires no new knowledge, no new language, no new credibility. Serving local government requires all three. One is adjacent. One isn't.
2. Which option, if actualised, opens the most doors? The media company lead doesn't just represent one customer. It represents a network, a reference, a category of credibility that makes the next conversation easier. Opt for optionality.
3. Which option are you already being pulled toward? Kauffman's research suggests the adjacent possible isn't only about what you can reach, it's about what's already reaching back. Signals! The journalist who wrote about you, the customer making introductions, the inbound enquiry you haven't followed up yet. Adjacency has a direction. Pay attention to it.
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š WAVE GOODBYE š
"We cannot mathematize the detailed becoming of the biosphere." ā Stuart Kauffman
The adjacent possible is a concept from evolutionary biology, but what it describes, to this restless soul at least, is something closer to flow than strategy.
You don't 'mission-n-vision' your way into the adjacent possible. You do the thing to become the thing, you create a reality through one small move at a time.
Most of us already know which door to open, yet we're often waiting for a better option that isn't adjacent yet.
*
Before I go, if I may: one small proof of concept of my own.
I started my YouTube channel on an iPhone in my office two years ago. The 1,700 subscribers Iāve gained since then will impress no one. But the adjacent possibilities it unlocked - the validation, the evolution of my coaching practice, the people who found this newsletter through it, the new friends - I couldn't have predicted a single one from where I was standing when I pressed record.
I reflect on that and more in my newest video. It would mean a lot to me if you headed over there, watched the video, and - should the spirit take you - hit like and subscribe.
Take care,
Adam
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p.s. If you were forwarded this, hello! You can subscribe over at my website.
p.p.s If you've been here for a while, thank you too! If you'd like to support my work's independence you can tip me (and I promise I will not spend it all on Star Wars Lego).
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A note on AI
AI is, in my experience, like pornography: everyone uses it, nobody is willing to say how much. My view is that it's genuinely useful if it speeds up the parts of writing that were always just functional, the vehicle for ideas, but the thinking still has to happen first.
I therefore use Claude a lot to take my notes, produce structural outlines, suggest section order, compress drafts, and check whether a throughline holds. I also use it to edit, and occasionally to suggest a sentence formulation when my brain is fried and my three-year-old still won't fall asleep in the room next door. I write at least 80% of the prose, which might be less than you hoped, but hey, I'm only human. For now. If you're curious about my process, just reply and ask.
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You might also like...
...this little app I built that audits your mission and vision against eight essential building blocks that Iāve spotted during decades of work (and having read 1000s of these damn things). Then it rewrites the whole caboodle in plain, human language you'll actually want to put on your website. It's in beta; feedback is very welcome. Just a bit of fun. (Until it's not).
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Where else to find my work (AKA my many, many hats)
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