Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less - and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined

by Scott Sonenshein

When people follow this mode, they are never satisfied with a good choice; they want the very best choice, even if it takes tremendous resources to make it. And when they act, they’ll often second-guess what they’re doing, regret their choices, and wonder if there’s a better way. They’ll also speculate about how their paths stack up against others, invoking the dangerous social comparison instinct favored by chasers that upends personal satisfaction. Now if you tend to jump right in, you’re following an acting regulatory mode. When in this mode, we do anything to move away from the status quo and closer to our goals, even if there’s a potentially better way we haven’t figured out yet. In a world where we hold planning on a pedestal, our commonsense notion of a person using the acting mode is that he acts recklessly without much thought. People who plan, on the other hand, conjure up more positive images—the careful person pursuing goals with reflection and