Overreach

Overreach is the state of producing errors faster than you can correct them. It's one of CF's original ideas.

"If your error rate exceeds your error correction rate, then you're doing stuff that's too hard for you. That is inefficient at best, and it often leads to failure. That's what I call 'overreach'."

Symptoms

• Growing backlog of unsolved problems.
• Overwhelm. Criticism becomes unpleasant.
• Ignoring criticism. Without conscious decision; it's a coping mechanism.
• Failure to finish. Projects stall, decay, or are abandoned.
• Chronic stress, emotional dysregulation.

The technical-debt analogy

Going into error-correction debt is worse than credit-card debt. It's like software full of bugs and disorganisation (technical debt): writing more buggy code makes it harder to fix anything. Companies go out of business from technical debt — and CF says overreach is the same shape of problem in life generally.

Causes

• Childhood overreach. Most adults have lived in chronic overreach since childhood — overwhelmed by school, social demands, and tasks they can't succeed at.
• Perfectionism. Trying to do more than your budget allows.
• Lack of skill. Doing tasks without adequate preparation.
• Poor tools. Using inadequate methods.
• Unmanaged complexity. Trying to handle too many moving parts.

The fix

1. Reduce difficulty. Smaller, simpler tasks.
2. Build skill. Through practice.
3. Budget. Like money, time, and energy.
4. Pause error creation. Stop adding to the backlog while you fix it.
5. Use objective-reasoning so you can see what's failing.

"Overreach is about considering and managing your rate of making errors compared with your rate of correcting errors." — criticalfallibilism.com