You have already apologized for something nobody has noticed yet. You packed for three kinds of weather. You know what your partner will object to, and you have changed the plan so they won't have to. You are tired before the day has started, and nothing has gone wrong. I go around and around on things that haven't happened and maybe never will.
It differs from controlling, which manages what is happening now. Pre-empting works on what has not happened yet.
01
What it looks like
You rehearse the conversation and answer the objection before it is raised. You send the email that explains, just in case. You have a second plan and a third.
You do other people's reacting for them. You decide how they will take it and adjust in advance, so the reaction you predicted never gets a chance to happen or not happen.
If I've got everything lined up ahead of time, then I can loosen up and go with it. That may be true. It may also be that the lining up never quite finishes.
02
What it protects
Across the rules below, it may keep a bad moment from ever starting.
Which moment is the one being prevented is the part the behavior can't tell you.
03
The rules it can serve, and what is under each
"If everyone is okay, then I'm okay."
The moment being prevented may be someone's displeasure. Under it, the fear may be that someone's disappointment means you did something wrong. There are things I know and have never brought up, because I already know how it would go.
Read about Peace →"Stillness is where it catches me."
The moment being prevented may be the surprise. Under it, the fear may be that if you stop managing, something goes wrong again. Just assuming the worst is going to happen.
Read about Ahead →"Being wrong isn't a mistake. It feels like a verdict."
The moment being prevented may be the correction. Under it, the fear may be that if you are wrong about this, what else are you wrong about. I take charge of everything, and then I'm braced the whole time for somebody telling me what I got wrong.
Read about Right →Other rules can do this as well, and this page does not reach them.
04
What it buys and what it costs
It buys smooth days. Things do go well when you have thought of everything, and you catch what other people miss.
For you, the cost may be living each hard moment several times, most of which never come. Calm can start to feel like the part where you are not doing your job.
For other people, the cost may be that they never get to object, be disappointed, or handle a surprise. Some may feel managed. Some may never find out you changed anything for them.
05
How to tell which rule is under it
There are three questions here, each one separating two of the rules above.
Peace or Ahead: are you watching for someone getting upset, or for something going wrong? Take the last thing you headed off. Someone getting upset is the Peace answer. Something going wrong is the Ahead answer.
Right or Ahead: a small correction in a meeting. Is the sting about being wrong, or about not having seen it coming? Being wrong is the Right answer. Not having seen it coming is the Ahead answer.
Peace or Right: say you were right and they were upset anyway. Is that alright? No is the Peace answer, because the upset is what counts. Yes is the Right answer, because being right settles it.
If none of them moves anything, there is not enough to tell yet. That is a result.
Two things are not this strategy. Planning for a real risk is planning, and some jobs depend on it. And changing your plans around someone whose reactions you have reason to fear is accurate reading. If that person is at home, that is a different situation from anything on this page.The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233. If tonight is an emergency, call or text 988 (US). This library is not that door. What to look at is cost, and whether the preparing is taking more from you than the thing it prevents would have.
Subtraction means taking explanations away until what is left has to carry the evidence.
What the same habit looks like at the door of a room is on I Read the Room Before I Walk In.