Plan A Thinking
Remove the safety net so all your energy goes into the main goal.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 78%
Plan A thinking, law 22 in Bartlett's book, is the discipline of removing your alternatives so that all your energy flows into the main goal. He cites studies where people told they would get a candy bar for a task, but also invited merely to think about another place on campus to get one, became measurably less motivated. The thought of an alternative distorts motivation toward the primary objective, so a plan B is detrimental to commitment. Bartlett reflects that when he dropped out and was shoplifting pizzas at 18 to feed himself, he had no plan B: he was either going to be successful or successful. That absence of a soft place to run added roughly 10% more wind in his sails, which on the hardest days was the difference between quitting and pushing on. He also reframes 'manifestation', a word he and many audiences dislike, as simply being a plan A thinker.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal. Plan A thinking is law 22 in Bartlett's book The Diary of a CEO: The 33 Laws of Business and Life, drawn from his own no-fallback early years.
Core principles
- 01Merely having a plan B lowers your motivation toward plan A.
- 02Even thinking about an alternative reward reduces commitment to the primary goal.
- 03Removing the soft place to run channels all your energy into the mission.
- 04Sometimes 10% more wind in the sails is the difference between quitting and pushing through.
How to run it
- 1
Name your plan A
Identify the single goal you are genuinely committed to pursuing.
- 2
Spot the escape hatches
Notice the comfortable alternatives, the soft places you could run to if plan A gets hard.
- 3
Accept the motivation tax
Recognise that merely holding or thinking about a plan B is already draining your commitment to plan A, as the candy-bar studies show.
Watch out The drain is subconscious; you will feel it as temptation on hard days.
- 4
Remove the fallback
Deliberately close or refuse the alternative so there is no soft place to retreat to.
Pro tip Reframe this as being a 'plan A thinker' rather than manifestation.
- 5
Redirect the energy
Channel the energy that would have gone into the fallback straight into the mission. Sometimes that 10% is decisive.
In the wild
When Bartlett called his mother to say he was dropping out of university, and was shoplifting pizzas at 18 to feed himself, it was survival: he was either going to be successful or successful, with no plan B and nowhere to run. He credits that absence of a comfortable fallback with adding roughly 10% more wind in his sails, which on the hardest days was the difference between quitting and continuing.
→ Having no fallback added the marginal drive that carried him through the hardest days.
Common mistakes
Comforting yourself with a backup
Keeping a soft alternative in mind feels safe but quietly erodes commitment to the primary goal.
Confusing focus with recklessness
Plan A thinking is about motivation, not ignoring genuine catastrophic risk that a safety net would protect against.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and high-stakes goal-pursuers who need maximum commitment and focus on a single mission.
Not ideal for
Genuinely reckless situations where a safety net protects against catastrophic, irreversible downside.
From the transcript
“Just the thought of where else they could get a candy bar distorts their motivation and reduces their motivation towards the goal.”
“it was like survival. Like I was either going to be successful or I was going to be successful. There was not a plan B…”
“It's removing the alternative so that you can use all of your energy towards the main goal.”
From the episode
Steven Bartlett: 9 Secret Habits of a Multi-Million Dollar Entrepreneur - Diary of a CEO
Steven Bartlett