Where to Cut
“My life has been terrible.”
“My job is unbearable.”
“This thing never works.”
Maybe.
But words like always, never, and lately can smear very different periods together.
Try putting the problem on a timeline.
When did this start?
Was it the same before?
When does it get better or worse?
A time cut separates different periods so you can see whether the problem is actually constant—or whether something changed.
Example: Loneliness
“I’m just a lonely person.”
Hold on.
Were you equally lonely:
before you started working from home?
before your closest friend moved?
while you were in school?
before the breakup?
six months ago?
this week?
Maybe loneliness has been a long-term problem.
Maybe it hasn’t.
Maybe one part is old and another part got much worse after something changed.
That matters, because:
“This is who I am”
suggests a very different problem than:
“My social environment changed eighteen months ago and never recovered.”
One is a global identity verdict.
The other gives you somewhere to look.
Example: Work
“My job is miserable.”
Was it miserable when you started?
Before the new manager?
Before the company reorganized?
Before three people left and nobody replaced them?
If the job became unbearable at a specific point, the problem may not be:
MY ENTIRE CAREER IS WRONG.
It may be:
Something changed here.
Much smaller machine.
Example: Technology
“This laptop is unreliable.”
Okay.
Since when?
Did the crashes start:
after a software update?
after installing something new?
after the battery was replaced?
only during the last month?
A timeline does not automatically tell you what caused the problem.
But it can show you where to start looking.
When to Try This Cut
Use a time cut when a problem feels:
permanent;
suddenly worse;
vaguely “recent”;
impossible to trace;
wrapped in words like always or never.
Ask:
When was this different?
Then look around the point where it changed.
Sometimes the problem has been telling you where the hinge is the entire time.
FOLLOW THE WIRES