A few days ago, I wrote about causal and effectual reasoning. You’ll be familiar with these two paths—but having words to describe them really helps. 

“When you think with causal reasoning, you focus on what you want to do—the desired end goal, or the destination—and then work backwards from that,” I wrote. “Business leaders, managers, and strategists tend to use this planning process in their work, but it’s not how entrepreneurs think.”

Here are some practical limitations of causal reasoning:

You find it difficult to decide on a final goal or destination, so you don’t choose. 

You choose the wrong final goal or destination. You realize that too late.

You never feel like you’ve done enough research to fuel your causal reasoning, so you fail to start.

You realize your destination is much further than you thought, and you experience paralysis, hesitation, and eventually despair. You lose too much momentum to keep plodding onwards.

Your path has too many dependencies that rely on other people’s approval (such as licensing, funding, examinations, etc.). If you’re rejected by a gatekeeper, you’re stuck at that point in the path.