The Cross-Section Test
Judge your life by a slice through today, not by a destination in the future.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
This is the operating system Brown ran for the ten unpaid years before television, and says has never changed. Rather than setting long-term goals, he takes a cross-section of his life as it currently is and asks whether everything is in the right place — can I get up when I like, do I make my own decisions about what I do day to day, is this day and this week the life I would like to be living. If anything does not feel right, it is easy to change while it is small. He is not against goals as such; he thinks short-term goals are obviously useful and that the long-term ones are where we get hung up, become rigid, and lose flexibility — not least because we are terrible at gauging what will make us happy years out.
Origin
Brown developed it while living in his old student flat in Bristol, signing on and doing magic in restaurants, dreaming up tricks by day and performing them at night — a period he says he simply loved, with no ambition at all.
Core principles
- 01The question is is this week the life I would like to be living, not where do I want to be.
- 02Short-term goals are useful; the long-term ones are where the trouble starts.
- 03We are very bad at gauging what will make us happy years in advance.
- 04Rigid goals cost you flexibility against a game that fortune is also playing.
- 05A goal achieved removes the very activity that was supplying the meaning.
How to run it
- 1
Take the cross-section
Slice through your life as it is this week and look at it: how you spend the days, who you spend them with, what you have control over. Not the trajectory — the slice.
- 2
Test each piece against what actually matters to you
Brown had a vague set of things that mattered — getting up when he liked, making his own decisions about what he did day to day. Write down your equivalents and check the slice against them one at a time.
Pro tip Keep the list short and genuinely yours. Brown's were about autonomy, not achievement.
- 3
Change whatever does not feel right, while it is still small
The advantage of the cross-section over the long-range plan is that corrections stay cheap. Brown's point is that if anything did not feel right it would be easy to change it.
- 4
Keep short-term goals, hold long-term ones loosely
Retain goals where they are useful over short horizons. For anything long-range, check its limitations rather than adopting it as a way of life, and stay flexible enough to respond to what fortune plays.
Watch out Brown warns against becoming too rigid in goals set years ago by someone who could not know what would make you happy.
In the wild
A friend of Brown's, made to feel young that he needed to achieve in order to be valued, decided he would build a company, sell it, and become a multi-millionaire. He did exactly that, relatively young, and then did not know what to do with his life. He was miserable, and ended up in a support group with other millionaires who had made the same mistake.
→ He realised it was the building up of the company that had given his life meaning — and that realisation, Brown says, really changed his life.
Brown stayed in his cheap student flat with his books and his parrot, signed on, dreamed up magic tricks during the day and performed them in restaurants at night for about six years after graduating, with no ambition and no real money.
→ He developed his own distinctive approach to magic during that period, wrote a book for magicians that got his name passed around, and that led to the phone call about a TV show.
Common mistakes
Making the destination carry the meaning
Brown's formulation: the arrival at the end of the journey might just be taking your coat off and putting your bag down. You are purposely and intentionally moving towards the point where the meaning is removed from your life.
Deciding your whole strategy at move one
Brown cites Schopenhauer's chess analogy — deciding at the start exactly how you will play and manoeuvre, when there is another player, life and fortune, throwing things back at you. Rigidity set in advance cannot survive the other player.
Is it for you?
Best for
People whose long-range goals have started to feel like an obligation, and anyone deciding whether a promotion or exit is actually worth it.
Not ideal for
Anyone who needs a long-horizon commitment to build something capital-intensive, or people who use present-focus to avoid ever committing.
From the transcript
“if I can take a like a a cross-section of my life, is everything in the right place?”
“It was never about where do I want to be. It was just is this day, this week, sort of the life that I'd like…”
From the episode
Derren Brown: UNLOCK The Secret Power Of Your Mind!
Derren Brown