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What Is The 'Five-Fold How' Technique?

The Five-Fold How is a way to connect your core desires to physical actions.

Once that you know what you want, ask yourself: "how would you go after it?" Continue asking "How?" until you've defined your plan in terms of Next Actions.

If you do it right, each action will give you an experience of what you want as you do it. Connect big goals to small actions, and you'll inevitably accomplish what you want.

Josh Kaufman Explains The 'Five-Fold How'

After applying the Five-Fold Why, you'll probably discover that what you actually want is quite different from what you thought you wanted. Now that you've identified the root cause of your original goals, it's time to figure out how to get what you actually want.

The Five-Fold How is a way to connect your core desires to physical actions.

Let's use the previous example: the core desire is to feel free.

How would you go about doing that? 1. Paying off a debt 2. Reducing your work hours, finding another position, or becoming an entrepreneur 3. Taking a trip 4. Breaking off a personal relationship that's not serving you anymore Once you find a "how" that looks like a good idea, ask "how" again.

Let's say that quitting your job and starting a business would give you the greatest sense of freedom. How would you go about doing that?

Fill in the details, and what was at first a fuzzy idea becomes more and more clearly defined. Continue asking "how" until you've clearly defined your plan in terms of Next Actions (discussed below).

The purpose of the Five-Fold How is to create a complete chain of actions from your big idea all the way down to things that you can do right now. Done properly, each action gives you an experience of what you want most.

If paying off a debt would make you feel free, connecting the dots in this way enables you to feel more and more free every time you make a payment, which makes it much easier to keep going.

Connect your big goals to small actions you can take now, and you'll inevitably achieve what you set out to accomplish.

Questions About The 'Five-Fold How'

• What's necessary to achieve your desired end state?
• Can you apply recursive approximation to break that destination down into small, immediate actions?

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"Go as far as you can see; when you get there you'll be able to see farther."

Thomas Carlyle, essayist and historian

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