Plan one small step out of your comfort zone at a time.
Length: 1:35
Voice: Ralph Varcoe
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The words to read
This tool maps what you do across four rings and asks for one small step outward on each. The Comfort Zone is where things feel safe and nothing much changes. The Fear Zone is where the excuses live, and where you worry what people will think. Push through and you're in the Learning Zone, picking up skills and dealing with problems. Beyond that is the Growth Zone, where you're doing the thing that you actually set out to do.
Add a card for an activity or an ambition. Drag it into the ring it honestly sits in for you today, and write the one step that would move it outward.
The four-ring version comes from Tom Senninger, a German educationalist, building on Lev Vygotsky's zone of proximal development from the 1930s. Vygotsky's idea was that learning happens in the band just beyond what you can already do on your own, and not really very much happens either side of it. Too easy teaches nothing. Too hard just frightens you off.
Which is why the instruction is one small step rather than a leap. A leap usually sends you straight back to your comfort zone, with a story about how you tried and it just didn't work out.
Your score is the share of cards in the outer two rings. So pick one card and move it this month.