What an even-over rule is for
Tim Fulton · · 3 minute read
A list of values reads well and decides little. Honesty, family, health, growth: you can hold all of them and still not know what to do on a Tuesday evening when two of them ask for different things.
That moment is what an even-over rule is for. It takes two things you care about and says, ahead of time, which one you follow when they pull apart.
Two good things, not a good and a bad
The format is one short sentence: A even over B. Both halves are things you want. “Honesty even over comfort” does not say comfort is bad. It says that when telling the truth and keeping things easy point different ways, you tell the truth.
That is the difference from a slogan. A slogan names one good thing and leaves out the cost. An even-over rule names the cost in the same breath, because the second value is the one you agree to give up, this time.
Where a rule starts
Take family and honesty. On most days they sit together without trouble. Then a relative asks what you think of a plan you expect to go badly, at a dinner where saying so will hurt. Now they ask for different things.
A rule for that moment has four parts:
When. The situation, in one line: “When someone close to me asks for my view on a plan I doubt.”
Which wins. “Honesty even over keeping the peace at home.”
What you will do. A behaviour, not a feeling: “I say what I think, once, in private, and then I help with the plan they choose.”
What you accept. “I accept that the evening may be cooler, and that they may be hurt for a while.”
The last part is the one that makes the rule honest. If you cannot write what it costs, you have written a wish.
Testing it the other way round
Once a rule is written, read it reversed: “Keeping the peace at home even over honesty.” Then ask yourself whether that would change what you actually do.
If the answer is no, the rule is not yet doing any work. You would act the same either way, so the trigger is probably too wide or too vague. Narrow it until the reversed version would send you somewhere else.
If the answer is yes, you have found a real choice, and the rule holds it for the next time you are tired, rushed or under pressure, when it is harder to decide from scratch.
A rule is for a season
A rule is not a verdict on who you are. Your life changes, and the same two values can sit differently in a year. That is why each rule carries a review date. When it comes round, look at the decisions you made since you wrote it and ask three things:
Did you keep it?
Did you break it, and what happened when you did?
Does the rule itself need to change?
A broken rule is information, not a failure. It may mean the trigger was wrong, or that the cost was larger than it looked when you wrote it.
Starting with your own pairs
The pairs worth a rule are the ones your own choices show you hold close together. The page on honesty shows the values it can pull against, which is one place to look.
A better place is your own answers. When you rank your values by choosing between them, the close calls are where to start: the pairs where you hesitated, or where you chose one way and then the other. Those are the places a rule saves you from deciding again under pressure.