Jaggedness Principle

A principle is a spine. Jaggedness Principle is the sort of spine that lets a person, or an institution, stand up straight.

The principle works because it moves the decision from the moment of weakness to the moment of clarity. You choose the rule when you are calm, so that the rule can carry you when you are not.

The idea is simple, and like most simple ideas it is easy to nod at and hard to use. The nod is free. The use costs attention, every day, in small change.

Watch the woman lighting the evening lamp in a small flat after a hard day. Nobody taught her that ritual builds a floor under the falling feeling. She simply knows.

In the end, life asks only whether we were awake while it happened. Keep it like a good key: accessible, unlabelled, and used often.