Dichotomy of control

Where the dichotomy of control comes from

The idea is Epictetus’s. Born in the 50s CE in Hierapolis, a Greek city of Asia Minor, he was for a time the slave of Epaphroditus, an administrator at Nero’s court, and studied under the Stoic Musonius Rufus. Once freed, he lectured in Rome until, presumably under Domitian’s edict of 89 CE banning philosophers from Italy, he moved to Nicopolis in Epirus and taught there until his death around 135.

His student Arrian of Nicomedia composed the Discourses from that teaching. The Enchiridion, the Handbook, is a brief abridgment of them, and its first line draws the distinction. In Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s translation: “There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power.” The Greek phrase is eph’ hēmin, “up to us.” “Dichotomy of control” is a modern label; William B. Irvine uses it in A Guide to the Good Life (2009).

How the dichotomy of control works

Enchiridion 1 sorts everything into two lists. Within our power: “opinion, aim, desire, aversion,” and, in one word, “whatever affairs are our own.” Beyond it: “body, property, reputation, office.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy restates the first side as convictions, attitudes, intentions and actions, and the second as the body, possessions, relationships with other people, “the success or failure of one’s projects,” and power and reputation.

Three points do most of the work. The first is that the line runs between what depends on you and what does not, not between what you can and cannot influence. Epictetus calls the things beyond our power “weak, dependent, restricted, alien.” Writing for Modern Stoicism, Michael Tremblay argues that “control” is the wrong word for it, and that the real split is “a dichotomy of cause or dependence.”

The second is that outcomes sit on the far side even when the effort is yours. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it plainly: it makes sense to manage your affairs carefully and responsibly, but the ultimate outcome of any affair is not in your power. You own the decision, the preparation and the execution. You do not own whether the deal closes.

The third is that the sort is a habit, not a one-off. Epictetus tells the reader to meet every “unpleasing semblance,” as Higginson translates it, with one test first and chiefly: whether it concerns the things within our own power or those which are not, and “if it concerns anything beyond our power, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you.”

Dichotomy of control examples

A well-documented test of the idea is James Stockdale’s. A US Navy pilot who had been handed the Enchiridion as a graduate student at Stanford, he was shot down over North Vietnam on September 9, 1965, and became the senior naval prisoner of war officer in Hanoi. In his 1993 Hoover Institution essay “Courage Under Fire,” he recalls telling himself on the way down that he was “leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.”

What he describes is the sort itself: a Stoic keeps “separate files” for what is “up to him” and what is “not up to him.” His first file held “my opinions, my aims, my aversions,” his judgments and his “attitude about what is going on.” His handling of reputation shows that the line is not passivity. Others decide your reputation, so it goes in the second file, yet his advice is not to ignore it: “Try to make it as good as possible, but don’t get hooked on it.”

Illustrative scenario, with no real company or figures: a key customer freezes all new purchasing for a quarter. The freeze, its length and the customer’s budget are not up to the operator. The account plan is. So are the terms offered when the freeze lifts, how fast the pipeline is widened to other customers, what the team is told on Monday, and whether the forecast is cut now or defended for another month. Run the sort and the week goes to the list that is up to the operator. Skip it and the week goes to re-arguing the freeze.

Where the dichotomy of control breaks

Reading “control” as influence. Loosen “up to us” to “anything I can affect” and outcomes slide into the first list: the deal, the hire, the board vote. Tremblay draws the line plainly: “We certainly strongly influence what we do out in the world, but it is not up to us.” His warning runs the other way too. Control in the strong sense, willing yourself into any reaction, is more than the Stoics claim: ingrained habits of character take years of work to change.

The trichotomy. In A Guide to the Good Life (Oxford University Press, 2009), Irvine splits the second list into things we have no control over and things we have some control over, such as winning a tennis match. For the middle group he sets internal goals: play as hard as you can rather than aim to win. Either way, the fix points back to the original list: set the goal on what depends on you, such as your aim, and not on the result.

Resignation dressed as acceptance. The sort is a tool for directing effort, not for excusing its absence. The encyclopedia gloss still has you managing your affairs carefully and responsibly; only the final outcome is released. The failure is filing something under “not up to me” because acting on it would be uncomfortable, which is exactly the misuse The Resilience Engine names below.

How The Resilience Engine runs it

The Resilience Engine’s version is the Resilience Filter, published on its shikata ga nai framework page. That page builds the Filter on the Japanese phrase for “it cannot be helped” and does not cite Epictetus, so the comparison here is ours, not the book’s. The two sorts point the same way. Where Enchiridion 1 states a principle, the published Filter adds three operating rules.

It sets a horizon: the first column holds what you can directly influence through your actions in the next thirty days. It sets a cadence: weekly at minimum, quarterly with a written record. And it names the failure this page warns about: the release turns into avoidance when it is applied to something you do have authority over.

Read the framework: Shikata Ga Nai →