The Controller Pattern

What the pattern can look like

These are ordinary moments. None of them means much on its own. People with this pattern often describe moments like these:

• Feeling more anxious than they probably should when plans change without warning.
• Feeling calmer when they have a plan for how things will go.
• Handling the worry about a change by replanning right away.
• Finding it hard to hand work to others, even when the others are capable.
• Being drawn to systems, routines, lists and backup plans.
• Being called organized, disciplined and prepared.

Organized, or controlling?

Being organized is not the pattern. Plans are useful. It is possible to plan well and shrug when the plan changes.

One difference is what a change costs. For people with this pattern, an unexpected change brings more worry than the change deserves.

Another difference is what the system is for. When a routine is doing the work of keeping worry down, it is doing more than organizing.

The test’s Controller is about plans, not people. Both of its statements are about knowing how things will go. Telling other people what to do is a different thing, and the test does not ask about it.

Why it is hard to see in yourself

For people with this pattern, the plans work. Things get done. Other people call them organized, disciplined and prepared. That makes the pattern easy to miss. It can look like being good at life.

Where it comes from

This page does not say where the pattern comes from. A list of signs cannot tell you that. Neither can a short test.

What the Blind Spot Test can show

The Blind Spot Test is ten short statements. You rate each one from “Not me” to “That’s me.” It takes about a minute.

Your answers are scored across five patterns, and the Controller is one of them. The others are the Deflector, the Intellectualizer, the Overachiever and the People Pleaser. Two of the ten statements are about control.

The result shows which pattern your answers lean toward most. It also says how clear that lean is. It may be clearly ahead of the others, or close with one other pattern. If two come out even, it says your answers did not point at one pattern.

What it cannot show

It cannot tell you that you are a controller. Ten statements cannot measure a whole person, and two statements cannot measure one habit. It is not a diagnosis. It cannot tell you where a pattern came from. It only reads what you answer on the day you take it.

It gives you a starting point. You can check what it names against your own life.

What Epictetus said about plans

Epictetus was a Stoic teacher, born into slavery around 50 to 60 AD. No writing of his own survives. His student Arrian wrote down his teaching. One line reads:

“Demand not that events should happen as you wish; but wish them to happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion 8, translated by Thomas W. Higginson (1865)

His handbook opens by sorting things into two kinds: what is within our power, and what is beyond it. Our aims and choices are within it. How events turn out is not.

He did not say to stop planning. Aiming at something is within our power. His point was narrower: how things go is still not up to us, however good the plan.

The Stoics also practiced picturing things going wrong. The aim was not to prevent them. It was to make peace with them before they happened.

One thing to try this week

Notice the moment a plan changes, and what you feel in the first thirty seconds before you start fixing it. You do not have to stop replanning. Only notice what was there first.

Sources

• Epictetus, Enchiridion 1 and 8, translated by Thomas W. Higginson (1865), Project Gutenberg #45109.
• Biographical notes on Epictetus and Arrian: Albert Salomon’s introduction to the same edition (Liberal Arts Press, second edition, 1955).
• The pattern description and test statements: the Blind Spot Test, Know Your Ethos.