At times, we all come to the edge of previous experience.

After some time (or a lifetime) on land, the path leads down to the docks — and the choice to continue the journey by other means.

Happily, we need not have set sail before to recognize a ship when we see one.

And fear of the as-yet-unfamiliar is also an invitation to a new adventure.

Yesterday, I had a conversation about building better habits.

The question we proceeded from was, “What’s the smallest possible action you could take toward your goal?”

Want to run a marathon? Start by walking to the mailbox.

Ditto a big task like a job search: “get a great new role” isn’t a single checklist item, but many, many emails and phone calls and coffees.

Just a few generous, intentional, purposeful actions a day — every day — can compound faster and more powerfully than you might think.

They’re everywhere:

Every time I do this, it’s like that.

Last time I tried X, I got Y.

Whenever we see a problem like this, we underestimate it.

Unrecognized and unreflected-upon, these kinds of stories will keep setting their old snares.

Once we see them and get specific, we can begin to escape. Just because it was like that last time doesn’t mean it has to be that way this time, too.

Three articles appeared this week in the national security journal War on the Rocks that provided a clearer view of the table stakes of this stage of the “war on terror” than I’ve seen in a long time.

(Full disclosure: I’ve previously worked for WOTR in several capacities.)

First was Lt. Gen. (ret.) David Barno and Nora Bensahel’s monthly column, which (presciently, I believe) noted how expansive definitions of terrorism, norms of targeted killing, and the proliferation of unmanned aerial strike technology could see U.S. political and military officials at significantly greater personal risk in the not-too-distant future.

Second, on a related note, was Raphael Cohen’s take on “The Politics of Man-Hunting and the Illusion of Victory.” Cohen effectively raises questions about whether the ability to personally target some of the most destructive people on the planet makes such strikes worthwhile, and especially about the now-familiar ritual of presidential “we got ‘im” announcements and public response. Are these strikes strategic efforts to cut off the heads of snakes, or simply an exercise in celebrity body-counting?

Finally, the always-insightful Francis Gavin attempted to “As[k] the Right Questions About the Past and Future of World Order.” For a brief and accessible history of how things got this way — for better and worse — and especially for its much-needed call for additional thinking and planning about the implications of modern finance and technology on “world” “order,” this essay is an excellent primer.

I recently came across a quotation from former European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker: “We all know what to do,” he said, “but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.”

The question isn’t so much what the evidence shows as what it would show to begin admitting evidence after three or four or 12 or 40 years.

Someone, somehow, has to find a way to change the stakes: either in the history books or (better) at the polls, personal vindication has to appear clearly tied to doing what most might privately admit needs to be done.

Nixon resigned not because he was done, but because an influential group of institutionalist senators took a midnight drive up Pennsylvania Ave. to tell the president the music had stopped.

I had a history teacher who liked to say that at least 90 percent of what people tell you will be a lie.

On one level, that’s true — and for many reasons. People are constantly making up or perpetuating stories, sometimes with real intent to deceive but often with intent to please, to appear consistent, to avoid blame, or to live out one of the many other rationales we all make up.

There are two things to track, then:

First, the difference between outright, willful deception or untruth versus common and possibly unconscious irrationality. Irrationality, ignorance, or best intentions don’t always earn a free pass, but there’s a meaningful distinction between, say, falsifying your résumé and making up a story that connects the dots of your career as if you planned every step.

Second, the evolution of the conversation over time. Yes, lip service, window dressing, spin, obfuscation, and all the rest are real tactics — and real problems. But saying the right things often precedes — and prepares the way for — doing more of the right things.

The world isn’t doing enough about climate change, or equity, or any number of other things. But the conversation has changed from an argument over whether the issues are real to a debate about how much is being done, or must be.

That might be cold comfort in a lot of ways, but it’s not all hot air, either.

Metarules are the rules about the rules.

They might sound pretty arcane, but they are enormously powerful (and often unseen) influences on the way things work.

Once you start looking for them, examples are everywhere:

• The currency in which money is borrowed or paid
• The idea that sticker price is the (non-negotiable) price
• Direct election of senators (which has only been fully in place for a century)
• How electoral districts are drawn
• Rules of evidence and procedure
• Etc.

You might think you know how a trial works, for example, but that’s only true under consistent metatrules.

When it’s possible to make or remake the rules about the rules, it’s Calvinball out there.

It’s difficult to build a good system.

It’s also difficult to bend a good system out of equilibrium in such a way that it tends toward entropy instead of resiliency.

Once that happens, though, it’s very difficult indeed to recover the previous balance.

And once a lot of big egos get tied up in doggedly making the same mistakes over and over again, the chances of reducing the centrifugal force become lower still.

Once someone has decided to ride the tiger, his perception of risk changes dramatically. Suddenly, it seems awfully dangerous to let go of something it would have been better never to have touched in the first place.

If you’re struggling to sort out priorities, try setting boundaries instead.

“There are zillions of possible jobs! How can I ever find the one?”

Zillions, sure — but how many, really, once you put in place strong filters for location, sector, type of work, income, and size of organization?

It’s a lot more efficient to try to catch a fish in a pond than to boil the ocean.

Today’s a good day to share one of my favorite essays ever, Daniel Brook’s “Someday,” from the Oxford American in 2014.

It’s a history of the original Highlander Folk School, where the Movement really began to take shape in earnest.

Long before anybody boycotted a bus, or went to the mountaintop, or stood out on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, a lot of people whose names America hadn’t heard yet got together to sing and pray and teach themselves and each other how to overcome by fighting without violence.