If the world were like Sudoku, decision making could be tackled in an equally direct way. The characteristics of Sudoku that make such an approach possible are:

• There is one and only one solution, and when it is identified we know that we have found it. Objectives are clear and constant.

• The play is not influenced by the responses of others to moves that are made. Interactions with others, if they are relevant at all, are limited and controlled or predictable.

• There is a complete list of possible actions and we know that all the potential actions we consider are in fact available to us. Even if we do not know what will happen in future, we know the range of possibilities and can sensibly attach probabilities to them. The problem is closed.

• The number of alternative ways of filling in the boxes, although running into many millions, is nevertheless sufficiently small that all can, at least in principle, be evaluated. Complexity, even if extensive is bounded.

The game of Sudoku is closed, determinate, tractable and has a clear-cut objective.

As you’re wondering through the fog, you use the compass as you take a series of iterative steps toward having all three elements come together into One Big Thing.

And that is a key phrase: “iterative steps.”

The people in this study surprised me with the extent to which their lives were so often unplanned. Their lives were organic, unfolding, iterative, adaptive. They were like explorers adventuring into a vast unmapped territory, making discoveries and adapting a to whatever they hit along the way. Culling through tens of thousands of documents on the people in this study, I was continually struck by how their lives went down paths and ended up in places that they never expected. The path out of the fog lies in a series of small steps, a highly iterative, often unplanned approach that I think of as simplex stepping through life. And it is to this idea of simplex stepping that we now turn.

Across the study, we can extract a more general pattern: When lost in the fog, simply take what looks like the next best step. Not a big step, but a small step. Then reassess, step again, reassess, step again, reassess, step again. Keep moving in steps. And one day, the fog will begin to lift and the cumulative effect of all those steps will become clear.

The lives in our study show the great utility of moving in small steps when otherwise befuddled and uncertain. You don’t need to have the answers for what to do with the rest of your life. You just need to begin simplex stepping. You might get a long way down the road before you even know where you are going.

Simplex stepping works in part because it allows you to take small steps, to get moving. And movement creates energy that fuels more movement, a feeling of momentum even if you don’t yet know where that momentum is taking you. If you just sit in the fog doing nothing and hoping the fog will clear on its own, you might never get to the other side. As Richard P. Carlton, former CEO of 3M, once put it: You so often get where you are going by stumbling, but you can only stumble if you’re moving.

This study shows that there are fog phases of life and there are clarity phases of life. In the fog phases, we see simplex stepping as a highly functional method of navigation. In the clarity phases, we continue to see simplex stepping at work, but we also see more big decisions and life commitments. In both phases, we have action and movement, not just sitting in a room and contemplating.