Here's a trap product managers fall into constantly: the better your roadmap gets, the harder it becomes to change it. Not because the roadmap is right — but because you've invested so much in building consensus around it. The Stoics called attachment to outcomes a form of inner enslavement, but the psychologist Robert Cialdini identified the same pattern from the outside: once we've publicly committed to a position, we unconsciously recruit new evidence to defend it rather than test it. Your roadmap becomes a reputation, and your reputation becomes a cage. Marcus Aurelius wrote that the obstacle is the way, but Cialdini's research on commitment and consistency (in *Influence*, 1984) suggests we're wired to treat the obstacle as an anomaly to be explained away. The practical move: before your next roadmap review, ask yourself whether you're presenting evidence or prosecuting a case.

When did you last update your roadmap because of new evidence — and when did you last update your interpretation of the evidence to protect the roadmap?

Drawing from Stoicism synthesized with Social Psychology — Marcus Aurelius (Meditations, ~170 CE) synthesized with Robert Cialdini (Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, 1984)