You’ve probably heard that insanity quote:
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
It’s one of those quotes that gets thrown around in business meetings, motivational posters, and LinkedIn rants, usually misattributed to Einstein (spoiler: he never said it).
It sounds clever. It feels insightful. But here’s the problem—it’s intellectually lazy.
The Flawed Assumptions
Let’s break it down. The quote assumes:
- Perfect repetition: That you’re doing exactly the same thing each time.
- Unchanging environment: That external variables remain constant.
- Predictable systems: That if nothing changes, the outcome must be the same.
All of these are rarely—if ever—true.
If anything, the insanity quote reflects a mindset that’s impatient with nuance and ambiguity. It favours efficiency over understanding, which is perhaps why it became so popular in management circles. But in life, art, love, or science, the line between madness and perseverance is blurrier—and often far more interesting—than that quote allows.
In real life, almost nothing stays still. People change. Systems evolve. Conditions shift. Sometimes imperceptibly. A conversation you had yesterday might land differently today, not because you changed, but because the other person had a bad night’s sleep. Or a good one. Or they just heard bad news. You’re never walking into the same room twice, even if the walls haven’t moved.
The Danger of Over-Simplification
This quote reduces complex, iterative, often messy human behaviour into a binary: success or madness. It discourages persistence, mocks learning curves, and it sneers at experimentation.
In software development, in therapy, in parenting, in relationships—you often must try something more than once, sometimes many times, before something finally shifts. The fact that you didn’t succeed the first few times doesn’t mean you’re deluded. It means you’re human.
The Real Lesson
Here’s a more honest, useful principle:
“If you’re not getting different results, ask yourself what’s actually changing—and what isn’t.”
Sometimes, a lack of progress does mean you need a new approach. But other times, it means you’re close, and the system just hasn’t caught up yet. Or you haven’t noticed the progress because it’s subtle. Or because you’re measuring the wrong thing.
Rather than labelling behaviour as “insane” because it’s repeated, ask:
- Have I adjusted my timing?
- Have I considered external factors?
- Am I giving this enough time to work?
- Am I assuming control over things I can’t control?
Iteration Is Not Madness
In engineering, we iterate. In science, we repeat experiments. Startups pivot. In love, we forgive. In life, we try again. What looks like “doing the same thing” is often just persistence with nuance. And that’s not madness. It’s the foundation of almost everything worthwhile.