How I used Goldratt's Evaporating Cloud to decide on my Easter flights

I needed to book flights home to Portugal for Easter. Berlin → Porto, departing March 31. The only open question: return April 7 or April 11?

The price difference was negligible — about €10-20 across most options. This wasn’t a money problem. It was a priorities problem disguised as a logistics one.

The data

I pulled flight options across both return dates and both Porto and Lisbon:

Route	Apr 7 return	Apr 11 return
Porto — best value (via Amsterdam)	€289, 4h40	€298, 4h40
Porto — nonstop	€343, 3h20	€359, 3h20
Lisbon — best option	€338, 5h30	€341, 7h25

Porto was cheaper across the board. The sweet spot was the via-Amsterdam option — reasonable duration, single connection. Price wasn’t going to decide this.

The real question

I’ve been living in Berlin, away from family and friends in Portugal. This trip wasn’t just a holiday — it was about reconnecting. Having laughs. Feeling home.

But some part of me felt like I “should” come back earlier. Stay disciplined. Keep the rhythm going.

So I had a classic conflict: spend more time with the people I miss, or come back and get back to work?

That’s when I reached for a thinking tool from Eliyahu Goldratt’s It’s Not Luck — the Evaporating Cloud.

The Evaporating Cloud

The Evaporating Cloud (also called the Conflict Resolution Diagram) is a tool from the Theory of Constraints. It makes conflicts explicit — not to pick a winner, but to find the hidden assumptions that make the conflict feel real. Break an assumption, and the conflict evaporates.

Here’s how mine looked:

The conflict sits between D and D’ — I can’t return on both dates. But the cloud isn’t about choosing a side. It’s about challenging the arrows.

Challenging the assumptions

Each arrow carries hidden assumptions. The technique works by surfacing them and asking: are they valid?

B → D: “To maximize time with people, I must stay until Apr 11.”

Is that true? Generally yes — more days means more chances to see people. Not every assumption is wrong.

C → D’: “To maintain my balance, I must return Apr 7.”

This is where it got interesting. I asked myself: what’s actually waiting for me on Apr 7? No client work. No commitments. Easter week is quiet. The “should” had no substance behind it.

And then the real insight: the absence of friends and connection was already disturbing my rhythm more than 4 extra days away ever could.

The cloud evaporates

The C → D’ arrow broke. There was no real reason to come back early — just a vague sense of obligation. The conflict between D and D’ disappeared because one side had nothing holding it up.

Decision: Return April 11. Book the via-Amsterdam option at €298.

The takeaway

The Evaporating Cloud works because most conflicts aren’t real trade-offs — they’re built on assumptions we haven’t examined. The technique doesn’t tell you which side to pick. It asks: do you actually have to pick?

In this case, I didn’t. I just had to notice that one side of my conflict was made of air.

If you’re stuck deciding something, try drawing an Evaporating Cloud. Map the conflict, challenge each arrow — you might find the choice evaporates too.

For much richer examples, pick up It’s Not Luck. Goldratt’s novel follows Alex Rogo — the same protagonist from The Goal — who’s promoted to exec at UniCo and told to turn around three acquired companies. Success means they get sold and he loses his job; failure means closures. It’s a lose-lose setup, and the Evaporating Cloud drives the entire story.