Readers of this column are frequently reminded to ignore the noise, stick to the long-term plan and let patience do the heavy lifting. How, then, should one think about an investment strategy? Is there ever a good time to make a change? And what sort of changes should investors be making?The New York Times recently ran an analysis showing that players who selected hard mode in Wordle were more successful than those who didn’t. The argument was that constraints improve decision-making and having too much flexibility often makes us less efficient, not more.For those who don’t know Wordle, you are given five chances to guess a five-letter word. Each guess must be a valid English word. Hard mode forces you to retain information from previous guesses. When a letter is revealed, you are not allowed to ignore it.Most investing decisions don’t happen in small increments. They tend to come in lumpy moments, often when investors consider changing solution providers. And that is usually when the problem starts.Unlike Wordle, it is never entirely clear which parts of a portfolio are “green” or “yellow”. Faced with that uncertainty, investors and providers tend to default to a clean slate. Change everything. Start again. It feels decisive, but it is usually wrong.What works …A portfolio is almost never entirely right or entirely wrong. Some parts work. Some parts almost work. And some don’t. Wiping the slate clean doesn’t solve that problem; it simply discards information that has already been paid for.A more useful starting point is not “what should I change?” but “what am I trying to keep?”Which brings you back to a more basic question: what are you trying to spell? What is the portfolio actually meant to do? Grow capital, protect it or generate income? If that is not clear, then the rest becomes guesswork. Letters without a word.Some constraints do help. Association for Savings and Investment South Africa categories, while imperfect, at least impose a shape. A portfolio that broadly fits in a category tends to be understandable. One that does not can quickly become a collection of ideas rather than a coherent solution.Then there are the basics: vowels. Every portfolio needs them, though they differ per investor. For some, it is equity exposure, the only real engine of long-term growth. For others, it is cash or more defensive assets that anchor the outcome. Without these, portfolios often become oddly constructed, technically interesting, but difficult to rely on.Where things usually go wrong is in the consonants. These are the more nuanced exposures: skilful managers, specialist strategies and alternatives. Individually they may be compelling, but they are also harder to use. A portfolio dominated by these tends to become difficult to interpret. It may sound sophisticated, but it is not always clear what it is actually meant to do.... what doesn’tWhen everything starts to look the same — the same style, the same underlying risk, the same types of managers — diversification becomes somewhat illusory. You are not building words anymore. You are simply repeating letters.Technology is improving some of that. Solution providers are getting better at understanding what portfolios are trying to achieve and reflecting that clearly. More importantly, they are becoming better at retaining what already works, rather than defaulting to wholesale change.That should help, though it does not remove the need for discipline.Because, in the end, investing is not about finding better letters. It is about using the ones you already have more intelligently.And the mistake, more often than not, is to change too much, not too little.• Crosoer is chief investments officer at PPS Investments