I feel like these three are part of a larger class of very useful questions to consider, which many people do not automatically consider, consciously or otherwise.
The version that springs to mind that wasn’t mentioned above: “What are my goals, and am I furthering them?”
I find the “how do I think I know X”, “why am I doing X”, and “what happens if I do X” versions are pretty much autopilot for me, especially the third one — but I basically never think about whether the thing I’m trying to do actually attaches to my broader goals without some kind of external prompting. I think perhaps different people need more or less manual effort/practice to correctly employ each of these ideas.
Expanding the Sazen of “what are my goals, and am I furthering them?”:
I repeatedly make mistakes of the following form. As an example, say I’m playing a board game with a few friends, some of whom are new. It’s not unusual for me to explain the game, then once the game begins I get absorbed in the process, play to the limits of my ability, crush the new player(s), and then they have a bad time and never want to play that game again. Oops!
Locally, I took pretty good actions pursuing a local goal (have fun, test my skills, satisfy the game’s objective), but pretty awful actions for the broader goal of “introduce a new friend to this game”.
Left on autopilot, my problem solving system will shed context aggressively, enabling it to solve a simpler problem with less effort. Stopping and consciously asking “hey, what are my goals actually? What larger goal do those goals serve?” seems to fix this issue for me, when I remember to do so.
I feel like these three are part of a larger class of very useful questions to consider, which many people do not automatically consider, consciously or otherwise.
The version that springs to mind that wasn’t mentioned above: “What are my goals, and am I furthering them?”
I find the “how do I think I know X”, “why am I doing X”, and “what happens if I do X” versions are pretty much autopilot for me, especially the third one — but I basically never think about whether the thing I’m trying to do actually attaches to my broader goals without some kind of external prompting. I think perhaps different people need more or less manual effort/practice to correctly employ each of these ideas.
Expanding the Sazen of “what are my goals, and am I furthering them?”:
I repeatedly make mistakes of the following form. As an example, say I’m playing a board game with a few friends, some of whom are new. It’s not unusual for me to explain the game, then once the game begins I get absorbed in the process, play to the limits of my ability, crush the new player(s), and then they have a bad time and never want to play that game again. Oops!
Locally, I took pretty good actions pursuing a local goal (have fun, test my skills, satisfy the game’s objective), but pretty awful actions for the broader goal of “introduce a new friend to this game”.
Left on autopilot, my problem solving system will shed context aggressively, enabling it to solve a simpler problem with less effort. Stopping and consciously asking “hey, what are my goals actually? What larger goal do those goals serve?” seems to fix this issue for me, when I remember to do so.