“What is the experience of the other people I’m interacting with?”
I have sometimes found empathy to be a complicated concept, but this question really cuts to the heart of it and causes your brain to model the situation from the other person’s perspective and use that in your decision-making.
Intriguingly, this seems to even apply to interactions with my future selves. If I don’t ask this question or one like it, I’m likely to write a massive todo list for myself—probably a completely impossible list, and delegate it to my tomorrow!self with very little thought. Then when that self encounters the list, it’s so overwhelming and inconsiderate that I find it hard to deal with at all. If instead, I stop to wonder what the experience will be of my future self encountering the tasks I’ve delegated for it, I realize that it makes sense to prioritize much of that up front, and to frame the delegation process with more context around why my past self wanted the thing done. This is basically the difference between saying “Future self, do this” and “Future self, at the moment it seems to make sense to me that you do this stuff, for reasons X, Y, Z.” or some similarly empathetic request… which is much less likely to produce e.g. reactance.
“What is the experience of the other people I’m interacting with?”
I have sometimes found empathy to be a complicated concept, but this question really cuts to the heart of it and causes your brain to model the situation from the other person’s perspective and use that in your decision-making.
Intriguingly, this seems to even apply to interactions with my future selves. If I don’t ask this question or one like it, I’m likely to write a massive todo list for myself—probably a completely impossible list, and delegate it to my tomorrow!self with very little thought. Then when that self encounters the list, it’s so overwhelming and inconsiderate that I find it hard to deal with at all. If instead, I stop to wonder what the experience will be of my future self encountering the tasks I’ve delegated for it, I realize that it makes sense to prioritize much of that up front, and to frame the delegation process with more context around why my past self wanted the thing done. This is basically the difference between saying “Future self, do this” and “Future self, at the moment it seems to make sense to me that you do this stuff, for reasons X, Y, Z.” or some similarly empathetic request… which is much less likely to produce e.g. reactance.
Your link is messed up.