In the last few weeks I’ve been exploring the concept of rationality and what it means to think rationally. I got introduced by Sebastinan Marshall to the less wrong community, which is essentially a place where rational people meet each other and share their thoughts.
At first, it may seem like the concepts discussed on less wrong are either overly complex or too much on the theoretical side, which is sometimes true, but they often also hide important principles that once grasped can really change the way that you view at things.
One of those principles is about learning from your mistakes. Learning from your mistakes means that you take a step back and examine your thoughts to see if there’s something that doesn’t look right. This is a tremendous ability that we have as human beings and it makes sense to take advantage of it.
The process is quite simple, you probably already do it from time to time. I’ll give you a practical example that happened to me a couple of nights above. I was driving with a friend and we were chatting about different things. It was dark and I was starting to feel tired, not that I couldn’t drive anymore, but certainly my response times were affected by it, plus I was involved in a discussion with him which was potentially distracting me even more. As there was some traffic I was driving close to the car ahead of me. Then it hit me: it didn’t make sense at all for me to stay close to the car ahead of me. From a rational point of view I was feeling tired plus I was involved in a discussion, and if the car ahead of me would suddenly stop for whatever reason I would not be able to stop to avoid the crash. So the right thing to do for me was to allow more space between my car and the one ahead of me. Quick fix, potentially life saver.
There are many situations like the one that I just wrote about, where we act in a certain way just because we’ve always been doing it that way. Analyzing your thoughts and your actions helps to spot those bad habits and to replace them with new ones. You can apply the same technique to analyze your actions in terms of productivity, and from personal experience I can tell you that it makes a big difference.
Setting posteriorities
Sometimes it’s just a matter of figuring out that what you’re doing is wrong, and you can presto replace your old habit with a better one. Other times it’s a bit tougher, and you may benefit from an external help. Posteriorities have been invented to solve that problem.
A posteriorities is, unlike a priority, something that you decide that you wont do. For example you may decide that no matter what, you’re not going to check emails more than once every hour, or that you wont turn on your computer before 30 minutes have passed after you wake up. Those are silly examples (which I don’t necessarily follow), but you get the point.
The interesting thing is that you can set your posteriorities based on what you’ve learned by observing your thoughts. For example in my case I could set a posteriority about not staying closer than 40 meters of the car ahead of me when driving. It makes sense for me if I think about it, so there’s no reason why I should not do it.
You can set rules for when you’re working to avoid procrastinating by analyzing what happens when you procrastinate and then denying those actions in the future.
I recommend that you write down your posteriorities in a piece of paper, and that you look at them frequently. Once a day is a good start, but see what works for you. Don’t write too many of them, otherwise it’ll be difficult to remember them. If possible, try to group your posteriorities into higher level concepts that will give you the big picture as soon as you look at them.
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If you want to learn more about rationality, I highly recommend that you check out the less wrong community. An article once a day can literally transform the way that you look at things. It’s worth the effort in my opinion.