How to change yourself and your life using the black box method

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Most of us are only vaguely aware of what they want to do and who to be. But if you purposefully study yourself and your behavior, you can change your life for the better.

Here are three determinants of an approach that will help you understand yourself:

1. You are a black box. Admit that you don't know yourself as well as you think, so predicting your future behavior is difficult.
2. You can study yourself. Test habits, introduce new processes, change the environment to observe the output.
3. You can hack yourself. By understanding your actions, your passions, and your motivations, you can model processes to work for you.

1. Introduce yourself as a black box

Daniel Kahneman, in his book Think Slow, Decide Fast, describes many experiments that demonstrate how easily we deceive ourselves. For example, if you ask a group of people about the likelihood of a critical event, they will greatly overestimate this probability.

Let's transfer this example to ordinary life. Provide a list of likely events for the coming Saturday:

• surf the Internet;
• read;
• do your hobby or project;
• spending time with friends or family;
• buy food and cook food;
• sleep off.

If you've watched yourself long enough, you've predicted your behavior fairly accurately. If not, then most likely you overestimated the likelihood of productive activities and activities and underestimated the likelihood of unproductive ones. Test yourself by writing down your assumptions and observing yourself over the weekend.

This approach can help relieve stress. Many people experience it at work, constantly torn between urgent tasks and not noticing progress in important matters. It may even seem to you that you were mistaken in choosing a field of activity, that you are not suitable for this profession, that you will not succeed.

By viewing yourself as a black box, you can avoid this. You will be able to say to yourself, “The work I am doing (or not doing) is not me. It does not define or limit me."

Instead of hating yourself for doing little in a day, think about what you can do to get more done.

Think of your work as a complex series of interactions between you, your environment, and your colleagues. Then you can make some changes to the workflow.

2. Watch yourself

Mindfulness meditation works best for this. In other words, it is a daily practice of observing mind, body, and the present moment. The thoughts floating in your head do not characterize you as a person. Realizing this will help release many of the stressors.

Within a few weeks, you will begin to notice repetitive thought and behavior patterns. You will notice that they are largely shaped by your surroundings and that thoughts feed each other no matter what your goals are for the day. To get things done and not get bogged down in a stream of thoughts, you may need to introduce new patterns of action.

Stanford University professor BJ Fogg introduced the concept of "motivational wave". According to his concept, a person's desire to do something rises and falls just like waves in the ocean. Therefore, it is quite natural that during the day there are times of recessions when nothing works. Try to identify your ups and downs in motivation and plan accordingly.

3. Hack yourself

People who achieve their goals try to hack their nature in order to move forward despite their weaknesses.

For example, actor, stand-up comedian and screenwriter Jerry Seinfeld forces himself to write with a calendar. Every day, when he’s finished writing, he puts a bold red mark on the calendar. “After a few days, a chain of such marks forms, and gradually it grows and grows. You will be pleased to see your chain, says Seinfeld, especially in a few weeks. Further, your task will simply not to break it."

Cal Newport, author of Into the Head Work, emphasizes the importance of deep work. It is distinguished by a higher level of attention and involvement of the brain in the task. To get deeper into work, he recommends giving up distracting habits (such as using your phone) and adopting habits that improve your attention. This is task scheduling, time distribution, interval work with breaks. Such habits will help accelerate progress towards any goal.