Past / Future Selves and Intrinsic Values (with Simone Collins)

1. Investigate Your Offenses

When something offends or threatens you, deeply investigate why, as this emotional reaction often signals a potential flaw in your own assumptions or a truth you’re resisting, providing an opportunity for self-correction and growth.

2. Pursue Values, Not Happiness

Instead of directly pursuing happiness, focus on the effective pursuit of your core values, as happiness is an emergent byproduct of successfully achieving what you genuinely care about.

3. Test Values with Extremes

To clarify your true intrinsic values, engage in thought experiments that push concepts to their extreme conclusions, forcing you to consider what you would truly prioritize if you had to sacrifice everything else for one value.

4. Identify Intrinsic Values

Use tools like the intrinsic values test on clearerthinking.org to reflect on and identify your most fundamental values, which are valued for their own sake and influence your behavior and goals.

5. Avoid Default Values

Be wary of adopting ‘default’ or socially acceptable values without deep personal reflection, as this can lead to a lack of fulfillment and indicates a failure to genuinely think through your own purpose.

6. Reframe Emotional Experiences

Actively choose how you frame and contextualize events, as this can profoundly alter your emotional experience of them, allowing you to find different meanings or connections, even in difficult situations.

7. Avoid Indulging Emotions

When experiencing heightened emotions like anger or sadness, avoid indulging in them, as this can reinforce the emotion and prevent you from addressing the underlying problem causing the distress.

8. Model Your Future Self

Adopt an external perspective to model your future self, predicting your behavior based on past actions and personality, similar to how you’d predict others, to effectively direct your own actions and achieve goals.

9. Apply Habit Reflection

To form new habits, reflect on a past successful habit change, write down the strategies that worked for you in that instance, and then write down how to apply those specific strategies to your current habit goal.

10. Use Bets for Habits

To assess and improve your commitment to new habits, imagine making a bet on your success; if you wouldn’t take the bet, identify what changes are needed to make you confident enough to do so.

11. View Self as Collective

Frame your identity as a collective of past, present, and future selves, all working as ‘soldiers’ to serve the greater purpose of your ideal self and the values you embody. This can make difficult tasks feel like altruistic service to your future self.

12. Connect with Future Self

Recognize that how you view your future self (as distinct or continuous with your present self) can significantly alter your behavior, encouraging you to make choices that benefit your future.

13. Write Future Self Letters

Regularly write letters to your future self (e.g., in three weeks, six months, five years) to reflect on your current thoughts, motivations, and ambitions, helping you recognize personal growth and estrangement from past selves.

14. Maintain Life Timeline

Create and regularly review a timeline of your life, such as a spreadsheet with interesting events for each month, to connect with your past narrative and progression, especially if you are naturally future-oriented.

15. Define Self by Purpose

Define your ‘self’ not by your current state, but by the purpose you serve, such as embodying your values and goals, as this perspective can influence your actions and choices.

16. Prioritize Values Over Self

If faced with a choice between your own well-being and something that better embodies your core values, choose the option that serves your values more effectively, even if it means personal sacrifice.

17. Redefine Self-Interest

Understand that actions seemingly selfless, like taking suffering upon yourself to spare others, can be driven by a deeper self-interest if they align with your core values and prevent greater emotional turmoil.

18. Radically Change Environment

For deep-seated issues like addiction, mental problems, or lack of motivation, consider a complete dislocation from your existing environment to eliminate old cues and provide a fresh start for a new identity and behavior.

19. Explain “Why” in Education

When teaching, always explain the practical relevance and utility of the information to the learner, providing a compelling reason for them to engage with and understand the material.

20. Pre-Question Learning Material

Before engaging with new learning material, formulate and attempt to answer questions related to the topic, which primes your mind to pay closer attention and better absorb the information.

21. Simplify Complex Learning

To accelerate learning, especially for complex subjects or young learners, create simplified versions of the material that are digestible and engaging at their current developmental stage.

22. Unthrottle Learning Exposure

Avoid restricting children’s exposure to learning opportunities and allow them to fully engage with and explore subjects that capture their interest, provided it’s digestible and relevant to them.

23. Foster Diverse Aptitudes

Design environments, such as schools, that allow individuals to thrive by leveraging their unique aptitudes and contributions, rather than solely focusing on traditional academic performance.

24. Parent for Diversified Legacy

View having children as a way to ’live forever’ and diversify your legacy, allowing them to potentially correct your mistakes or pursue different paths, thus hedging your bets on what constitutes ‘right’ in the world.