Mental New Year's Resolutions

by phil on Tuesday Jan 11, 2005 4:46 PM

So I have some New Year's Resolutions. These ones are all about changing my habitual thinking patterns.

- Less complex thinking, more simplicity.

- Less direction oriented, more emergent. For example, instead of "I want to accomplish x, y, and z" I should be "I'm working on x, y, and z, and we'll see what pans out"

- Less focused on optimization, more into working with alternatives. For example, instead of trying to find the most perfect job, look for what could be good match now.

- Less interested in a rational logical world, more accepting of the irrationality and unsolvability of things. i.e. Don't always begin with the assumption "there must be a logical explanation for this." Also, don't try as hard to suss out the reasoning behind things. be more pragmatic.

- Less into theories, more into empirics. Rather than trying to encapsulate grand over-arching pattens, look for what you know will happen, what you know won't happen, and what is uncertain. another "be more pragmatic" resolution.

Let's see what happens.