I think this overestimates the level of introspection most people have in their lives, and therefore underestimates the effectiveness of introspection. I think for most people, most of the time, this ‘nonspecific discomfort’ is almost entirely composed of specific and easily understood problems that just make the slightest effort to hide themselves, by being uncomfortable to think about.
For example, maybe you don’t like your job, and that’s the problem. But, you have some combination of factors like
I dreamed of doing job X for years, so of course I like doing X
I spent so long training and working hard to be allowed to do job X, I can’t quit
I’m an X-er, that’s who I am, what would I even be if I stopped doing job X?
These kinds of things prevent you from ever thinking the thought “I have a problem which is that I don’t like doing X and maybe want to do something else”. So you have this general feeling of dissatisfaction which resists being pinned on the actual source of the problem, and may pin itself to other things. “Maybe if I get that new, better X-ing equipment”, “Maybe if I get promoted to Senior X-er”.
Probably doing exercise and socialising and cooking will help you feel better about a life doing a job you don’t like, but ten minutes of honest focused introspection would let you see the problem and start to actually deal with it.
It seems plausible to me that there are also problems that are really deeply defended and will resist introspection very effectively, but I think most people haven’t spent ten minutes by the clock just really trying to be honest with themselves and stare at the uncomfortable things, and until you’ve at least done that it’s too soon to give up on the idea that your problem can’t be understood and dealt with. Certainly introspection can give you wrong answers, but usually the problem is just that people have barely tried introspection at all.
That’s a good criticism which goes to the heart of the post. But I’ve done plenty of introspection, and on the margin I have less trust in it than you do. Most people I expect can’t tell the difference between “I’m unhappy in my profession” and “I’m unhappy with my immediate manager” much better than chance, even with hours of introspection.
One thing that does help is experimenting, trying this and that. But for that you need “resource”; and the list in my post is pretty much the stuff that builds “resource”, no matter what your problems are.
To me, it also seems you undervalue introspection. This can be bad because if you think introspection is not useful, you will underuse it.
Most people I expect can’t tell the difference between “I’m unhappy in my profession” and “I’m unhappy with my immediate manager”
That might be correct, not because it is impossible for these people to introspect, but because they have not learned it. Most people don’t hold off on proposing solutions but I would be surprised if they could not learn to do it.
I am sure I can tell if I am unhappy because of my job or my boss. It is likely I wouldn’t have been able to tell a year ago when I thought I was good at introspection while being terrible at it. So terrible, that it is hard to imagine how I could have been worse.
How is that possible? Well, I thought I was good at introspection because I was very good at certain kinds of introspection. E.g. introspecting on how I do analytical reasoning, while I do it. But I was terrible at emotional introspection. I only had the concept of introspection. Now it is clear to me that there are multiple kinds of introspection. I was blind to emotions, without realizing this.
Before I got better at introspection, all of my negative feelings could have been described as nonspecific discomfort. But it was really not nonspecific at all. It was just that I had ignored and suppressed my emotions so much that they got disassociated from their actual causes. So I would feel bad but didn’t know why. I basically did exactly what Hazard talks about here. I did this basically for every negative emotion I experienced.
But then I discovered this tek to introspect, and it seems to work quite well. I have applied it maybe 8 times now. Mostly to emotions that at first seem nonspecific. In my experience, most emotions are actually non-specific, even if they are temporally linked very tightly.
E.g. if I experience social rejection, I normally feel good at first but after 15 minutes I start to feel bad. It seems like it should be clear to me that this is because of the social rejection, but it’s not. It will seem like the most likely explanation to me, but there will be uncertainty about if this is actually what is going on. This is ridiculous maybe I am especially bad at analyzing emotions without spinning up a conscious expliitit optimization process. But once I use the technique I linked above it becomes very clear why I feel bad. The interesting thing is that once you understand the underlying cause of the nonspecific comfort, it disappears. Without you doing anything.
This makes sort of sense. Once you have truly understood what a specific feeling “wants you to accomplish” there is really no more point in it sticking around. Now that you have understood the feeling you can either optimize for getting what the feeling wants, or you can realize that the feeling doesn’t actually make sense in the current situation. Doing the appropriate thing will make the feeling go away. At least that is what happened so far for me.
I suppose it makes sense that if you’ve done a lot of introspection, the main problems you’ll have will be the kind that are very resistant to that approach, which makes this post good advice for you and people like you. But I don’t think the generalisable lesson is “introspection doesn’t work, do these other things” so much as “there comes a point where introspection runs out, and when you hit that, here are some ways you can continue to make progress”.
Or maybe it’s like a person with a persistent disease who’s tried every antibiotic without much effect, and then says “antibiotics suck, don’t bother with them, but here are the ways I’ve found to treat my symptoms and live a good life even with the disease”. It’s good advice but only once you’re sure the infection doesn’t respond to antibiotics.
Could it be that most people do so little introspection because they’re bad at it and it would only lead them astray anyway? Possibly, but the advice I’d give would still be to train the skill rather than to give up on understanding your problems.
That said, I think all of the things you suggest are a good idea in their own right, and the best strategy will be a combination. Do the things that help with problems-in-general while also trying to understand and fix the problem itself.
I think this overestimates the level of introspection most people have in their lives, and therefore underestimates the effectiveness of introspection. I think for most people, most of the time, this ‘nonspecific discomfort’ is almost entirely composed of specific and easily understood problems that just make the slightest effort to hide themselves, by being uncomfortable to think about.
For example, maybe you don’t like your job, and that’s the problem. But, you have some combination of factors like
I dreamed of doing job X for years, so of course I like doing X
I spent so long training and working hard to be allowed to do job X, I can’t quit
I’m an X-er, that’s who I am, what would I even be if I stopped doing job X?
These kinds of things prevent you from ever thinking the thought “I have a problem which is that I don’t like doing X and maybe want to do something else”. So you have this general feeling of dissatisfaction which resists being pinned on the actual source of the problem, and may pin itself to other things. “Maybe if I get that new, better X-ing equipment”, “Maybe if I get promoted to Senior X-er”.
Probably doing exercise and socialising and cooking will help you feel better about a life doing a job you don’t like, but ten minutes of honest focused introspection would let you see the problem and start to actually deal with it.
It seems plausible to me that there are also problems that are really deeply defended and will resist introspection very effectively, but I think most people haven’t spent ten minutes by the clock just really trying to be honest with themselves and stare at the uncomfortable things, and until you’ve at least done that it’s too soon to give up on the idea that your problem can’t be understood and dealt with. Certainly introspection can give you wrong answers, but usually the problem is just that people have barely tried introspection at all.
That’s a good criticism which goes to the heart of the post. But I’ve done plenty of introspection, and on the margin I have less trust in it than you do. Most people I expect can’t tell the difference between “I’m unhappy in my profession” and “I’m unhappy with my immediate manager” much better than chance, even with hours of introspection.
One thing that does help is experimenting, trying this and that. But for that you need “resource”; and the list in my post is pretty much the stuff that builds “resource”, no matter what your problems are.
To me, it also seems you undervalue introspection. This can be bad because if you think introspection is not useful, you will underuse it.
That might be correct, not because it is impossible for these people to introspect, but because they have not learned it. Most people don’t hold off on proposing solutions but I would be surprised if they could not learn to do it.
I am sure I can tell if I am unhappy because of my job or my boss. It is likely I wouldn’t have been able to tell a year ago when I thought I was good at introspection while being terrible at it. So terrible, that it is hard to imagine how I could have been worse.
How is that possible? Well, I thought I was good at introspection because I was very good at certain kinds of introspection. E.g. introspecting on how I do analytical reasoning, while I do it. But I was terrible at emotional introspection. I only had the concept of introspection. Now it is clear to me that there are multiple kinds of introspection. I was blind to emotions, without realizing this.
Before I got better at introspection, all of my negative feelings could have been described as nonspecific discomfort. But it was really not nonspecific at all. It was just that I had ignored and suppressed my emotions so much that they got disassociated from their actual causes. So I would feel bad but didn’t know why. I basically did exactly what Hazard talks about here. I did this basically for every negative emotion I experienced.
But then I discovered this tek to introspect, and it seems to work quite well. I have applied it maybe 8 times now. Mostly to emotions that at first seem nonspecific. In my experience, most emotions are actually non-specific, even if they are temporally linked very tightly.
E.g. if I experience social rejection, I normally feel good at first but after 15 minutes I start to feel bad. It seems like it should be clear to me that this is because of the social rejection, but it’s not. It will seem like the most likely explanation to me, but there will be uncertainty about if this is actually what is going on. This is ridiculous maybe I am especially bad at analyzing emotions without spinning up a conscious expliitit optimization process. But once I use the technique I linked above it becomes very clear why I feel bad. The interesting thing is that once you understand the underlying cause of the nonspecific comfort, it disappears. Without you doing anything.
This makes sort of sense. Once you have truly understood what a specific feeling “wants you to accomplish” there is really no more point in it sticking around. Now that you have understood the feeling you can either optimize for getting what the feeling wants, or you can realize that the feeling doesn’t actually make sense in the current situation. Doing the appropriate thing will make the feeling go away. At least that is what happened so far for me.
I suppose it makes sense that if you’ve done a lot of introspection, the main problems you’ll have will be the kind that are very resistant to that approach, which makes this post good advice for you and people like you. But I don’t think the generalisable lesson is “introspection doesn’t work, do these other things” so much as “there comes a point where introspection runs out, and when you hit that, here are some ways you can continue to make progress”.
Or maybe it’s like a person with a persistent disease who’s tried every antibiotic without much effect, and then says “antibiotics suck, don’t bother with them, but here are the ways I’ve found to treat my symptoms and live a good life even with the disease”. It’s good advice but only once you’re sure the infection doesn’t respond to antibiotics.
Could it be that most people do so little introspection because they’re bad at it and it would only lead them astray anyway? Possibly, but the advice I’d give would still be to train the skill rather than to give up on understanding your problems.
That said, I think all of the things you suggest are a good idea in their own right, and the best strategy will be a combination. Do the things that help with problems-in-general while also trying to understand and fix the problem itself.