For me, sanity always starts with remembering times that I was wrong—confidently wrong, arrogantly wrong, embarrassingly wrong. I have a handful of dissimilar situations cached in my head as memories (there’s one story about popsicles, one story about thinking a fellow classmate was unintelligent, one story about judging a student’s performance during a tryout, one story about default trusting someone with some sensitive information), and I can lean on all of those to remind myself not to be overconfident, not to be dismissive, not to trust too hard in my feeling of rightness.
As for patience, I think the key thing is a focus on the value of the actual truth. If I really care about finding the right answer, it’s easy to be patient, and if I don’t, it’s a good sign that I should disengage once I start getting bored or frustrated.
For the author and the audience: what are your favourite patience- and sanity-inducing rituals?
For me, sanity always starts with remembering times that I was wrong—confidently wrong, arrogantly wrong, embarrassingly wrong. I have a handful of dissimilar situations cached in my head as memories (there’s one story about popsicles, one story about thinking a fellow classmate was unintelligent, one story about judging a student’s performance during a tryout, one story about default trusting someone with some sensitive information), and I can lean on all of those to remind myself not to be overconfident, not to be dismissive, not to trust too hard in my feeling of rightness.
As for patience, I think the key thing is a focus on the value of the actual truth. If I really care about finding the right answer, it’s easy to be patient, and if I don’t, it’s a good sign that I should disengage once I start getting bored or frustrated.