This reminds me of a thing I formulated a little over a year ago and adopted as a “thought-resolution” (goal of changing some thought patterns) in 2017. I will also paste a thing I wrote back then:
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“Instead of thinking about tradeoffs between what I WANT to do and what I SHOULD do, try to think about choices as tradeoffs between things I want and other things I want.
Examples:
- “I should go to sleep but I want to read this blog post and ALL the comments” --> “I want to read this blog post and ALL the comments right now. I also want to wake up on time tomorrow and have some energy.”
- “I should get up but I want to stay in bed” --> “I want to stay in bed. I also want to both get a good amount of work done today and finish work at a reasonable time.”
- “I want to eat this brownie but I shouldn’t.” --> “I want to eat this brownie. I also want [various good health outcomes].”
Why? Several reasons:
- Making the things that underlie the “should” more explicit might help me actually consider those things in my decision and ultimately make better choices. “I want outcome X” is more motivating than a general sense of unwanted obligation.
- The “should” framing makes me feel guilty when I do things I “shouldn’t” do—even though I don’t believe making these choices is actually *immoral*, which means guilt isn’t justified (and obviously isn’t pleasant). I’m not really making moral choices in these situations, I’m just making tradeoffs between various things I want, which means I shouldn’t feel guilty even if the tradeoff I make isn’t the best one.
- In general “should” is just shorthand for “this is a better choice for me than the opposite”. But this isn’t actually always true. If there is something unusually interesting happening at 2 a.m. one night, it might be worth it to stay up late and incur the negative consequences. I already do that, with the words “I should go to bed but I really don’t want to miss this”—but that makes it sound like a bad choice even when it’s not!”
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which I guess can be reframed as “I should identify equally with my short-term desires and my longer-term ones; my future self is not a different person from me”. De-identifying entirely was not a goal (and I’m not sure it is a goal now, either, though in some ways I do want to move in that direction).
In general “should” is just shorthand for “this is a better choice for me than the opposite”.
I think it’s more complicated than this. In my experience many shoulds come from social pressure, so “I should do X” is often implicitly something like “if I don’t do X then the tribe will disapprove of me,” e.g. I should exercise, I should eat well, I should study, and so forth.
This reminds me of a thing I formulated a little over a year ago and adopted as a “thought-resolution” (goal of changing some thought patterns) in 2017. I will also paste a thing I wrote back then:
---
“Instead of thinking about tradeoffs between what I WANT to do and what I SHOULD do, try to think about choices as tradeoffs between things I want and other things I want.
Examples:
- “I should go to sleep but I want to read this blog post and ALL the comments” --> “I want to read this blog post and ALL the comments right now. I also want to wake up on time tomorrow and have some energy.”
- “I should get up but I want to stay in bed” --> “I want to stay in bed. I also want to both get a good amount of work done today and finish work at a reasonable time.”
- “I want to eat this brownie but I shouldn’t.” --> “I want to eat this brownie. I also want [various good health outcomes].”
Why? Several reasons:
- Making the things that underlie the “should” more explicit might help me actually consider those things in my decision and ultimately make better choices. “I want outcome X” is more motivating than a general sense of unwanted obligation.
- The “should” framing makes me feel guilty when I do things I “shouldn’t” do—even though I don’t believe making these choices is actually *immoral*, which means guilt isn’t justified (and obviously isn’t pleasant). I’m not really making moral choices in these situations, I’m just making tradeoffs between various things I want, which means I shouldn’t feel guilty even if the tradeoff I make isn’t the best one.
- In general “should” is just shorthand for “this is a better choice for me than the opposite”. But this isn’t actually always true. If there is something unusually interesting happening at 2 a.m. one night, it might be worth it to stay up late and incur the negative consequences. I already do that, with the words “I should go to bed but I really don’t want to miss this”—but that makes it sound like a bad choice even when it’s not!”
---
which I guess can be reframed as “I should identify equally with my short-term desires and my longer-term ones; my future self is not a different person from me”. De-identifying entirely was not a goal (and I’m not sure it is a goal now, either, though in some ways I do want to move in that direction).
I think it’s more complicated than this. In my experience many shoulds come from social pressure, so “I should do X” is often implicitly something like “if I don’t do X then the tribe will disapprove of me,” e.g. I should exercise, I should eat well, I should study, and so forth.