tldr: this question sounds like you probably have a lot of prerequisites before you get to the “what should I do with my life” question.
Before getting into anything like 80,000 hours, I think a good approach is a combination of:
1) gaining skills in introspection, well enough that you can query yourself for things like “why am I doing this particular thing?” and find answers that are likely true (instead of a story you tell yourself – a lot of what we believe about our motivations is bullshit)
(This post on Focusing is a good place to get started on introspection)
2) think about:
a) most of the things that you do on a weekly basis ask “why do I do this?”, and then when you get a “because Y”, ask yourself “okay, but why do I care about Y?” and recurse until you hit something that feels like motivational-bedrock.
b) same for things you feel like you should do, or feel like you want to do, but don’t actually do.
(It helps to actually write all these things down as a kind of interconnected web)
3) Take a step back and look at all those things together, to build up a model of what your values actually are, and what sort of things you actually want.
From there, asking “okay what do I actually do?” is another complicated question, but which I wouldn’t have much more advice for until having a clearer sense of what the outcome of those steps was (or, some equivalent set of steps that outputs “understanding what you value and why.”
Thanks for sharing this. Coincidentally I have started out on steps 1 and 2a, but I haven’t done it systematically not have I recorded anything. I will aim to go through the exercise more systematically and will report the outcome back on this thread (likely to take a while). I am a bit sceptical if I will reach a motivational bedrock because I am thinking that probably every motivation / action will have a “because” , which will in turn will have another “because”… irrespective of whether I can identify these or not. However, I will shut up and execute and see where I land.
tldr: this question sounds like you probably have a lot of prerequisites before you get to the “what should I do with my life” question.
Before getting into anything like 80,000 hours, I think a good approach is a combination of:
1) gaining skills in introspection, well enough that you can query yourself for things like “why am I doing this particular thing?” and find answers that are likely true (instead of a story you tell yourself – a lot of what we believe about our motivations is bullshit)
(This post on Focusing is a good place to get started on introspection)
2) think about:
a) most of the things that you do on a weekly basis ask “why do I do this?”, and then when you get a “because Y”, ask yourself “okay, but why do I care about Y?” and recurse until you hit something that feels like motivational-bedrock.
b) same for things you feel like you should do, or feel like you want to do, but don’t actually do.
(It helps to actually write all these things down as a kind of interconnected web)
3) Take a step back and look at all those things together, to build up a model of what your values actually are, and what sort of things you actually want.
From there, asking “okay what do I actually do?” is another complicated question, but which I wouldn’t have much more advice for until having a clearer sense of what the outcome of those steps was (or, some equivalent set of steps that outputs “understanding what you value and why.”
Thanks for sharing this. Coincidentally I have started out on steps 1 and 2a, but I haven’t done it systematically not have I recorded anything. I will aim to go through the exercise more systematically and will report the outcome back on this thread (likely to take a while). I am a bit sceptical if I will reach a motivational bedrock because I am thinking that probably every motivation / action will have a “because” , which will in turn will have another “because”… irrespective of whether I can identify these or not. However, I will shut up and execute and see where I land.
Looking forward to hear how it goes!