Introspection. I believe that I’m pretty good at it. I even spent a few years writing a book about it, which received some very positive reviews (“It changed my life” etc). Despite this, from time to time it strikes me that I don’t do it, to my own benefit, nearly half as much as I could. It’s almost like I’m aware of a ‘free money glitch’ and I use it… sparingly. Why is that?
First of all let me contextualize what I mean by Introspection, since different people have different interpretations. I’m not talking about infinitely recursive navel-gazing. I’ve encountered people who seem to struggle with this, and it’s always somewhat surprising to me. The way out of that infinite-mirrors trap is to attend to something that’s rooted in reality. I can’t remember the last time I introspected ‘in the abstract’– maybe when I was a bored teenager? Most of my introspection is focused on solving problems. And the reason I’m comfortable saying that I’m pretty good at introspection is that I have a history of solving my own problems. I notice something that’s bothering me, and I investigate and experiment until I find a solution. Oftentimes with the more serious or persistent problems, it turns out that my definition of the problem is itself erroneous, so there’s a bunch of meta-investigation that needs doing.
I’m not against recursion entirely. For example, when I started writing this, I didn’t know exactly where I was going with it, apart from “I want to talk about introspection because it bothers me how people seem to keep assuming it’s about unproductive navel-gazing”. But already I can look back and see an interesting puzzle that would be productive to solve: why don’t I use my ‘free money glitch’ more? Why don’t I accelerate the rate at which I solve my own problems?
I start listing out possible explanations without being too attached to any one too soon. Maybe it’s that… the free money glitch isn’t actually free– introspection requires a stupid bravery, and that costs effort and energy. It’s like the psychological equivalent of physically moving around. Everyone knows it’s great to be physically fit and healthy, to move, to run, jump, squat, be limber and dextrous. But not everyone makes the effort to move, even though movement sets off a cascade that then gives us more energy to expend more effort on more things that matter to us, and makes things easier to do, and so on. And yeah, I don’t physically move nearly as much as I know would be good for me, either. Why?
Part of it feels like I haven’t designed it to be compelling enough for me. And I start thinking about other things that I do that are compelling. Tweeting is very compelling for me, it’s effortless, I can do it all day without realizing that I’m doing it. Sometimes I’ll casually start writing a tweet and then next thing I know almost 2 hours have passed. That’s one of the reasons I know that writing is the right vocation for me. It compels me. Can I make things like introspection and physical more compelling for myself? I believe it might be possible. How? I think this is a question maybe better approached in the inverse. What deters me from doing it? Part of it is that results are not immediately obvious. Part of it is that… I feel slightly overwhelmed by the vagaries of everyday life– caring for my 1yo son and everything else that goes with that.
(I am now 6 paragraphs deep and I don’t see a simple or elegant path to a conclusion. One thing I could do would be to copy this note out and turn it into an essay that keeps going maybe for another 12 paragraphs. And then maybe I might find a way to condense that. But I don’t feel like doing that right now, since part of my original intent here was to start something and get to a resolution in the same ‘session’. So I think I should narrow my scope, and just pick a specific thing to dig into and resolve, even if it isn’t spectacular.)
What can I do to increase the rate at which I use introspection to solve my own problems? What would I recommend someone else do? Well, I would say… you don’t have to make a huge deal out of it. That’s why tweeting is so compelling, isn’t it? You’re just writing one tweet. And then another. It never feels like a huge deal. And I think the mistake I make in many other domains of my life is that I keep allowing things to swell up into unnecessarily huge deals, which then become dauntingly overwhelming. I’ve spent the past 2 years trying to write Great Essays, and the result has been… Not That Great. I have enough experience as a writer to know that if I simply allowed myself to write Okay Essays, some of them would be Great almost entirely by accident. That just happens sometimes as part of the magic of the creative process. Think about how a casual conversation with someone can sometimes strike you in a profound way. Whereas if you insist on trying to have profound conversations on demand, that can put undue pressure on the interaction, which saps the life out of it. (This is also part of why I feel dating apps aren’t really a great idea when it comes to trying to spark chemistry with someone. It’s too pointed. It’d be easier to create chemistry if there’s less pressure to have chemistry.)
And I think that’s roughly the answer I’ve been looking for. I’ve gotten too severe and solemn about how I do important things. I did preempt this in my ‘Are you serious?’ essay, and it also comes up when I talk about ‘ayy lmao’ energy. I would do more of the things that I know are good, if I didn’t make such a needlessly big deal out of them. If I can teach myself to once again be a silly lil guy messing around with silly little details, I genuinely think I’d get a lot more done. Maybe something similar might be true for you?