Life. We all have some of it, but it is just so hard sometimes. Especially since we only have one, and every single decision matters. So, how can we find what to do with our lives?
You can find what to do with your life by splitting your life into four spheres- financial, social, physical, and intellectual- then deciding how to optimize each.
If you know what that means, then you should be good. If you do not, then you must be a mortal. Well, let’s get on with the tour, mortal.
Why I Can’t Decide What I Really Want?
You can’t decide what you really want because all options have a physical gain, and a social gain, making it seem like there are many options, and none at the same time.
Physical gains refer to concrete physical gains that we can get in the world. These include things like money, food, house, a job, a lover, a family, and all these things that follow.
Meanwhile, social gains refers to the immaterial things that we can attain. These are things like respect, admiration, people being attracted to you, people being intimidated by you, and other immaterial things we gain.
Examples of Social and Physical gain
When companies market products, they use these two things. For example, an SUV car will be advertised as being able to drive across treacherous terrain and turn you into a real man. Physical gain here is the car that can take you anywhere, and the social gain is people looking at you in admiration, and intimidation, seeing a “real man”.
Every decision we make in life has a physical gain, and some disadvantages. But they also have a social gain and disadvantage.
A car may provide you with protection, but it can kill you with debt that you will have to pay for years to come. Meanwhile, a social gain such as admiration, and people being intimidated to you can help, but it has the advantage of leaving you isolated, and lonely. Thus when times get tough, you can’t drop your shell, or you lose people’s intimidation/respect.
This is why making decisions is hard.
Deciding which college to go to, who to date, where to live, what to study, and all these things is complicated by these things. It would be nice if people took decisions that gave physical gain over social gain.
Also, if they’d try to maximize their gain versus their losses. For example, if people went to a cheap college so they can save money, and use it for something. Or if they asked for help when they needed it.
However, that is very hard, because people usually can’t tell apart physical and social value.
How To Pick The Best Life?
Growing up, I’d always wanted to do art for a living. Of course, I was also interested in being some kind of mind doctor (maybe a psychologist), but art was my passion. I mostly wanted to do the doctor thing because it was what would make me look cool. Being a doctor. However, I decide that on the side, I’d draw manga. I started writing stories that I could turn into manga when I grew up. They were simple scripts, written in play format. Eventually, when I’d finally filled a number of books with these stories, I had a silly idea.
Why don’t I just write a book?
It took a while, but eventually I’d written a book. It was one of the most fun experiences of my life. After the book won a competition, I decided that I will just be a writer.
Today, I’m studying to be a clinical psychologist. However, I am also working on my official debut novel.
There are a number of ways to decide what to do with your life. Today, I am going to be discussing one I recently learned on a book called Deep Work. Let’s dig in.
How Do I Decide What To Do With My Life?
1. You Could Improve Your Life With The Your Unconscious Mind
The first technique you could use to decide what to do with your life is using your unconscious mind to make the decision.
This theory is a theory that applies to decision making, impression formation, attitude formation, and change, problem solving, and creativity, as described by Dijksterhuis A. This theory states that there are 2 types of thought; unconscious thought, and conscious thought.
They then conclude that these two types of thoughts can be used in different situations, but the what we are mainly interested in is the line, “For instance, contrary to popular belief, decisions about simples issues can be better tackled by conscious thought, whereas decisions about complex matters can be better approached with unconscious thought.” The rest of the study can be read here.
The experiment
The primary difference between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind is that the conscious mind is bounded and restrained. Meanwhile, the unconscious mind reaches out and sees all the angles and information that it knows to make decisions. Dijksterhuis performed a research experiment to test this. You can read the rest here.
He broke a group into 3. Each group received a picture. One group was asked to make a decision immediately on which they liked the most. The second was asked to study the pictures, and make a list of the ones they liked and didn’t. The last group was given puzzles to solve for five minutes, and then asked immediately to choose which picture they liked. A month later, they asked how much each of the members liked their picture, and how much they’d sell it for, they found only the third group was attached to the picture. They sold their picture for more money.
If this is true, I can easily by pass things like social gain for physical gain.
The 6 Principles of Unconscious Thought Theory
The theory uses 6 core principles for it to work:
- The unconscious thought principle: This asserts the existence and nature of unconscious and conscious thought.
- The capacity principle: This asserts that “one cannot hold more than seven items, plus or minus two, in conscious working memory; unconscious thought does not have this restriction.”
- The bottom-up versus top-down principle: This one states that “conscious thought must use a top-down style of processing that uses shortcuts and schemas to work efficiently”.
- The weighting principle: states that “deliberation between choice objects and introspecting on one’s reasoning process results in poorer choice satisfaction than when one does not introspect.”
- The rule principle: “conscious thought employs rule-based thinking, following formal rules much like those of traditional logic, whereas unconscious thought instead uses associations that are either inherent or learned through experience”.
- The convergence principle: “conscious thought is focused, and convergent, using only information directly relevant to a goal or task, while unconscious thought is more divergent bringing to bear information that has less obvious relation to the goal or task at hand.”
So, how do you use this theory?
2. Place The Things You Must Choose From Before You, and Their Consequences
The second thing that you could try is placing the information before you.
The simple way to make decisions is to lay down all the information before you in a way that can allow you to process it. Now, whether you process this information consciously, or unconsciously, it does not matter. You just need all the facts before you.
So how can you lay all this information before you in a way that shows you all the gains, and the losses? You could use a list like this.
Split your life into financial, social, physical, and intellectual spheres. Then, write every option you have for each.
The List
- Financial: Where do you get your money from? Is it a job, your parents, or a business? Then, is there a way of you to increase your money? What would you have to do to do this thing?
- Social: This refers to who you spend most time with. When you are lonely, who do you spend the most time with? Then, is there a way that you can help them better? Or if you do not have anybody, is there a place where you can go to meet people? It would be helpful if it is somewhere you also spend time with your finance, and other spheres.
- Physical: Can you physically keep up with the demands of your finance sphere and your social sphere? This means do you have energy to spend on friends, and lovers? Or do you have an attention span long enough for you to make an impact financially? If not, there are exercises you can use to increase energy, and increase brain power output, so you can think and concentrate more.
- Intellectual: Do you know where to go if you want to start a new business? if you want to build friendships? Or get a wife/husband? Do you have somewhere to go if you want to increase your physical energy, and your intellectual energy?
What do these questions do?
These questions will give you a list of your current potential, what you have to lose and what you can gain in the future. With these things written out in front of you, it will be easier to add, and subtract where necessary.
It is also how I decided to be a psychologist, and writer. You can input this information and go play video games, then come back to the list, and see what you’ve decided.
However, there are some who remain skeptical about UTT (Unconscious Thought Theory). A study was conduct by sciencedirect, and they found no evidence in favor of the predictions made by Unconscious Thought Theory. They report, “The results of out studies suggest that it is better to base decisions on conscious thought while having access to information.”
So, is there a way of using conscious that to use Unconscious thought theory? It sounds oxymoronic, but, we could use these 6 principles to our advantage.
3. You Could Sort Your Life With The capacity Principle
You could make a decision by trying to keep as little information in your mind as possible.
You conscious mind can only hold up to 7 factors. When deciding which college to go to, you have to think of friends, family, tuition, travel, and even more factors. A simple exercise you could use is whittling down what you have to think about.
What do you want to use that specific thing for?
If it’s college, what problem must it solve? If it is a friend, what problem do they solve? When you have that one specific problem, try to see how well it fixes it, and ignore the rest. They will naturally fail, and you will be left with one choice.
For example, choose the college that offers the best education, and they may reject you because you do not have the proper marks. Then another, and they may reject because you do not have the money. Then choose another, and they could accept you but may the travel is not financial possible.
Do this until you are left with a college that best fixes that one problem, but it also fixes the others too.
4. Use the Bottom Up Versus Top Down Principle
You could use a bottom up way of fixing the problem.
This means that you could try not to use shortcuts to fix the problem. You can do this by first researching the problem you have. Learn the etymology of the word, what the word actually means. Then, you’ll know what the true problem and goal is.
This way, you could find more unorthodox means of fixing the issue at hand.
5. You Could Help Your Life With the Weighting Principle
You could make decisions by asking people who have made similar decisions.
Weighting principles refers to people who make decisions after thinking deeply about it and then regret it. This is compared to someone who just chooses without consideration, and thus never regrets the decision.
Ask the people who have made decisions to do what you want to do. Look for those who regret, and those who do not regret, then try and see if you do not mind the cause of their guilt.
You could do this by going online and researching regret stories about your current predicament. Or better yet, walk up to someone you know and ask them.
6. You Could Improve Your Life With the Rule Principle
This means you could try to make choice on your previous personal experiences.
Rather than making your decisions based on the rules and what is statistically proven to work best, it is better to make decisions on what you experienced yourself.
For example, I listen to music to concentrate. Studies show that music makes working hard, and concentration difficult. Yet here I am.
To use this, expose yourself to more experiences. Try the advice given, then make your own decision afterwards.
7. You Could Use the Convergence Problem
You could try to use tangentially related information.
Instead of thinking about the factors directly involved in the problem, you could try to look at other factors that are related to the problem. Sort of like metaphors
8. Expose Yourself To The Problem
“PICTURE 8”
You could stop trying to make decisions, and instead focus on trying to make discoveries.
Nobel prize winners mention that they made their most critical discoveries when they were dwelling within the problem, not trying to fix it. This means that they are just observing, and not drawing any conclusions.
You could do the same.
Observe the decision you need to make, and just watch it. Look at people who talk about it, go online and watch videos of people discussing their lives dealing with the problem. Then, after sitting down, write the things you observe about it. You may eventually stumble upon something.
9. Speak Out Loud
Try saying your problem out loud to yourself.
You should go for a walk. In this walk, starting having a conversation with yourself about the problem. Speak as if you are speaking to someone else, and respond as if someone else had spoken.
I do this often and you’d be amazed how crass you are.
Once you’ve finally decided what to do with your life, you’ll be that much closer to mastering mastery.