One of the things I’ve been fascinated about as I’ve been learning chess is discovering my thinking mistakes. It turns out, my brain isn’t a well-programmed computer when it comes to making chess decisions, so uncovering my thinking mistakes is a great way to improve.
I’ve been thinking about how to apply this to personal development — if you’re trying to create better habits or improve your productivity or fitness, how can you uncover some old thinking patterns that aren’t serving you?
So here’s my attempt at pointing to some very common thinking patterns that I believe aren’t serving most people as they try to improve parts of their lives …
Please read the descriptions of each, because the part in bold might not be something you recognize until you read further.
1. I can do this later. This is, of course, true — you can always do this task or commitment later. There’s always time later to write your book, study your course, do your meditation, do your workout. But this will be true later as well — later today, you can still say, “I can do this tomorrow.” The problem with this thinking is that if you extend it beyond this one instance, you’ll be putting your important (but non-urgent) things off all the time. This thinking pattern results in procrastination of the most important but uncomfortable things in your life. Upgrade: This is important enough to do now, or to commit to a time to do it.
2. Just one time won’t hurt. This is what I’d say when I was trying to quit cigarettes — just one won’t hurt. That’s literally true, except that of course it leads to more. This kind of thing applies to any kind of addiction or compulsion — including compulsive shopping or video game playing, etc. Upgrade: My health/finances/family/mission is more important than this one temporary pleasure.
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