Understanding yourself

• Seneca tells us that we should each have our own Cato - a great and noble person we can allow into our minds and use to guide our actions. It doesn't have to be an actual person, just someone who, like Seneca said, can stand witness to our behavior. Someone who can quietly admonish us if we ...

What makes something effortful? For example, why is it harder to do a math problem than play a video game?

Understanding how effort works is essential. Many of our goals will require a lot of it. If we have the wrong view on how effort works, many of our systems will fail ...

• We must have the self-awareness to recognize that our values have failed. Losing a value feels as though we’re losing a part of ourselves. We resist that failure. We explain it away and deny it.
• Question the value and brainstorm what values could do a better job. ...