Post 39: On Reflection — Neel Nanda

It’s easy to agree that going meta and reflecting is valuable, and far harder to actually do it. The core problem is that reflecting often feels important, but rarely feels like the top priority. It’s easy to be stuck in the short-term, chasing whatever is currently top of my mind, and letting my blind spots forever remain blind spots. And I think ... See more

Some prompts for questions I find helpful:What mistakes did I make this week?What am I being an idiot about?What am I missing?What was my biggest success this week?What is my biggest bottleneck?What is the right lesson to take from this week?In an ideal version of this week, I would have […]What am I currently procrastinating about?Whose advice wil... See more

Overall, I think regular reviews are extremely valuable. Your life will be full of mistakes, and things that could be better. Your goal is not to avoid this, your goal should be to slowly notice them and then actually do something about it. This is not the default, but you can make it the default. And this can form a cornerstone habit - a source of... See more

The world is full of wasted motion. Many things are far below where they should be, many actions fail to achieve their goals, and this includes many of your actions. And this is not because you’re failing, but because achieving your goals is hard.

The step of zooming out, being meta, and asking myself the right questions is hard. It is not the default action. The problem right in front of me always feels urgent, going meta never feels like the thing I should do right now, so I never do it.

I find there’s a lot of value in just making time to stop and reflect on your life, even if you don’t have a concrete plan - this makes reflection and going meta the default, which is the key first step! But I think it is even more valuable to go in with good questions, to get yourself thinking in the right way.