As I reflect on my pattern of thoughts lately, I noticed how I often “step out” and think of things at a higher level, e.g., trying to justify some justifications, etc. Where does this change come from? I’d assume it has to do with me reading a lot of philosophy lately 🙂 I’ll post some brief random thoughts here about this matter.
I did a lot of reading lately, and I can’t say that I remember everything on top of my mind, but there is still influence even in such passive learning. For example, I encountered Knowledge=JTB twice so far, and the second time I feel like I really grasped it, compared to the first time. Perhaps a big part of my trying to find justifications come from it?
To speak a bit more concretely, when I have a conversation with someone, some questions come to me passively/naturally, and it’s not that they disturb the conversation, more like “I’d like to find the answer to these questions, so I’ll keep conversing and see what happens!”. Of course, I don’t ask the person these questions (but sometimes I do!). Some example questions:
- Why are they telling me this?
- Do I trust what they say?
- If I do, why? Is it due to authority? Is it a family member?
- Do they usually speak the truth?
- Are they telling the story only from a single angle, or are they covering other perspectives?
- What does the answer to these (and other) questions tell me about the person?
Lately working on DevEx, I experienced mindset shifts and had to do more self-programming. The process for this: take down these notes, continuously remind myself of them, and keep trying to apply them:
- Remain calm in meetings, listen to others, observe them, and speak SLOWER. (For those of you who have interacted with me, you already know I speak too fast 🙂 Some of you think it’s part of my character, but I see good reasons to change that behaviour.)
- Don’t reply fast, think before! Communicate with clarity.
- Working on a project with minimal guidance: try to predict situations/run more simulations (similarly to chess calculations), but also remember to get into action (thinking can only get us so far)
- What will X think of this?
- Structure/codebase for security workshop: perspectives (devex/facilitator/…), fill gaps, offload, iterate on feedback.
- When working on a product feature, how will users use it?
- See which persons expect you to come prepared, and with which you can brainstorm half-baked ideas.
- Self-pressure: be aware of it, and control it! No personal failures.
- Always think beyond: Find opportunities to build relationships, when doing mentoring think about mentoring mentors, etc.
I also found out that we can create and make things happen, like tools, ideas, and activities that can give happiness and work to others, just by starting with an idea.
One meta-thought I had: why do these questions start to come naturally to me? It wasn’t always effortless, and why did I not get them naturally before? I guess it’s the result of reading a lot of philosophy lately. Of course, beyond reading also try to apply it, live it, philosophize with my friends, and try to reflect more. In general, reading philosophy taught me the beauty of rationalization and also made me appreciate the beauty of cultures, traditions, and religions even more.
Think the I and observe what is involved in doing this [also think of God]
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
The quote above got stuck in my mind and likely is another contributor.
Ultimately, I feel like I became even calmer as a person. I feel like I am more “present” than before by being more aware of things. For example, when a feeling is rushing through me, I try to understand why and where it comes from. Of course, if it’s a good feeling, I just ignore everything and enjoy the flow 🙂
It wouldn’t be fair to pay all the credit to philosophy for this. Obviously, the way I live my life, the people I’m surrounded with, and the paid work that I’m doing (recently, mostly with hiring/mentoring engineers) is likely huge contributor as well.
Finally, I am not trying to sell rationalization with this post. In fact, I believe that too much thinking can cause more harm than help. Balancing the right amount of rationalizing/acting in life is the key.
If this post wasn’t meta enough, here’s another bit of meta: I write this post publicly because I think that 1) my future self will likely find it useful, and 2) I hope that someone else finds it useful/finds themselves in it.
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