How to make sure you actually answer the questions you ask
Criteria in prompt-driven thinking
Two weeks ago, I wrote about thinking for yourself. The essay you are reading builds on the process I described in that one, so consider reading it first!
Imagine what would happen if you discovered that everything was illusory. Having this insight might significantly reduce your suffering, as it does with many Buddhists.
Now, if a waiter asked you what you wanted to eat for breakfast, to be completely truthful, you would have to say “nothing, there is no such thing.” But then you would get hungry. A concerned friend might ask if you are OK, and you would have no choice but to remark that “there is no self to be OK or not OK.”
How silly! Unless you wanted to share your revelatory insight at the cost of your satiety, you should have answered in a way that at least gets you some food. Sure, it would be fitting to write that insight down in a philosophical treatise. But at the restaurant, your waiter does not want to hear it!
Clearly, just because something is true, does not mean it is applicable. You might have truthfully answered the waiter’s question, but did you do so in the way you ultimately would have liked?
This pain-point is the motivation for prompt criteria. If you have been thinking actively, asking and answering questions in the way I recommended, you might have found that same pain-point: some of your answers to individual questions might completely miss the greater point.
Say you were interested in exploring the many avenues in front of you, thinking about the implications of a consequential decision. Wanting to think actively, you wrote down “what is the meaning of life?”
Then, you find an answer that is immediately truthful: “It depends.”
…
So much for your inquiry. While this example is clearly contrived, I have sometimes written down an interesting question only to, a few months later, ignore it because the answer was something obvious along the lines of “it depends.”
To ensure that your questions get the answers you want out of them, keep track of the criteria you will hold various answers to. If your criteria for the waiter’s question was that your answer had to be on the menu, then at the very least, you would not be starving.
I often use Obsidian’s Canvas as a thinking tool. Expect a step-by-step guide sometime, but for now I will use it to visually demonstrate criteria:
Notice the box at the center. It states the problem I had, the prompt at the center of the whole inquiry. In this case, I realized that my understanding of behavior had incompatibilities, so I set out to settle it.
Connected to that central box is a purple box labelled ‘Criteria.’ Within that box are a collection of statements that describe the ideal situation after my thinking is done. Here, I wanted to synthesize the two understandings into a singular view.
While coming up with further questions and answering them, I keep those criteria in mind. They serve as context to which my thinking is directed, making sure that everything is more applicable.
Criteria can really help guide your thinking, but do not treat them as permanent and eternal. It is normal that thinking through something shines light onto what the answer would ideally look like, and criteria in those cases might be too strict.
Unfortunately, criteria take up quite a bit of space. When thinking on chalkboards, I tend to use less criteria because they would not fit. They also take some time, so when I am flooded with ideas I often ignore writing them.
It takes time and practice to discover what works for you, so please think for yourself! Try using criteria in your own thinking, and let me know how it turns out.
Practical tip that we should keep in mind, sometimes hard to do that :)