Hey guys, it's Non here.
Coffee in hand. I owed this blog six more rules and I simply did not write them. I forgot. Freud had a word for the kind of forgetting that is quietly doing a job for you, and I think he was right about mine.
To make an absolutely true judgement on anything, we're risking making a bad decision. When Steven Jobs tells us to "stay hungry and stay foolish," he's asking us to accept the fact that we can might as well be wrong on just about everything we think we already know well based on whatever reasons we have created for ourselves to believe so.
I had a deadline. I promised to put six more rules into a post, and then I just... didn't do it. It wasn't a case of being too busy or having a broken laptop.
It was a plain, quiet forgetting. Sigmund Freud, who spent his life trying to figure out why people do the things they do, had a term for this. He called it a parapraxis. That is just a fancy way of saying a "slip."
It’s when your brain does something by accident—like a typo or forgetting your keys—that actually reveals a deeper truth about what you are feeling or thinking. I looked at my own failure to write those rules and I realized my brain was doing something for me. It was protecting me. I wasn't ready to say those things yet.
The forgetting was a signal. It told me that the way I wanted to frame those rules wasn't honest enough, or maybe it wasn't clear enough. And this is the part worth stealing. I think we often mistake our lack of discipline for a character flaw.
We think, "I'm lazy," or "I'm not a hard worker." But what if your avoidance is actually a piece of data? What if the reason you keep putting something off is because the thing you are trying to do is based on an opinion you haven't actually finished forming yet? I think we have a massive problem with how much we want to have a say about everything.
We feel like we have to have a stance on every news story, every product, and every tiny detail of our surroundings. "It's true that we tend to want to have an opinion on everything. Why is the desk you're working on your laptop right now not as clean as you want it to be? Why is the cup you're using not as nice as the one you used to hold?
Why is the spoon you are using looks so strange?" When I say this, I mean that we treat our opinions like badges of identity. If we don't have an opinion on the spoon, we feel like we are missing a piece of ourselves. We think that having a "take" on the world makes us active participants in it.
But often, we are just reacting to the friction between what is and what we want it to be. If you find yourself stuck, like I was with those rules, try to look at the friction. Are you avoiding the work because you are lazy? Or are you avoiding it because you are trying to force an opinion on something you don't actually have enough knowledge about yet?
Maybe the best thing to do is let the opinion go for a while. If you stop trying to judge the spoon, you might actually be able to use it.
You might be right to push back on that. It is a very easy thing to do, and honestly, it is the most logical thing to do if you value your own agency. You could say to me, "Dr. Non, that sounds like a very convenient excuse.
If I just decide that every time I procrastinate, it’s a 'signal' from my subconscious, then I never have to take responsibility for my own lack of willpower. I can just blame my brain for being 'protective' whenever I choose to be lazy." That is a fair point. If we take this to the extreme, it becomes a way to avoid the hard work of discipline.
It turns every missed deadline into a profound psychological mystery instead of just a failure to manage your time. It’s a way to stay comfortable in your own habits by dressing them up in the fancy clothes of Freudian theory. You could argue that some people are just genuinely disorganized or overwhelmed, and calling that a "parapraxis" is just a way to make a personal flaw feel like a deep, spiritual truth. But here is where I have to push back.
I am not saying that every time you forget a task, it’s a hidden message from the universe. That would be a bit much. What I am saying is that we need to look at the specific friction of the task itself. There is a difference between forgetting to do the dishes and forgetting to write a specific, difficult piece of work.
The dishes are a chore. They are a physical necessity. But the writing—the public declaration of your thoughts—is different. That involves your identity.
When you find yourself stuck on a specific project, you have to ask: am I avoiding the effort, or am I avoiding the conclusion? If it’s just the effort, then you need better habits. But if it’s the conclusion, it means you are trying to force a shape onto your thoughts that they aren't ready to take. "There're so many things in life that you either 1) Do not have enough knowledge about to have an opinion?"
I mean that we often try to skip the part where we learn and go straight to the part where we judge. We want the badge of having a take before we've done the work of understanding the topic. If you can't find the words, it's usually because you're trying to speak for a version of yourself that doesn't exist yet.
Think about the last time you had to send a difficult email or sign off on a project that felt... heavy. Maybe it was a performance review for someone you actually liked, or a message to a friend explaining why you couldn't do a favor. You probably sat there staring at the blinking cursor for a long time.
You might have told yourself you were just "tired" or "busy." But if we look at this as a signal, as a piece of data, something else is happening. You are feeling a friction between the version of yourself you want to project and the reality of what you actually feel or know. When you keep hitting that same wall, it’s not a failure of your calendar.
It’s a sign that you’re trying to force a conclusion before the information is there. You want to be the person who is decisive. You want to be the person who has the "right" take. But if you haven't done the work to understand the full scope of the situation, any opinion you put on the page is just a mask.
It’s a way of closing the loop so you can stop feeling the discomfort of not knowing. This is where the actual work of being a person becomes difficult. It requires you to sit in the "not knowing" for a while longer. If you are avoiding a specific decision, stop asking if you are lazy.
Ask if you are trying to skip the learning phase. I like to live by the wisdom of the economist John Maynard Keynes: "When information changes, change your opinion." Again, not only do we not know everything in the world, but for many things that we think we know there can also be new data, research, information to disprove it. And when that happens those who can adjust will benefit. And, 2) There are so many things in life that do not matter to you at all whether you do or do not have any opinions about them.
What I mean is that we have to be brave enough to be flexible. If you find yourself stuck on a task because it feels like it requires a "perfect" stance, give yourself permission to hold off on the stance. You don't have to have a finished opinion today. Sometimes, the most productive thing you can do is admit that the data isn't complete yet.
When you stop trying to force the "take," the friction usually starts to melt away. You can finally move forward because you aren't carrying the weight of a premature judgment.
This leads me to a difficult spot, because if we stop forcing the judgment, we have to face the quiet space that remains. We often use our opinions as a shield against the sheer scale of the world. It’s a way of saying, "I have categorized this, so it can no longer surprise or overwhelm me." When I stop trying to be the person who has a definitive take on everything, I am left with the fact that I don't know as much as I thought I did.
That's not just a lack of information; it's a shift in how I inhabit my own life. "Restrain yourself from wanting to show off how much you want other people to think you know by criticizing everything. A practical advise is to look at things the way they are, and appreciate them that way. If you can; Don't be a victim to your own ability to think about something." I mean that we have to be careful not to let our intellect become a cage.
If we spend our lives judging the spoon, the desk, and the news, we eventually stop actually using the spoon or sitting at the desk. We become observers of our own lives rather than participants in them. But here is the question I’m still circling around. If we let go of the need to have a finished opinion, to be "right" about the shape of things, how do we actually decide what to do next?
If the "take" is gone, what is the actual compass we use to move?