Homunculus

There are many ways of dealing with hard decisions.

For example, there’s a method called “fear setting” which Tim Ferriss is fond of. In short, he describes it this way: imagine the worst-case scenario and you will realize it’s really not that bad.

There are many more methods, of course. Here’s a collection of them.

My favorite is Homunculus. Nate Soares describes the technique, and it goes like this: imagine you are a homunculus, which is a tiny human, and you get to steer your body however you want. Now, imagine also that you are a very new homunculus, and arrive in your body for the first time. What would you change?

As a new homunculus, you have the privilege of pruning the things that obviously need pruning. Maybe you’ll look and say “Ah, yes, we’re going to cancel lunch with that person; this body was secretly dreading it. I also see that this body is currently spending a lot of cycles feeling guilty about a date that went poorly last week; we can dismiss that, it’s no longer useful for this homunculus. And also, “exercise” doesn’t seem to be on today’s schedule at all! How strange. This body definitely intended to exercise today; somehow it fell off the list. I’ll put it back on.”

– Nate Soares “Be a new homunculus”

It’s a very easy method. I’ve already imagined my new homunculus, and it made me delete 3 items from my to-do list. That’s one of my major struggles — I keep adding things to my list and have a tough time recognizing which tasks are not important. But my homunculus knew right away.