A powerful tool that I think is underutilized is visualization. The simple fact is that most people fundamentally do know what they want, but different heuristics end up taking this away. So how can we actually get these heuristics to go away/find out what we truly want?

One small technique I really like to do is visualizing what my ideal self would do in a certain scenario. For example, imagine you’re in a social situation and you don’t know what to do. Imagine who you would want to be + how they would act in the scenario… and follow that. It seems quite simple but its actually really powerful. This functionally is the “fake it till you make it” mindset taken to the extreme. You roleplay as the person you want to be until you literally become them.

Using this, you can debug exactly which lens you want to view the world in. For example, a character I really like to reference when I’m confused is Iroh from avatar the last airbender! What would Iroh do is a question I find myself asking myself a lot. I highly recommend this as there probably are people/fictional characters that you admire, and you can become more like them!

This works in doing work/procrastination, because people fundamentally do tend to know what they need to do. By sampling it specifically with these values/fake person you’ve constructed, you can essentially work to bypass unconscious biases that might be plaguing your current stream of thought.