Why Do Your Personal Development Efforts Fail and What to Do Instead

We humans assume on an intuitive level that our minds consists of a single, monolithic entity. In reality, there are multiple entities active in our consciousness at different moments. Nobel laureate economist Daniel Kahneman identifies two main systems in his book Thinking Fast and Slow.

System 1 is the autopilot state. It’s active all the time. It doesn’t require much energy to maintain. However, it’s not very intelligent. System 2 is the intelligent system. It gets activated when you have an intellectual challenge like making a complex arithmetic calculation. It requires a lot of energy to maintain. Therefore, we spend most of our time in System 1.

David and Goliath in Our Heads

I like to think about the System 1 and 2 as the David and Goliath in our heads. David is intelligent, but at the same time lazy, weak, and sleeping the whole time. He doesn’t want to get bothered, but when he wakes up, he’s very sharp. He comes up with brilliant solutions. Goliath, on the other hand, is extremely active, strong, stays up the whole time, but unfortunately, dumb and prone to irrationality.

Why Work More on System 1 than System 2

Most of the personal development efforts fail. Why? Because most of the personal development systems try to use David to convince David. David already knows he has to work harder. David already knows he has to exercise more. David already knows he has to watch his caloric intake. And David is asleep most of the time.

It’s not David that is active all the time and leads our lives. It’s Goliath that does that. We have to convince Goliath to act in a certain way, not David. David is already on board and despite all of his intelligence, he has limited capacity to influence our life.

How to Get Goliath on Board

Related posts:

While our dog is getting on in years, and suffers from arthritis and is almost blind, there is nothing wrong with his sense of smell and he loves his food. If you give him top grade steak, or just…