Fig Trees, Intentions, and Elephants

TJL #88

Feb 22, 2021

Parable of the Barren Fig Tree - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“Remember: you shouldn’t be surprised that a fig tree produces figs, nor the world what it produces. A good doctor isn’t surprised when his patients have fevers, or a helmsman when the wind blows against him.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.15

When I first read this quote I was surprised. I never thought of it that way. We are not surprised a fig tree produces figs, a good doctor is not surprised when his patients have a fever, and a sailor is not surprised when the wind blows against him. Just like that, a good philosopher should not be surprised when he faces adversity, it’s only natural after all.

Implementation intentions

I watched this 58 minute YouTube video about procrastination so you don’t have to:

We all have intentions, some big, some small. It turns out that if your intentions are too vague you will be more likely to procrastinate on them
We lie to ourselves about when where and how we will work because we don’t know how to talk to ourselves in a way that makes us productive.
Implementation intentions are a powerful tool in beating procrastination and helping you achieve your goals.

“An implementation intention helps you get started. It is your predecision so that you do not get caught up in thinking, choosing, deciding. You have already made the decision. Now is the time to act.”

Implementation intentions are if-then plans that determine how we will act in a future specific situation. This is what an implementation intention looks like:

In situation X, I will do behavior Y, to achieve subgoal Z.

You can write this down and own it. Implementation intentions work because they put the cue of your behavior in your environment. You don’t have to think, and that’s what makes them powerful.

I wrote about this previously in TJL #18: The power of precommitment, which was about the power of precommitment. Precommitment is a sort of implementation intention.

Elephant

A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: "We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable". So, they sought it out, and when they found it they groped about it.
The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, "This being is like a thick snake". For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. As for another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant, "is a wall". Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.

The moral of the story is that we can never deeply and truly understand the true nature of a system by just observing its individual elements.

Previous TJLs

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Today Jan Learned

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