Here is one of my “rants”, as I like to call them. I study A LOT. Cognitive science and effective thinking especially, and sometimes after studying a topic for a while I write something like this. I wrote this sometime during December 2025-January 2026.
Enjoy it in all it’s messy glory:
Intro
We often think there is a “right” way to do things. It is often fast, optimized, efficient, effective, and ideal. It works. You’re confident in it. No one will criticize you for it. It works the first time and every time. It is also simple, with clearly-defined steps that guarantee success.
It also doesn’t exist.
To explain why your “Right Way” needs to be tossed to the trash, I use writing stories and changing people’s minds.
Writing – Progress-blocking Beliefs
In writers just starting out, including myself once upon a time, I often see the following as either conscious or subconscious ideas:
- The words should flow easily
- I should be able to sit down and write the whole thing through
- What I write should be as good as I can imagine it to be
- I need each word, sentence, paragraph, and chapter to be “right” before I can move on.
- I shouldn’t have to plan, or the planning should come easily
- I just have to know the right “formula” or “structure” to get it right
- I just need my environment to be just right, then I can write (feelings, family, environment, place to write, etc.)
- I just need discipline to “just do it” (which I should be able to summon any time)
Changing Minds – Progress-blocking Beliefs
When it comes to the goals of changing other people’s minds, a whole other set of conscious or subconscious beliefs are part of the “right” way:
- I should be able to change someone’s mind with facts and logic.
- People should accept any fact or evidence I share
- People who don’t accept my arguments are illogical, irrational, stupid, or evil.
- I am logical, and my beliefs are based on facts, not feelings.
- My perspectives on what is “right” are, in fact, right.
- It’s more important to be “right”, to speak “truth”, to be “on the right side of history” than it is to be effective.
- I am an individual thinker and not just just a follower of the crowd.
- Sharing memes, articles, and posts, as well as discussing (or debating) them on social media should not only be effective, but it means I’m doing my part to help.
- And last, there are some people too far gone to help. Impossible to help. They will never change. They are evil or just too dumb.
Impact of these Beliefs
Individually, these can stop you from progressing. But more than one of them? And if the majority sit in your subconscious?
It’s crippling.
The Invisible Mind
These beliefs are often subconscious. When called outright, most of us would deny most of these affecting us. We would look at ourselves, and see no sign of them.
Pity 98% of your mental processing is invisible to your conscious mind.
Think harder on that. The vast majority of your processing is inaccessible to your waking mind.
Actual Behavior vs. Stated Goals
Then how can you tell if these are affecting you?
The first key is to imagine if a neutral observer compared your behavior to your goals, would they think some of these beliefs are throwing you off? Your actual actions are the key, not the story you tell yourself about them.
The second key is to actually get feedback from trusted people. Strive to overcome the instincts that protect your self image that push you to reject anything that contradicts the story you’ve written for yourself.
Now as you start examining this, or as you run into experienced/successful people or look into broad, peer-reviewed research, you’ll start hearing things about another way…
This way sounds slow, inefficient, difficult, like it will take a lot of extra work, drudgerous, and less than ideal. It involves a lot of guess-work, trial and error, repetition. You have to do it without confidence. People might make fun of you. You’ll look “cringe“.
In order to get better at it, you must be willing to do it poorly MANY times first.
The paradox that trumps them all is that if you want to reach the goal of doing it “well”, you have to ignore how well you do it for a while and focus only on the goal of doing it.
Writing – Progress-improving Beliefs
Based on my personal experience and learning from experiend and successful writers, here’s more of the way that actually works, the might look like the “slow” way:
- The words will be difficult to produce (at first)
- You don’t know the “right” order to do the writing process
- There is no clear “formula” for success
- A good plan or idea does not control how easy, or how much work, the story will be
- There is no “right” process
- Working with your needs and limitations will work, saying they “shouldn’t exist” won’t
- You have to be willing to do it poorly many times before you start to improve (don’t even obsess over doing it “well” yet).
- Most of your early projects will be unpublishable, but will be critical practice. Vital even. Required.
- You must enjoy the process of writing, not just daydream of a perfect finished product.
- You will never be in the perfect mood or location or environment, but taking time to take care of emotional needs, rest, and preparing your environment can go a long way.
- And most of all, you first must make a habit of doing it. Not well. Not right. Not with feedback, not trying to improve. Not with the goal of finishing. Nothing happens until you have that habit of producing words with abandon and without delay.
- Focus on no other goal until you achieve that one.
- This is the ONLY way to achieve those other goals.
That last one is key, and we’ll get back to it in a moment.
Changing Minds – Progress-improving Beliefs
Now for our second example, “Changing people’s minds”. When you start learning about how that actually works, things really start getting wild. The ways that belief and moral psychology work go against the stories we tell ourselves. The following are ideas much more closely aligned with successfully “Changing People’s Minds”:
- First and most important, I can’t. People must change their own minds.
- I mainly believe things for emotional, intuitive, and subconscious reasons (and so do others).
- The reasons we tell ourselves that we believe things are mostly a story we created after the fact.
- People are not convinced when confronted directly with something that opposes their world view.
- I am strongly influenced by the opinions of my friends and acquaintances
- Arguing usually strengthens the other person’s stance (whether logical or emotional)
- I am also prone to emotional responses (like the backfire effect)
- People do better exploring ideas than directly confronting beliefs or contradictions in their worldview
- Treating a discussion like combat only ends in weakened relationships, not weakened convictions
- Treating a discussion like a collaboration opens people up to change, especially yourself
- No matter how good your argument, no one changes their world view after a single conversation (though they might shift slowly over time)
- My ideas and worldview are at least incomplete, if not wrong.
- People have good reasons to come to a conclusion different from mine
- I have poor reasons for some of my beliefs
- It’s not enough to be “right”, I must be effective.
- Being “good”, “right”, “smart”, “correct”, or “on the right side of history” won’t matter if I fail and the world burns around me. If I didn’t help the situation (or worse, I made it… worse), those things won’t matter. I still lost.
- I am not as “good”, “right”, “smart”, “correct”, or “on the right side of history” as I think I am.
- People don’t like getting preached at
- Beliefs change slowly, over time, usually unnoticed
- In-person conversations are far more effective than any text-only formats (due to factors like tone, body language, rapport, and more).
- Trying to change someone’s mind is likely to backfire.
- Getting people to explain how their believed world works helps them to discover the holes in their own knowledge
- Helping people explore the origins of their beliefs and HOW they connect is more effective than asking them to justify them
- People have subconscious moral instincts motivating them to keep certain beliefs.
- Pushing too much in one conversation is counterproductive. I must take baby steps and long breaks between chats.
- People will only start to listen when they know that I care about them and that I share their goals of doing good and helping others.
- I must not only be WILLING to change my mind, acknowledge ignorance, and admit I was wrong; I must do those things FREQUENTLY.
- And, most of all, my primary goals should always be getting myself closer to truth.
- Treat others as sources of learning new perspectives to be understood, not criticized.
- You will never be able to help others change their minds unless you practically forget that goal and focus solely on changing your own.
- This is the only way to achieve those goals with others.
The only way to change people’s minds is to first change your own, then to make your goal to understand others, and then forget your goal of changing other people’s minds.
YEP. There it is again, You must forget the end result and focus completely on the process.
Conclusions
This leads us to our conclusions (finally!).
First, what we often envision as the “right way” is frequently idealized and unrealistic.
Second, we may think of the “hard way” as slow, tedious, too complicated or downright stupid.
Third, the “hard way” is the only one that actually gets results.
But here’s the real test:
- When you put your results against your stated goals, do they match?
- Do our behaviors actually help us succeed?
- Does our reasoning get us closer to our goals, or do they just excuse our lack of progress?
To simplify: How well does what I’m doing actually work in reality?
This entire article can be summarized into 2 simple phrases:
- “Fast is slow. Slow is fast.”
- “When it comes to doing things ‘the ideal way’ and the ‘hard way’ there really is only one choice. The hard way. Because it is the only way that works in reality.
We should call them ‘the imagined way’ and “the way that works.”
So, which way is actually the “slow” way? Which is actually the “hard” way; since one of these ways doesn’t actually work at all?
The universe doesn’t care how you think it “should” work. It just is. Work with reality as it is, not how you think it should be. After all, your goal is NOT “follow this process I decided is right”. Your actual goal is to succeed, right? Right?
Be kind to yourselves.
Booyah.
A question to leave with you:
What else in your life have you approached with the same attitude?
Thomas Fawkes 