5 steps to pragmatism

With our world being turned downside up and outside in, it can be difficult to put our minds and bodies in a position to think practically. But now more than ever we need to develop the skills of a more pragmatic approach to life. Being pragmatic isn’t only the practice of what is useful, but moreso, what is useful for you. It’s centred around your self-interest.

The following is a quick 5-step guide on how we can flip the world in our favour, and have it work for us.

Regardless of where something is from, or the situation you may be in, it’s always beneficial to look at multiple sources to make sure the information we are basing our decisions on is factual.

Psychologists use the term ‘cognitive distortion’ when you consider something being good or bad and its possible effects.
Despite being taught from an early age to not make assumptions or jump to conclusions, we all typically fall short of this ideal and imagine the worst case scenario. Allowing our minds to paint a dystopian picture of what a seemingly insignificant event can create.

You need to have an eclectic process of collecting knowledge. Don’t just reference one site, or one article, or one news channel. Reference as many as possible until you are confident that you are not stumbling yourself through hearsay, gossip or clickbait.

The importance of this cannot be understated. Consider when you are sick or in need of professional help, you pay a premium to subject matter experts regarding law, health and finances. Yet, how do you go about getting information about how to improve your life if you aren’t happy?

As a society we are trained to open up social media or turn on the news, and suddenly we are glued to world events.
But ask yourself:

Even with our filters sorting through factual information, we are still bombarded by information online, at work, from friends and family and just generally in our day to day life going from A to B. We need a way to sort this information into ‘useful’ and ‘not so useful’ baskets. This can be achieved through categorising how important this knowledge is to us.

Even if you don’t mean to prop something up, what truly shows the importance we give to something is the time and energy it takes from us. We’ve all heard the adage ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff’, but that doesn’t help us understand what is worth our time. And as our least renewable resource, we need to focus on giving our time to the things which truly matter.

As an exercise, try having an honest sit down with yourself and peel away the layers of the “self-awareness onion” as Mark Manson puts it. This touches on a much larger topic for a different article, but for pragmatic purposes it can be summed up in 4 key areas:

Being self-aware of how you react to new information, provides you with the best tool-belt for rationalising what information will benefit you the most in relation to your values and goals.

Have you ever seen an experienced tight rope walker run across a tight rope over a gorge? Job title aside, despite the thousands of hours of practice and the best training and knowledge, they know that how you balance and stay focused is by taking one small step at a time. If you jump into a situation without considered thought, you can easily mistake opportunities for being in your self-interest.

Although at times it feels like you’re walking a tightrope, applying new knowledge is all about balance. Remember that looking around at others doesn’t help you balance on your rope, each of us has to find that balance for ourselves.

It’s nearing the end of the work day, you’re about to start packing up to head home, and then you’re suddenly called away into an ‘urgent’ client meeting for stuff that needed to be done yesterday (although you only just found out about it). Don’t cringe too hard whilst reading that, as this gives us the perfect opportunity to practice how we manoeuvre obstacles.

What is more important to you?
a. Getting work done so you don’t have to worry about it at home.
b. Being home when you thought you would. You don’t worry about work at home, so stuff it.
c. Getting the work done so your boss is happy.

Do you see how none of the above options bodes well for effectively handling your emotions? Let’s manipulate the options to reflect a healthier and more pragmatic approach:

What is more important to you?
a. Want to spend quality time at home with my significant other/working on hobbies. So I will try to get this done as quickly as possible.
b. I told my significant other/friends that I would be there for dinner. I’m not going to worry about this until tomorrow.
c. There is a new role available and the boss knows I want it. They will look more favourably on me if I stay back and get this work done.

A hurdler can get passed a hurdle in numerous ways. They could knock it over, run around it or even crawl under it. But you typically find that the more effective way is to jump over it.
By making the obstacle the way you get to something, not only do you exert your control on the situation but you also practice the reflection of your values in situations that typically hamper you.

How often have you finished a task and thought, ‘Absolutely perfect, that was just too easy’? If that happens frequently, you probably don’t need to be reading this as you have mastered life and it’s contents already.

But on a serious and controversial note,

as many like to think.
Expectations are the enemy. Expectations sit like dirt on the lens of your goals. How can you accurately act, when you can’t be sure on what that action looks like? Where does it end? Success and failure may appear to be opposite ends of the spectrum, but what they mean to us is completely relative.

Expectations are more dangerous than we’d like to admit. Not only do they often lead to perfectionism, but they can also lead to procrastination, pragmatism’s arch enemy. Don’t let idealism prevent you from reaching your goal when all you have to do is put one foot in the front of the other.
You’ll always end up on the other side.

Being eclectic in how we obtain knowledge will help us ensure that we are getting the ‘full picture’, and not just a pigeon hole of what we or our friends like to see.

Deciding what is in our self interest through understanding the principles that guide us is vital in organising our thoughts and sifting through beneficial knowledge.

Practicing this newfound knowledge requires patience and a proper self-assessment.

We hit obstacles on a day to day basis, how we turn those obstacles into opportunities for growth indicates whether we have the correct information we need to grow.

Expecting ourselves to get everything right the first time, or second time or third time… inhibits our ability to iterate on our learning and that prohibits on our ability to reach our goals.

Like all skills, pragmatism must be practised, revised, trained and customised to ourselves for it to be effective. It’s a journey, not a ride.

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