I do a favor for someone, therefore I think that I must like this person. I feel happy, therefore I smile at someone on the street. I feel angry, therefore I think that someone must have wronged me. I think that my boss will be upset if I’m late for work, therefore I start getting ready to leave. I think that there’s no way I can succeed, therefore I feel sad. “Fake it ‘til you make it” contains a grain of truth. Notice that our behavior has a direct impact on our thoughts and feelings. The error in that logic is the one-way causal connection between what one thinks and feels and the resulting behavior.ĬBT states that our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are tightly interconnected, each influencing the others in an open feedback loop.Įach node in the triangle can impact, and be impacted by, any other node. Therefore, I should actively avoid Beeminder and similar tools in order to ensure I do the hard work of addressing the root causes! Without Beeminder, I would be forced to address the real issues - my distorted thoughts and beliefs. Providing a superficial fix for an internal problem enables denial of the deeper issues. So instead we beemind behaviors - getting to bed on time, doing our chores, spending less time on Facebook.Īnd it’s worse than that, says our hypothetical Beeminder naysayer. Thoughts and emotions are none of those things. We could try to sidestep the objection by instead beeminding the root issues.īut Beeminder works best for concrete, quantifiable, controllable metrics. Wouldn’t we rather address the underlying thoughts and emotions that give rise to the behaviors rather than Beeminder’s approach of just changing the behaviors? This objection paints Beeminder as an inefficient and needlessly-stressful game of behavioral whack-a-mole - that it’s a superficial fix that leaves the source of the problems unaddressed. It’s the difference between repeatedly cutting the top off of a weed and pulling it up by the roots. If you change your thoughts, behavior modification is automatic. If you leave your thoughts unchanged, you’re likely to continue dealing with the same behavioral problems. The anti-Beeminder view takes that model and claims that the best way to change your behavior is to address your thoughts, rather than trying to change your actions directly. Our behavior is the result of our emotional state which, in turn, is created by the thoughts and beliefs we hold about our situation. (See, for example, Scott Alexander’s excellent primer on CBT as a part of Self-blackmail or suggest that more positive approaches should be better.Ī common candidate for “more positive approaches” is Cognitive Behavorial Therapy, which Nathan is well-versed in.Ĭognitive Behavioral Therapy is all the rage. The backstory is that sometimes people accuse Had such an amazing response to some Beeminder skepticism in aįorum thread about Beeminder vs CBT that we asked him to blog about it. TaskRatchet fame and who we’re now proud to also have on the Bee Team part-time)
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