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Relsqui comments on Improving The Akrasia Hypothesis - Less Wrong
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This is a definitely a tool that I use, and teach other people to use. Self-inquiry doesn't have to be written, but it does have to be done, and it's generally best to do it in a way that involves an external sense - hearing yourself say it, or seeing it written. I don't know why exactly it's helpful, but it definitely is.
The biggest challenges most people have to conducting self-inquiry, though, are that:
They don't know how to separate the two "voices", and stay stuck in only one side of the conversation,
They engage in self-defeating behaviors, like criticizing the other voice instead of being relatively helpful/inquisitive/nurturing as you are in the dialog example you gave, and
They have trouble staying focused and knowing how to take the inquiry somewhere without either letting their emotional side run on, or trying to overwhelm it with logic.
It has taken me a long time to learn how to teach around these points, some more so than others.
When you keep it in your head, you don't have to form words; you can just think about what's bothering you as a vague concept. When you verbalize it externally, it forces you to clarify those ideas and pinpoint exactly what you're thinking; as far as I can tell, that's where the utility of the technique comes from.
I recently rediscovered this as a means, not of solving technical problems, but of overcoming strong negative emotions. Even when I already understood the facts and causes, "talking it out" on the page helped me vent the stress and calm down.
Perhaps in situations where your emotions are inhibiting your thinking, writing the useful parts (what you think, want, and can do) but not the useless parts ("oh god oh god everything is terrible") gives the former more weight.