Treat your subconscious like a dog

Sean Herrington
Fri, 03 Apr 2026 01:00:39 GMT

I am dumb. I regularly perform actions I don't endorse, and these sometimes end up working out badly. Just yesterday, I spent half of the day carefully avoiding writing my first Inkhaven daily post, despite this being necessary for my continued existence in America (aside from the evident embarrassment of being the very first person to get kicked out of the program). My brain knows that this avoidance is bad, but procrastinates anyway, and apparently this is a perfectly normal thing to have happen.

This seems like a strange state of affairs, but I think it can practically be solved (at least somewhat) by thinking differently about what we mean when we say "I know X". In "Thinking, Fast and Slow", a book I have not read, Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman apparently talks about our brains having 2 systems, system 1 and system 2 (which seems like an eminently sensible way to name them). System 1 is fast and intuitive, it does things like walking, catching balls and basic arithmetic like 2+2. Just about anything you don't have to think about is system 1. The main reason is that anything you do think about is system 2. Calculus, which socks to put on this morning and hiding their holes are all system 2.

For the purpose of this article, I will be using a categorisation which is fairly similar. I am going to call anything which you need to think explicitly your "conscious mind" and anything you don't your "subconscious". I hope the psychology nerds in the comments find this acceptable.

In any case, with this framing in mind, the question of whether you know something becomes ambiguous: does "you" refer to your conscious, your subconscious or both together? Hmm. Seems like we have our concepts muddled. Yesterday I knew I should write, but didn't. When I look at a large chocolate bunny on Easter Sunday, I know I shouldn't eat the entire thing in one sitting, but do. When I see a bottle of vodka on the shelf, I know I shouldn't down it in one, but...

In each of these situations, the things I am driven to do by my unthinking subconscious are different from the carefully thought-out actions my conscious mind gives me. I think these are all situations where saying "I know I shouldn't do this" muddies the water. Sure, "you" know, if you restrict "you" to the part of you which thinks thoughts out loud in your mind. The rest of you just wants to eat chocolate.

And this is fine. You have 2 systems of thought, and they do different jobs, but your system 1 is trained by your system 2, and you need to think about them separately if you want the training process to go well. I find the best way to go about this is to treat your subconscious like a dog: when you do good things like go on a run, eat healthy food or successfully roll out of bed, give your brain a treat. How do you give your brain a treat you ask? Celebrate! Give a little fist pump, a little yes I did it. This will train your subconscious to do the things you want it to, and be a good boy.

When your dog does something bad, you don't treat this as you having done something wrong - dogs are going to go for a swim in a muddy puddle from time to time. You can decrease the frequency with training, but the point is that it's fundamentally a training thing, and you should be thinking about trying to get the incentives right to convince him to rinse off properly rather than rub the mud on the sofa.

Dogs recognise locations. If you regularly go for a walk in a particular spot, he gets ready for walkies. Hanging around by the treat tin gets him salivating. Hanging out around the vet's makes him nervous. Going for a walk every day at 6am means he'll be ready to walk at 6am, and feeding him at 7am means he'll be hungry at 7am.

Telling your dog how to jump through a hoop is entirely ineffective. You need to show him how to do it in small steps until he appreciates that these steps will get him a treat. Don't give him a treat tomorrow, give him a treat immediately after he goes through the hoop. Dogs have short memories. Obey these tips and treat your dog well and he will be a good boy.

And a good boy will treat you well back.

Discuss