Ensure that you have trained enough for the next challenge, because it is the training that will see you through it, not your agenty conscious thinking.
Spent the last 5+ years of my life trying to do this, specifically for the role of Nurse (and Lifeguard before that). It's been fairly successful, and even generalizes a little–I am frequently the Person who Gets Shit Done in non-nursing contexts.
I'm not sure that the competence/learned skill routines/martial arts for rationality aspect is the same thing as "Being Responsible For This Shit." The former is something that takes years of doing hard things over and over, training the right mental motion the same way you'd train the physical motion. Almost all the things that actually make me a competent ICU nurse fall into this category.
The latter is something that can change in a day, with the right mental reframe. (Example: I usually basically never volunteer to drive places, although I've learned how–I'm not super comfortable and I don't have to. Then I was The Person In Charge of logistics for a large event, and hardly anyone else could drive, and I was responsible–so rather than spend a ton of energy convincing other people to drive places for me, I just got in the car.)
The two skills are probably related and probably correlated–for example, I suspect that many people have trouble taking on the role of "Person In Charge" because they have low confidence in their ability to actually take the right action and make things better rather than worse. (Given that in plenty of situations, taking the wrong action confidently is worse than doing nothing, that may be justified). Acquiring competence in one area, like nursing, brings confidence, and I think that's the thing that generalizes to the rest of my life, rather than any of the specific routines and skills and dealing-with-emergency templates that I've spent years training. It feels like I have a good understanding of which situations actually require very little skill, where the main thing is having the necessary confidence to speak. (Then again, I'm not sure I could distinguish this from "having ingrained a skill to the point that it doesn't even feel like a skill anymore.)
This correlates with my experience in the military. I had a job for a while that did not allow time for thoughtful analysis before each decision. In order to become competent, I had to do simulation after simulation after simulation, then live exercise after live exercise after live exercise...to the point where I could just react (hopefully competently).
Although I was well-trained in that role, it didn't automatically make me good at "Being Responsible For This Shit". Being Responsible (well, being good at Being Responsible) requires consid...
A long time ago I thought that Martial Arts simply taught you how to fight – the right way to throw a punch, the best technique for blocking and countering an attack, etc. I thought training consisted of recognizing these attacks and choosing the correct responses more quickly, as well as simply faster/stronger physical execution of same. It was later that I learned that the entire purpose of martial arts is to train your body to react with minimal conscious deliberation, to remove “you” from the equation as much as possible.
The reason is of course that conscious thought is too slow. If you have to think about what you’re doing, you’ve already lost. It’s been said that if you had to think about walking to do it, you’d never make it across the room. Fighting is no different. (It isn’t just fighting either – anything that requires quick reaction suffers when exposed to conscious thought. I used to love Rock Band. One day when playing a particularly difficult guitar solo on expert I nailed 100%… except “I” didn’t do it at all. My eyes saw the notes, my hands executed them, and no where was I involved in the process. It was both exhilarating and creepy, and I basically dropped the game soon after.)
You’ve seen how long it takes a human to learn to walk effortlessly. That's a situation with a single constant force, an unmoving surface, no agents working against you, and minimal emotional agitation. No wonder it takes hundreds of hours, repeating the same basic movements over and over again, to attain even a basic level of martial mastery. To make your body react correctly without any thinking involved. When Neo says “I Know Kung Fu” he isn’t surprised that he now has knowledge he didn’t have before. He’s amazed that his body now reacts in the optimal manner when attacked without his involvement.
All of this is simply focusing on pure reaction time – it doesn’t even take into account the emotional terror of another human seeking to do violence to you. It doesn’t capture the indecision of how to respond, the paralysis of having to choose between outcomes which are all awful and you don’t know which will be worse, and the surge of hormones. The training of your body to respond without your involvement bypasses all of those obstacles as well.
This is the true strength of Martial Arts – eliminating your slow, conscious deliberation and acting while there is still time to do so.
Roles are the Martial Arts of Agency.
When one is well-trained in a certain Role, one defaults to certain prescribed actions immediately and confidently. I’ve acted as a guy standing around watching people faint in an overcrowded room, and I’ve acted as the guy telling people to clear the area. The difference was in one I had the role of Corporate Pleb, and the other I had the role of Guy Responsible For This Shit. You know the difference between the guy at the bar who breaks up a fight, and the guy who stands back and watches it happen? The former thinks of himself as the guy who stops fights. They could even be the same guy, on different nights. The role itself creates the actions, and it creates them as an immediate reflex. By the time corporate-me is done thinking “Huh, what’s this? Oh, this looks bad. Someone fainted? Wow, never seen that before. Damn, hope they’re OK. I should call 911.” enforcer-me has already yelled for the room to clear and whipped out a phone.
Roles are the difference between Hufflepuffs gawking when Neville tumbles off his broom (Protected), and Harry screaming “Wingardium Leviosa” (Protector). Draco insulted them afterwards, but it wasn’t a fair insult – they never had the slightest chance to react in time, given the role they were in. Roles are the difference between Minerva ordering Hagrid to stay with the children while she forms troll-hunting parties (Protector), and Harry standing around doing nothing while time slowly ticks away (Protected). Eventually he switched roles. But it took Agency to do so. It took time.
Agency is awesome. Half this site is devoted to becoming better at Agency. But Agency is slow. Roles allow real-time action under stress.
Agency has a place of course. Agency is what causes us to decide that Martial Arts training is important, that has us choose a Martial Art, and then continue to train month after month. Agency is what lets us decide which Roles we want to play, and practice the psychology and execution of those roles. But when the time for action is at hand, Agency is too slow. Ensure that you have trained enough for the next challenge, because it is the training that will see you through it, not your agenty conscious thinking.
As an aside, most major failures I’ve seen recently are when everyone assumed that someone else had the role of Guy In Charge If Shit Goes Down. I suggest that, in any gathering of rationalists, they begin the meeting by choosing one person to be Dictator In Extremis should something break. Doesn’t have to be the same person as whoever is leading. Would be best if it was someone comfortable in the role and/or with experience in it. But really there just needs to be one. Anyone.
cross-posted from my blog