How can I efficiently write down my personal problems for further auto-analysis? [closed]
Closed by System on Jul 16, 2019 at 06:30
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When I have some personal problems in relationships or there are worrying issues about life in general and I am really upset about the situation, in order to “solve it”, or efficiently think about it, I tend to dump all data I have about this “mental” situation into some electronic text document, word, etc. There once I have all possible information, I tend to add hypotheses about why this happens, what should be done, etc, in a very similar way the scientific method is applied in order to solve problems. Sometimes this works for me and I finally find a “solution” to my problem, or at least I finally stop worrying about it. Afterwards I feel a bit impotent about this and I think that my brain or mind is not strong or skilled enough in order to do it by itself without needing it to dump all info into paper or other external system.
Therefore my question is, how can I efficiently write down my personal problems for further auto-analysis? Please answers based on facts, specific expertise or references.
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1 answer
Q: Do we write down problems that we address using the scientific method?
A: Yes. We dump all this information on static media all the time, both for our benefit and for the benefit of others. We do so not only because our brain is limited, but because sharing data, storing information and reproducibility of experiments are all key elements of progress.
Consider the general case of a scientific problem, in which you have spent time clarifying in your head what the observables are, what the assumptions are, what the model is and what experiments you need to perform to verify your model.
You can now retain all this information in your head, and it will only be useful to you as long as you can remember it. Alternatively you can write it down and share it with others, or with your future self.
A good writeup:
- automatically highlights the differences between the new and the previous models;
- implicitly indicates the experiment that would most discriminate between the two models;
- suggests what observables you should collect in such experiment;
- allows you to pass this information to others in a manner that that they could replicate your experiment and obtain your results.
In doing so you have helped all of us, and while we may never ascertain truth using such approach, we can still try to remove errors.
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