I love making life easier (or less stressful).
And one way I make life easier is to use frameworks to think better.
One example is using a Stoicism fundamental framework:
The Stoics realized that there are things we control and things we don't control. To get to the good life, we should focus on the things we control, and accept the rest as it happens.
That has helped my life tenfold. And it's guided me in helping those I care about.
Another framework recently came to light in a convo with my mom.
She was explaining a particular predicament with my grandpa. He did not want to stay alone after my grandma passed, so he came to stay with my parents.
My mother quickly realized that he was lost (aka, he didn't know how to do much). My grandma had done almost everything for him (i.e., cooking, cleaning).
Her "helping" ended up hurting him. And now, my mom was left to deal with it.
So, as she lamented about how she was helping him so much, I provided her with a framework to help her think.
I said, "Whenever you're going to help him, ask yourself: Will this disable his ability to help himself further down the road?"
An example of how I used this was with Katie two weeks ago. She had COVID (we both got it) and was very tired. So instead of demanding she still do her routine household tasks, I picked up her load.
I did this because I knew it wasn't enabling her to do less work in the end. On the contrary, it was genuinely helping her.
Now, if she turned to me this week and asked me to clean the cat's litter (her routine task), I would say sure, under one condition: You feed them food (my routine task).
Because if I helped her this time, she would become conditioned to me doing it, and she would slowly stop and forget how to do it (maybe not forget but…).
While this doesn't altogether remove the moment's tension, it helps make a better decision that leads to a better future.
Helping someone while enabling them to not do basic things for themselves is a disservice to them in the long run.
Like in business when a manager fails to delegate. Yea, it helps at the moment. But you are not empowering your people to do their job and grow.
Why share this with you?
Maybe like my mom, you can find this framework to be of use. At least I have.
Or, you can see the value in establishing mental models (frameworks) to think through–rather than off your strength alone–to improve your decision-making.
Either way, let me know some frameworks or strategies you use that help you autonomously improve your thinking, decisions, and thus your life.
I would love to add them to my toolkit.
🧠 + ❤️ // JO