Stop The "What Does It Mean When He/She Does This?"
Channel: Alex Zorach
Date: 2018-07-20

Huge amounts of energy in our society is put into asking questions and giving advice about interpreting people's actions. Yet rules like "When someone does X, it means Y" are error-prone due both to cultural diversity and individual variation, and lack of information. Here I explain how freeing it can be to avoid such interpretations, instead using contextual cues (rather than social norms) to gather information, and relying on direct verbal communication if we're still unsure of something. I also explain how a lot of this interpretation is totally unnecessary -- we don't need to know what's going on in other people's heads in order to lead happy and productive lives. Just saying "I don't know" and moving on can free up a tremendous amount of mental energy which we can put to use doing other things.