Don't Fight Your Mind

Discover, accept, and work with your mental limitations just as you do with physical ones.

I'm not sure whether “work with” or “work around” is better; you can pick whichever you like.

I should point out that I'm using the word “mind” in a slightly peculiar way. I don't mean the whole conscious mind, as opposed to, say, the body; I mean, roughly, the substrate that memes exist on top of. That may not make any sense, so here's an example. Consider two different things, the belief that cars are powered by gasoline and the fact that your short-term memory can only hold so many items. Both these things are mental in nature, but the first is a belief, i.e., a meme, that's subject to change, while the second is a fixed property of the mind. (If that still doesn't make sense, it might help to look at the essays The Mind and Footnote on Artificial Intelligence.)

Probably the best way to explain the principle “don't fight your mind” is to give examples of its use. You can find several in the backlinks at right, but, for continuity's sake, here's one more: since you know that your short-term memory can only hold so many items, you shouldn't expect to be able to remember, say, an entire twenty-item grocery list, you should just accept that a written list is necessary, or find some other workaround.

The above, I hope, gives the basic idea. I've included a few related thoughts as subessays.