I once wrote about a peculiar practice I do to help me become a less judgmental person. Whenever I’m out in public and I catch myself judging a stranger—for such offenses as poor sidewalk-sharing, or imprecise parking—I resolve instead to temporarily become their secret ally.

Unbeknownst to the other person, I’ve gone from silently resenting them to silently watching out for them. For the short time we’re in the same vicinity, I’m prepared to leap into action should they need any sort of help. If they appeared to need directions, I’d offer. If their grocery bags were to tear, I’d help collect the rolling fruit.

I’ve almost never had to actually spring into action, aside from helping people reach things in grocery stores, but that’s not the main purpose. Essentially I’m training myself to view others with goodwill, rather than judgment.

And it works. My helping reflex is stronger and my judging reflex is weaker. Becoming a secret ally also makes me feel happier right in that moment.

Part of what’s so empowering about this practice is that it’s totally portable and self-contained. It doesn’t matter what happens, or what the other person does. Simply assuming the role of a helpful person, in any situation, helps me become a more naturally helpful person, and also creates an immediate sense of well-being. It’s like I’m making goodness out of nothing. It almost feels like cheating, like some kind of alchemical secret.

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I’ve always liked the Blaise Pascal quote, “I have discovered that all the miseries of men derive from one single fact: that they cannot sit quietly in their own room.”

People interpret this famous pronouncement all sorts of ways, but if you look up the context, it’s clear he’s saying “we prefer the chase over the quarry.” In other words, we live more easily in a state of pursuing future experiences than settling into the experience we’re having.

It makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. We’re less likely to be descended from easily-contented hunter-gatherers than from the ones who got antsy if they took too long to go out hunting and gathering again.

You could say that this persistent restlessness is nature’s way of keeping a little fire under our butts—one that makes “elsewhere and later” seem like a more suitable site for happiness than here and now.

This is a delusional belief, however, because once you get to that particular “elsewhere,” it’s already become another “here,” complete with that same fire of discontent under your butt. Another future-based haven soon forms in your mind’s eye, and you’re off trying to make that your new present.

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I’m in the back room of a coffee shop right now, switching between writing and another mental exercise: pretending I’m not here.

I don’t mean I’m wearing a disguise, or hiding behind a potted plant. I’m doing a perspective-shifting practice that I’d recommend to anyone: now and then, wherever you are, look at the scene in front of you as though it’s happening without you. 

From any seat, or standing spot, anywhere—in an office, a breakfast diner, a public square, a waiting room—see your surroundings just as they’d be if you weren’t here to see them.

Focus on the look and feel of the setting. The way the light lays across things. Take it in like a shot from a movie. Notice the movement and speech of people or animals, the soundscape and overall ambiance. It’s just a little corner of the world where things are unfolding, and you’re not here. Maybe nobody is.

When you do this, you might notice a certain lightness or simplicity arising. Things are more poignant. Everything seems less complicated, because it’s just stuff happening, not stuff happening to you.

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For whatever reason, whenever I resolve to get good at something, I habitually take a “boot camp” sort of approach. I draw up a challenging regimen, to be followed by hell or high water—for 30 days or so.

The regimen is always way too much to sustain forever, and I know that. The hope is that an intense period of focused striving will catapult me to new, higher realms of prowess and confidence, so that when I return to baseline, that baseline will be higher.   

It works, sort of, sometimes. You can look at my experiment logs to get a sense of the mixed outcomes. Some have been abject failures, almost comically so. Write at least a thousand words a day! (Result: “Outright failure.”) Read a book a week for a year! (Result: “Catastrophe.”)

And those are only the immediate outcomes. Longer term, the results are probably weaker. On many occasions, I soared through the boot camp period, declared myself permanently improved, and then quietly slid back to the baseline, which apparently had not moved.

For a long time I assumed that this pattern was due purely to my own personal bumbling, and not a problem with the method. After all, a boot camp style approach can be found for anything you want to get good at. There are programs that identify as “boot camps” for novel writing, personal budgeting, dating, poker, building a YouTube channel, reading the Russian masters, and of course hundreds of fitness programs.

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If you time-traveled to the 1960s, or even the 1980s, and tried to describe smartphones to the people you met, they wouldn’t believe you.

It would simply seem too good to be true—an affordable, pocket-sized device that provides:

instant telegrams or phone calls, from anywhere to anywhere, usually free maps of virtually every city or rural area, even showing current traffic conditions searchable encyclopedias up-to-the-minute news about anything in the world step-by-step instructions for doing virtually anything quick translations between dozens of languages endless articles, courses, movies and TV shows a camera that takes stills and video, and can transmit them to anyone instantly the means for anyone to create their own regular column or newsletter, or audio or video broadcasts the ability to adopt new functions at any time, usually for free

These are just a few basic smartphone functions, but to your new friends, they would all sound like life-changing superpowers. Their imaginations would run wild at how much easier such powers could make their lives.

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When I had a job, it was easy to know how much work to do in a day: somewhere between as much as I could, and as little as I could without someone calling me out on it.

Now I’m my own employer, and that clear standard for “a respectable day’s work” is gone. I’m constantly negotiating with myself over how hard to work, when to tackle the trickiest tasks, and when to take time off.

I realize that many people, both employees and self-employees, don’t have this problem. They work as hard as they reasonably can every day. These people get a lot done, and face problems of burnout and obsession, rather than lack of productivity.

This article is not for them. It’s for those of you who perpetually struggle to get the important things done, especially when there’s flexibility in what and how much you do on a given day: entrepreneurs, novelists, inventors, or really anybody aspiring towards something that may or may not happen.

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