Output/input

There's something fairly counterintuitive about human behaviour: we tend to assume it's a result of external inputs, but in fact it seems to be mostly a result of previous behaviour – that is, outputs. Your past behaviour is highly predictive of future behaviour, at least when that past behaviour happened in a similar context.

Why should this be the case? If you think of your brain as mostly an association machine, it makes a lot of sense. The more similar a situation is to another situation, the more likely you are to do the same thing again. Similarly, the way you have reacted in response to similar situations in the past will influence the way you react in the future. This is one of the central ideas of cognitive behavioral therapy.

In other words, if you want to change your behaviour or your mood, it may be best to focus on your output, not your input. Classic examples include the effect of keeping a gratitude journal on happiness, and the backfire effect, where correcting someone makes them believe more strongly in their mistake. Of course, if you disagree with the facts, more facts just means more practice at disagreeing.

One of the most interesting effects of this is that it can be helpful to put yourself in situations that challenge the behaviour that you want. For example, if you experience impostor syndrome, it can be helpful to have a debate with a friend. However, your friend takes the position that you are an impostor and you take the position that you aren't. It sounds strange that it could be helpful to be told you're an impostor, but the point is that the input (their arguments) doesn't matter as much as the output (your counterarguments). You want to practice and thus reinforce that output.

A common way to analyse a system is as something that takes in inputs and produces an output. It can be tempting to think of people that way; certainly, it's very neat and easy to understand. However, in reality I think we operate on associations, and associations are bi-directional. It's less that we turn the input into an output and more that we have a whole lot of inputs and outputs and we jumble them together and pull out the ones with the strongest associations at any given time.

Of course, our actions are usually going to be our most powerful experiences because there are a lot more associations involved in doing something than in experiencing it second-hand. Plus, we have a lot more direct control over our actions than our situation, which is usually at least partly beyond our influence.

All of which is to say that it makes sense to prioritise output over input, to focus on your actions and your responses rather than the situations that lead to them. And, in fact, sometimes it can even be worth giving yourself worse input if it reinforces the kind of output you want.