Making A Decision? Measure The “Trust My Thoughts” Index First

The 10-question prompt I use to avoid making poor choices

Jul 28, 2024

I recently created a “Trust My Thoughts” index.

It’s a score that helps me realize when I’m in a good state to make a decision or listen to the ideas in my head.

I start with a score of 10, then subtract 1 point for each of the following that are true:

Have I had alcohol in the last 3 days?
Have I had a poor night’s sleep in the last 3 days?
Have I had a poor diet in the last 3 days?
Have I gone longer than 3 days since spending time in nature?
Have I gone longer than 3 days since I used a handwritten journal?
Have I doomscrolled social media for over an hour in the last 3 days?
Have I had my energy drained by someone else in the last 3 days?
Has the weather been abnormally bad within the last 3 days?
Have I gone longer than 3 days without intense exercise?
Have I gone longer than 3 days since having a good conversation with a friend?

If my score is less than 8/10, I avoid making any decisions and instead focus on fixing my state. Then, I come back and decide with a clear, calm mind.

Here’s the prompt as a downloadable image you can take with you.

Since doing this exercise, I’ve learned a few things:

Most of “feeling good” is simply avoiding these things. It’s hard to feel bad when your answer is “no” to each of these. This means baking these activities into your default lifestyle makes feeling good inevitable. Live somewhere warm, where it’s easy to exercise, surrounded by people you love, without too much time on your phone.
It takes about 3 days for the negative effects of each of these to “roll off.” So rather than just looking at today or yesterday, I give myself a “buffer” that stacks enough positive days in a row before the score “flips.” This realization also helps me avoid the behaviors entirely because I know I’ll feel their effects for at least 72 hours.
There were periods of my life where I operated at a 0/10 Trust My Thoughts index for literally months at a time. Funny enough, it was during this period when I made zero progress & felt miserable. The opposite is true as well: my periods of biggest progress came when I operated close to a 9 or 10 on this index for months at a time.
The best advice you can give people when making a decision is to avoid deciding until this score is 8+. When someone comes to me stressed & looking for direction, I avoid giving them anything specific. Instead, I suggest taking care of their “state” first—because then, the right path becomes obvious.
Society has normalized operating at a 0/10 on this index. And this creates a vicious loop that keeps people pinned in this lower state of consciousness for years and years (without noticing anything is wrong).

How To Put This Exercise List Into Practice

Step 1: Spend 10 minutes completing the prompt. This is currently my go-to morning journal prompt. I’m focused on constantly keeping my score at an 8 or higher.
Step 2: For each area where you lost a point, brainstorm an immediate action you can take to avoid it in the future. Doomscrolling too much? Delete Instagram. Poor weather & no nature? Book a quick “environment reset” vacation. Poor diet, poor sleep, and too much alcohol? Publicly commit to cleaning things up for 3 days (with your partner or on social media).
Step 3: Choose the 1 action that wins you the most points back and take that action immediately. For me, avoiding alcohol, cleaning up my diet for 3 days, hitting a hard workout, then calling one of my best friends always sets off a positive chain of momentum.

The goal here isn’t to do a massive overhaul of everything in your life to try and get the score to a 10/10.

Chances are, there are one or two things you implement that take care of just about everything on this list.

Find them, commit to them, and watch as default anxious feelings start to melt away.

That’s it for this week. If you found this helpful, leave a comment to let me know ✊

- Dickie

Dickie’s Digest

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