Decision, intention, prediction

Here’s the bottom line for this post:

Intention comes from decision. If an intention is strong enough, it will lead to action. To control action, start with decision, and test with prediction.

Here’s how I got there:

On October 21 I wrote this post, about Predictive Processing and correctly predicted that I would publish it. On October 25, I wrote this follow-up prediction. Then over the next 25 days, i published 21 posts.

Maybe there’s a connection. Perhaps not. But right now I’m going with maybe there is.

In some other posts, I wrote about intention. How intention makes things happen. But clearly (as I considered here) intention is not enough.

So now here’s my insight: prediction is a test of effective intention. If I intend something, let me test it by predicting the result of my intention. If I predict failure or unlikely success, then there’s something wrong with my intention.

I may intend an outcome. I may want it. But that’s often not enough. Right now I intend to take another sip of coffee, and I intend to have someone give me a million dollars. I predict that I will taste coffee in the next minute or so. And I predict that no one’s giving me a million dollars any time soon.

Result: I correctly predicted coffee, and correctly predicted not getting a million.

I predict that I’ll achieve what I intend much more frequently if I take the time to predict success or failure and adjust my plans and actions according to my prediction.

There may be times when I want to carry out a plan even when I predict likely failure. But in general, when I predict failure, I should change the plan or abandon it entirely (an extreme change in plan.)

Here’s the bottom line for this post:

Intention comes from decision. If an intention is strong enough, it will lead to action. To control action, start with decision, and test with prediction.

Is this post good enough? What I decide determines what happens.

If I decide this post is not good enough, then I predict that I’ll keep writing it, intending to make it better. If I do that, then I can’t confidently predict when I will publish it.

I’m not going to decide that.

If I decide that I’ve captured something useful in this post (I have!) and that it’s is good enough (I can decide that!) then I predict that my intention will shift—from improving it to publishing it. If that happens, I predict, with high confidence that it will appear in my blog within the next half hour.

I’m going to decide that.

It’s 1:35 as I finished the first draft.

It’s 1:45 as I’ve finished tweaking it and checking it in Grammarly.

It’s 1:49 as I finish my last tweaks, and convert from markdown.

I predict I will now publish it.

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