mind.q08.org
A reading list for the inside.
Thirty-six primary sources, each attached to one question about how a mind works, and each ending in a probe you can run on yourself in under an hour.
This is not a personality product. There are no types, no elements, no charts of your destiny, and no author here claims authority over your life. There are arguments that can be wrong, evidence that can fail to replicate, and exercises that either change what you notice or do not.
If you want the shortest route: five entries, in order. If you want the reason for the exclusions: method.
Start here
- How much of what you experience did you actually choose to notice?
- Can you find the self you are so sure you have?
- Do you run because you are afraid, or are you afraid because you run?
- If insight does not change you, what does?
- What do you actually think, before you have decided what to think?
Attention
What your mind does when nothing is demanded of it.
- How much of what you experience did you actually choose to notice?
- What is your mind doing when it leaves the room?
- Is an unhappy mind a wandering mind, or the reverse?
- What subject does your brain return to when nothing else claims it?
- Why is passive leisure the least restorative part of the day?
The self-model
Is there a you behind the reports?
- Can you find the self you are so sure you have?
- What exactly is your self-esteem a ratio of?
- How much of the person you were at twenty-two is still you?
- Why does a representation feel like an owner?
- What is left of you when the story is subtracted?
- Are your reasons causes or press releases?
Feeling and the body
Where a mood comes from before you name it.
- Do you run because you are afraid, or are you afraid because you run?
- What happens to decision-making when feeling is removed?
- Is anger a circuit that fires, or a category you learned?
- If perception is inference, what is the self inferring?
Will, habit, and the limits of character
Why knowing better is not doing better.
- If insight does not change you, what does?
- Which of your desires do you want to have?
- How much of your character is just the room you are standing in?
- How much of what you believe about your mind would survive a replication?
Meaning and work
What makes a life add up, argued rather than asserted.
- Why can a pleasant life still feel empty?
- What do you do with the fact that your seriousness is optional?
- Would an unlimited life still be worth living?
- Which of the three things you do all week is not being expressed?
Self-examination as a technique
How to inspect your own mind without a guru.
- What do you actually think, before you have decided what to think?
- What would a daily audit of your conduct actually look like?
- How much of today's disturbance was about something you control?
- What if reading was supposed to change you rather than inform you?
- Which self-examination techniques did you inherit without choosing?
Minds under failure, minds from inside
What breaks, and what first-person accounts show.
- Which capacity, if you lost it, would end the person you think you are?
- When has a state impersonated a conclusion?
- Is your past continuous, or does it arrive in fragments?
- What does resistance to a correct explanation of yourself protect?
Instruments
Validated ways to put numbers on yourself.
- What do the five factors actually say, and what do they not say?
- Do you seek effortful thinking, or only tolerate it?
- Under uncertainty, do you pursue or withdraw?
- How much of your behaviour is organised around not feeling something?
What this cannot do
Reading does not measure you. The probes do, and only if you write down the result. The record page describes the smallest instrument worth keeping: four items, once a day, no streaks.