Beyond Why

It’s prudent to semi-regularly ask ourselves why we do various things, and why we do them the way we do them.

This isn’t a complicated concept but it can be tricky to implement productively: we humans tend to be skilled ritualizers and heuristics-developers—makers of physical and mental shortcuts—because habits and shorthand-thinking tend to save us time and energy.

As a consequence of these often-beneficial traits, we may also, even when very consciously asking ourselves “why?” about some...