Thought provoking article but I'm not too sure that it is this simple. The heuristics outlined are inherently helpful and going through the process would be enlightening, but getting the answers to any of the questions in (a) - (h) are hard (some harder than most).
For example "(a) Ask ourselves what we’re trying to achieve" I find that this is a problem with most people (including myself), they do not know what they want to achieve, nor how to even start on the process of discovering what they want to achieve. Given this, then the first order question then becomes - How do I find out what I want to achieve?. Answering this question probably involves gaining more perspective and this is probably why "many people go through long training programs to make money" (college). So it seems that if you dig a little more, seemingly unoptimal actions make more sense.
Regardless, this article is a great start and I would love to see more in depth discussions on this.
You don't need detailed answers, after all many of them are unanswerable in any absolute sense, just thinking about them enough to get a partial answer will help.
For example "(a) Ask ourselves what we’re trying to achieve" I find that this is a problem with most people (including myself), they do not know what they want to achieve, nor how to even start on the process of discovering what they want to achieve. Given this, then the first order question then becomes - How do I find out what I want to achieve?. Answering this question probably involves gaining more perspective and this is probably why "many people go through long training programs to make money" (college). So it seems that if you dig a little more, seemingly unoptimal actions make more sense.
Regardless, this article is a great start and I would love to see more in depth discussions on this.