I’ve defined sensemaking as a personal project for laymen to figure out how to live. There are really three things to do.

• Answer the question, “What do you think the world is?”
• Answer the question, “How do you think you should live in it?”
• Figure out how to execute what you’ve decided.

People might be stuck at different points but if you can figure all three things out then you’ve achieved the goal of sensemaking as I’ve defined it.

Note that the question is not what the world truly is but what you think the world is. Some people get stuck because they think they need to understand the absolute truth about the world.

That’s what the philosophers were trying to do. And in their attempts they developed science as a way to seek truth. But they couldn’t find any final or convincing answers to the big questions.

As a lay sensemaker you don’t need the absolute truth. You just need to figure out what you think the world is and remain open to the possibility of being wrong. Update your view upon receiving more evidence or feedback from reality. As long as you remain open to this possibility, you don’t need to seek the ultimate absolute truth.

The same goes for the second question. You don’t need to find the absolute truth about the best life for everyone. You just need to find, or rather decide, in light of what you think the world is, how you want to live in it. What is the best life for you.

Some people get stuck because they think, “I don’t know what the world is, or what the best life is, because I’m not an expert in everything.” They’re once again assuming that the answer they need has to be the absolute truth. Even if they relent on the ‘absolute’ part, they don’t let go of the ‘truth’ part. Even if it’s provisional, they still think they need to understand the truth about the world and how to live. They know what they think right now, but they can’t be certain that it’s the right answer and so they stay lost.

This is once again the assumption of certainty at work. If you can convince yourself that you’re certain of the answers to these questions, then it gets very easy to act on them. The problem is that then you also become resistant to changing or updating the answers.

People usually work within this assumption and you get two approaches. Those who are certain in the answers they have and won’t change or update them for any reason. And those who want to be certain, but can’t find that kind of answers and so stay lost. Both groups get it wrong in my opinion.

Living with Uncertainty

What we need to learn instead if how to live with uncertainty. How to act without certainty. The way to do that is to say, “Well this is the best I can come up with for now. I might be wrong but there’s no point staying lost forever and never acting. So let me live according to this worldview and depending on the feedback I get from life, I’ll try to improve it.”

The next point of trouble can be the execution stage. You might know the answers to the first two questions but when you try to live like that you just can’t get yourself to do it. You keep repeating old patterns and bad habits and can’t seem to make it work.

To solve this problem you need to answer a more specific question about yourself: why am I not able to execute? How do I get myself to do what I want to do?

This question then becomes the third question that must be answered to make sensemaking work. You’ve made sense of the world and how to live but you still need to make sense of your own mind and how you work, in order to live the way you’ve decided.

The next problem can be that you’ve answered all three questions and you’re living the way you’ve decided but you’re still not happy. You’re not getting what you wanted; whether that’s satisfaction or happiness or reduced suffering.

This is your life giving you feedback. Something is missing in your answers. That’s when you go back and try to find one small thing that might be wrong, change it and then see if your life improves.

Iterative Development

In this way, you’re figuring out life through iterative development; the way software developers build software. They don’t come up with the best software in their head and then build it and ship it and it works great for everyone. They come up with a minimum viable product and ship it and let users use it and give them feedback. What bugs they found, what features they’d like etc. Then they do continuous iterative development. Remove one bug here, add one feature there. And after a few versions, they have something that none of them could have dreamt up on their own.

To think that we can find the truth about the world and the best life and then everything will work perfectly is the same as thinking that you can develop the perfect software without any bugs and covering every feature anyone could ever want. It’s just not realistic.

Instead you begin with a minimum viable philosophy. A basic understanding of the world and life and how you want to live. An understanding of your own mind and how to control your actions. And then you begin living and improve things one small thing at a time for the rest of your life.

This is the key difference between sensemaking and traditional philosophy. You don’t sit in an armchair and think up utopian societies and best lives inside your head. You actually live your life. Sensemaking is a practice to help live a better life, but living life is still the main goal. Sensemaking should be a small part of it, not the entire purpose of your existence.

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Cover Photo by Eyrie Photography on Unsplash