The advice you'd give a friend

Psychologists call it Solomon's paradox, after the wise king who solved everyone's dilemmas but his own: we reason better about other people's problems than about our own.

In the experiments of Igor Grossmann and Ethan Kross, people analysed the very same conflict more lucidly — more nuance, more alternatives, more humility — when it was happening to someone else than when it was happening to them. It isn't a lack of intelligence: it's an excess of closeness. From inside a problem, fear and pride fill the whole field of vision.

The trick is to manufacture distance. Write your problem in the third person, as if it belonged to someone with your age and your life: 'X has spent months wondering whether to quit their job…'. Or ask the question straight: if my best friend told me exactly this, what would I say? The answer usually arrives fast and clear — a sign that you knew it all along.

It isn't wordplay: in the studies, that small shift brought the wisdom we apply to other people's lives closer to the way we judge our own. You already have the good advice. All that's left is to treat yourself like someone you want to advise well.