Coaching practices for Ideality Thinking
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Ideality Thinking, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- Every option I’m weighing is just a tweak on what already exists
- I’d settled on A over B, and then a third option showed up and somehow flipped me back to B
- I walked out of that sales pitch about to say yes to the "middle" option, and only later did it hit me that the pricey one they showed first was probably there just to make this one feel reasonable
- If it’s not perfect it’s a total failure to me
- I’m weighing a choice and I notice I’m only asking what’s best for me, then quietly building a clever story for why that’s also fine for everyone
Practices that may help
- Define the ideal final result first
Describe the perfect outcome as if the solution already exists and costs nothing, then work backward to what could enable it.
TRIZ: Systematic Invention and the Logic of Contradictions - Check whether a third option is changing your view of the original two
If a new option makes you change your preference between existing options, ask whether the new option should have that power.
The Decoy Effect — How an Irrelevant Option Changes Your Choice - Recognize when contrast is being used on you
Awareness of the contrast principle is the antidote — evaluate options against an independent standard, not the presented sequence.
The Contrast Principle, Made Practical - All-or-nothing thinking (black-and-white thinking)
Evaluate situations and yourself in absolute, binary terms — perfect or failure, always or never.
Cognitive Distortions: The Thinking Errors Behind Anxiety and Depression - Test your actions against the common good
Ask whether what you’re about to do serves or damages the common good — not just your interests.
Sympatheia — the Stoic Practice of Universal Interconnection - Satisfice: set a good-enough threshold and stop searching when you hit it
Optimize for "good enough" rather than "best possible" — the search cost often exceeds the gain.
Simple Heuristics: Gerd Gigerenzer’s Case for Fast and Frugal Thinking - Know your two selves (Adam I and Adam II)
Distinguish the self that wants to build and achieve from the self that wants to be good.
The Eulogy Virtues: Building a Life of Character - Consider the cost of mediocre vs excellent allocation
Ask not just "is this worthwhile?" but "is this the best use of this resource right now?"
Opportunity Cost Thinking: What You Give Up When You Choose - Elicit your real standards before you look
Write down what a good outcome actually requires before options are visible.
Choice Overload, Made Practical - The Ideal Performance State, Made Practical
The Ideal Performance State (IPS) is Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz’s term for the specific combination of physical, mental, and emotional activation at which a performer reliably produces peak output. The IPS is individual-specific — what energizes one performer paralyzes another — and is accessed through deliberate energy management rather than through hoping to "get in the zone."
Related concerns
- First Option Bias
Estimate what you’d accept under comparable known-odds risk — if your bar is much higher for unknown odds, that gap is the bias.
Check whether you’re demanding an unfair ambiguity premium
- Killingsworth Gilbert
Continuing bonds theory, developed by Dennis Klass and colleagues, holds that maintaining an ongoing inner relationship with the deceased — through memory, ritual, and internalised connection — is a normal and often adaptive part of grief, not a sign of pathology. Observational research supports this for many types of connection, though some forms (active searching, idealisation) are associated with poorer outcomes.
- Lure Of Alternatives
Recognize when comparison to alternatives is inflating their apparent quality — and how to recalibrate.
Understanding and managing the lure of alternatives
- Parameter Optimization Trap
Notice when you are adjusting numbers and ask whether the structure is the actual problem.
Resist the pull to optimize parameters when structure is the problem
- Preference Elicitation
Over-explaining reasons for a preference can actually detgrade the quality of affective predictions.
For many decisions, going with your gut outperforms lengthy analysis
- Choice Architecture At Work
Choice architecture — the arrangement of options in a decision environment — powerfully biases outcomes through default effects, ordering, salience, and framing. Thaler and Sunstein showed this is true whether or not anyone designed it deliberately, which means you can redesign your environment to bias yourself toward better choices.
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.