Should you ever lie to yourself?

A reader asks, "How should we confront the fact that it's sometimes more productive to believe false things?"

My answer is that, yes, in principle, having false beliefs can benefit you. But in practice I rarely think self-deception is a good strategy, for two reasons:
1) It doesn't work that well
2) It sets you up for biases you can't predict ahead of time

But you don't have to obsess over unhelpful, or unpleasant truths. I find there's usually some third way, an alternative to being paralyzed by the truth AND to believing a comforting lie. One example is a technique I call "worker-me and CEO-me."

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