advantage.

The branch of self-knowledge which is particularly required for the
solution of the immediate case of the plain man now under
consideration is not a very hard one. It does not involve the
recognition of crimes or even of grave faults. It is simply the
knowledge of what interests him and what bores him.

Let him enter upon the first section of it with candour. Let him be
himself. And let him be himself without shame. Let him ever remember
that it is not a sin to be bored by what interests others, or to be
interested in what bores others. Let him in this private inquiry give
his natural instincts free play, for it is precisely the gradual
suppression of his natural instincts which has brought him to his
present pass. At first he will probably murmur in a fatigued voice
that he cannot think of anything at all that interests him. Then let
him dig down among his buried instincts. Let him recall his bright
past of dreams, before he had become a victim imprisoned in the
eternal groove. Everybody has, or has had, a secret desire, a hidden
leaning. Let him discover what his is, or was--gardening, philosophy,
reading, travel, billiards, raising animals, training animals, killing
animals, yachting, collecting pictures or postage-stamps or autographs
or snuff-boxes or scalps, astronomy, kite-flying, house-furnishing,
foreign languages, cards, swimming, diary-keeping, the stage,
politics, carpentry, riding or driving, music, staying up late,
getting up early, tree-planting, tree-felling, town-planning, amateur
soldiering, statics, entomology, botany, elocution, children-fancying,
cigar-fancying, wife-fancying, placid domestic evenings, conjuring,
bacteriology, thought-reading, mechanics, geology, sketching,
bell-ringing, theosophy, his own soul, even golf....