The starting claim is unflattering. A person has no permanent I, only a crowd of small ones that take turns and each speak in the name of the whole, and ordinary waking life is a form of sleep in which nobody is present to notice. The method attacks that directly. Self observation means watching oneself without correcting or excusing what is seen. Self remembering means holding attention on the observer and the observed at the same time, which pupils reported being able to sustain for seconds at a stretch. Identification, losing oneself in a task or a grievance, is the ordinary condition and the thing being worked against.
Gurdjieff described a person as three centres, moving, emotional and intellectual, which develop unevenly and are usually out of contact with each other. That is why the older paths of the fakir, the monk and the yogi each train one and leave the rest. The Fourth Way trains all three at once and refuses withdrawal: the work is done in ordinary conditions, and at the Prieure near Fontainebleau that meant heavy manual labour, unfamiliar tasks and deliberately awkward arrangements designed to make habit visible. The Movements, dances set to music which often require the limbs to keep different counts at once, exist to make habitual coordination impossible and attention necessary. The enneagram, a nine pointed figure inside a circle, was taught as a diagram of how any process unfolds.