#125 - Nine Tiny Thoughts
A collection of prompts for a better life
Many think of decisions as a product but see them as a process and you’ll see that the right framing gives you a big leg-up all the way to the end. It generates better options that lead to better decisions.
I want to share with you a practical toolkit for better framing. So I’m doing a free Zoom session on decision frames on Saturday November 4th at 8pm IST / 2.30 pm GMT / 10.30 am EST.
🚀Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86264779178?pwd=fOaqC5ayMQ73TLYntub2becphSEPHX.1
On to this week…
It is often a tiny thought that sparks off a process of exploration. Something in the idea being expressed catches our attention and then what follows leads to self-discovery. I want to share with you some of these open-ended prompts I hav encountered in the last couple of months.
Most of them are the words and ideas of luminaries in their fields. They cover the themes of holding an opinion; cognition, perception, and intuition; and working with others.
I hope they trigger in you something useful.
THEME 1: HOLDING OPINIONS
🔺Opinion and Evidence
‘Whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.’
- Bertrand Russell
Few have arguments about whether night will follow day. Not because it has been like that for millennia. That’s not a good explanation. But the laws of physics can explain precisely why night follows day. The explanation can meet with all the criticisms people have.
Not every topic has similarly good explanations. On any such topic there may be an equally compelling alternative explanation. Competing explanations point to opinions, not knowledge. When you’re holding an opinion, don’t expect to be immunized by criticism. If criticism of your opinion vexes you, consider it a sign that your belief is deeper than the supporting evidence for it.
🔺Evangelists Are Racked with Doubt
‘You are never dedicated to something you have complete faith in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas are in doubt.’
- Robert M. Pirsig
🔺Avoiding Intellectual Dishonesty
‘One way to avoid intellectual dishonesty is to maintain a slight positive pressure in the opposite direction. Be aggressively willing to admit that you're mistaken. Once you've admitted you were mistaken about something, you're free. Till then you have to carry it.’
- Paul Graham
THEME 2: COGNITION, PERCEPTION, & INTUITION
🔺Why Can You See Better Than You Can Think?
‘Perception is something that we share with other animals. It’s got, you know, many millions of years to develop and to develop beautifully, because we’re not all that better in our perception than cats or other mammals. In fact, you know, we’re inferior to birds in many ways. Cognition has had much less time to develop, and it’s a work in progress in terms of evolution.’
- Daniel Kahneman
🔺Judgments of Probability and Judgments of Quality
Judgments of probability are hard. But judgments of quality we’re good at.
We get stumped when asked to make explicit the probability of an outcome X in the future. But switch the emphasis from probability to quality (or intensity) and the answer comes much easier.
Instead of asking: how likely is the investment to succeed on a scale from one to seven?
Ask: how promising is the investment on a scale from one to seven?
Likely demands a probabilistic judgment; promising provokes an intensity judgment;
We naturally use intensity scales with a sense of confidence. We find ourselves capable of matching across scales. We can easily answer questions like, How tall a building in the city you live in would have to be to be as tall as that man is intelligent?
- From the ideas of Daniel Kahneman
🔺Feed Your Intuition before Asking It a Question
‘The problem with the intuitive judgment is that it’s too fast and we form intuitions very quickly, and in the unstructured interview, and there are data on this, the interviewers tend to form an intuition very quickly and they spend the rest of the interview justifying their first impression, so basically the rest of the interview adds very little information.’
- Daniel Kahneman
Kahneman has been saying for years that our belief-making works backward. We form beliefs and then construct reasons that back them up. We don’t first find reasons and then stitch them together into a belief.
This means that sometimes we lack useful information to construct an argument for our decisions. Some other times, we do but we let it pass because we’re busy looking for reasons that justify our first impressions.
The time spent looking for reasons that justify our first impressions is time taken away from evaluating the set of information that exists and is available. Don’t let your intuition guide you before you have gathered all relevant and available information. Don’t form a generalized overall impression based on a narrow dimension judged early.
In other words, feed your intuition before asking it a question.
THEME 3: WORKING WITH OTHERS
🔺Behavior and Performance
‘We very quickly separate on behavior. Performance is something that we will give more time; behavior we won’t. And that’s because behavior is a choice, not a skill set. When you come in as a new leader, everybody’s watching not just what you’re doing but [also] what you’re not doing. So if you’re not moving on things that people, that everybody is seeing, your leadership brand is already in question because apparently you’re blind and apparently you’re hesitating or you’re tolerant of behavior that you shouldn’t be tolerant of.’
- Frank Slootman
🔺Influence and Hierarchy
If you can’t convince people in your organization, you’re likely to remain a prisoner of hierarchy. Your ability to influence others will be a function of your designation. Continue this way long enough and you may end up questioning your ability, instead of your ability to influence.
Your ability to influence those you work with is often the unlock to your ability to make an impact.
🔺A Lesson Not Worth Learning
‘Work happens in community with your colleagues, customers and the broader industry, and that community will endeavor to teach you lessons that change your beliefs. When I left Yahoo, my Director asked me to explain my decision, and I ranted at him that I was disappointed by the lack of effort within my team. Several of my colleagues accomplished so little in a year that I was able to reimplement their work, running faster and using significantly less memory, in a weekend. This wasn’t because I was experienced or exceptional–I would generally say that I was neither–simply because I maintained a fairly moderate level of effort. This was, from my point of view, a major failing. My Director disagreed. Instead, he argued, you need all types of people in an organization. You need folks who push hard, but also those who are willing to maintain the boring pieces at a slow pace. Rather than a failed organization, this was good governance.’
- Will Larson
See you tomorrow at the Zoom session!