How People Think

If you desperately need a solution and a good one isn’t known or readily available to you, the path of least resistance is willingness to believe anything. Not just try anything, but believe it.

One is that length is often the only thing signaling effort and thoughtfulness. Consumers of information rarely try to dissect an argument objectively; that’s too hard. When reading they just try to figure out whether the author is credible or not. Does this sound right? Does it pass the smell test? Has the author put more than a few seconds of tho... See more

Author Elias Canette wrote:

The largest crowds are drawn by the storytellers. It is around them that the people throng most densely and stay longest... their words come from further off and hang longer in the air than those of ordinary people.

Psychologist Amos Tversky once said “the secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.”

Some variation of that phrase can be used on most of your role models – people who have extreme, outlying success. You like them because they do things other people would never consider, or can’t even comprehend.

One thing this does is gives a false view of success. Most of what people share is what they want you to see. Skills are advertised, flaws are hidden. Wins are exaggerated, losses are downplayed. Doubt and anxiety are rarely shared on social media. Defeated soldiers and failed CEOs rarely sit for interviews.