The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't
When you think of someone with excellent judgment, what traits come to mind? Maybe you think of things like intelligence, cleverness, courage, or patience. Those are all admirable virtues, but there’s one trait that belongs at the top of the list that is so overlooked, it doesn’t even have an official name. So I’ve given it one. I call it scout min
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REALIZE THAT TRUTH ISN’T IN CONFLICT WITH YOUR OTHER GOALS Many people actively resist viewing reality accurately because they believe that accuracy is a hindrance to their goals—that if they want to be happy, successful, and influential, it’s better to view themselves and the world through a distorted lens.
Julia Galef • The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't
LEARN TOOLS THAT MAKE IT EASIER TO SEE CLEARLY
Julia Galef • The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't
APPRECIATE THE EMOTIONAL REWARDS OF SCOUT MINDSET
Julia Galef • The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't
As the late physicist Richard Feynman once said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Julia Galef • The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't
So I’ve given it one. I call it scout mindset: the motivation to see things as they are, not as you wish they were.
Julia Galef • The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't
Striving for an accurate map means being aware of the limits of your understanding, keeping track of the regions of your map that are especially sketchy or possibly wrong. And it means always being open to changing your mind in response to new information. In scout mindset, there’s no such thing as a “threat” to your beliefs. If you find out you we
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Instead of being motivated by the promise of guaranteed success, a scout is motivated by the knowledge that they’re making a smart bet, which they can feel good about having made whether or not it succeeds. Even if a particular bet has a low probability of success, they know that their overall probability of success in the long run is much higher,
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This is the biggest problem with the self-belief approach to motivation. Because you’re not supposed to think realistically about risk, it becomes impossible to ask yourself questions like, “Is this goal desirable enough to be worth the risk?” and “Are there any other goals that would be similarly desirable but require less risk?” It implicitly ass
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Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz argues, in The Hard Thing About Hard Things, that there’s no point in thinking about your odds of success when building a company. “When you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it. You just have to find it,” he writes. “It matters not whethe
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